Language:
German
Year of publication:
2008
Titel der Quelle:
Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte
Angaben zur Quelle:
60,4 (2008) 310-329
Keywords:
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim,
;
Mendelssohn, Moses,
;
Michaelis, Johann David,
;
Christianity and antisemitism History 1500-1800
;
Haskalah
Abstract:
After consistently negative depictions of Jews in German literature until the Enlightenment, Christian Fürchtegott Gellert's novel "Leben der schwedischen Gräfin von G..." (1748) first portrays Jews who, out of gratitude to the count who saves the life of one of them, act nobly and generously; the countess wonders whether more Jews would not act as nobly if Christians treated them better. A year after Gellert's novel, Lessing wrote his comedy "Die Juden", in which a Jew saves a baron from the latter's own servants, who attack him disguised as Jewish highwaymen - a disguise credited by the baron, since it is generally accepted that Jews will commit any crime for the sake of gain. In appearance, deportment, and enlightened ideas the baron's rescuer does not differ from any cultured German. In gratitude, the baron offers him his daughter in marriage. The hero then reveals that he is a Jew, and all understand that the marriage is naturally impossible (except the daughter, who in her naiveté does not understand this at all). When the play was published in 1754, the scholar Johann David Michaelis criticized it, as well as Gellert's novel, for depicting improbable characters: noble Jews. Lessing responded that self-education could form such a Jew, and that he knew an example: Moses Mendelssohn; but he did not expand this positive view to Jews in general. Mendelssohn, on the contrary, pointed out that Judaism itself teaches virtue. The play with its bitter ending was staged by George Tabori in Berlin in 2003 and seemed as relevant as ever.
DOI:
10.1163/157007308785797781
URL:
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