»Ein Bild von ihm … wird immer belehrend und erquickend bleiben. Sein Leben lehrte.« David Friedländers biographische Fragmente über Moses Mendelssohn

Abstract

Abstract A few years after Moses Mendelssohn’s death (1786) David Friedländer wrote life-history descriptions in which he took a fragmentary look at Mendelssohn’s personality and emphasized that he had succeeded in approaching moral perfection as a human being and as a merchant to a high degree. With the virtuous perfection pattern Moses Mendelssohn (Vollkommenheitsmuster Moses Mendelssohn) designed by him, Friedländer initially pursued two intentions: on the one hand, he established a modern Jewish educational ideal, and on the other hand, his image of Mendelssohn served him to combat prejudice among non-Jews. Three decades later, Friedländer published further biographical fragments about Mendelssohn, this time appearing in a distinctly educational context, and again presenting Mendelssohn as an educational ideal. The article analyzes Friedländer’s ›Platonic‹ mode of presenting Mendelssohn and questions the significance of his parallelization of Mendelssohn with Socrates. In addition, it examines Friedländer’s choice of the fragment as a descriptive category and form of biographical representation, with which he functionalizes Mendelssohn for his pedagogical aims.