Moses Mendelssohn and the Haskalah

Moses Mendelssohn arrived in Berlin in 1743 as a poor 14-year-old Jewish student and became one of the most admired philosophers in Germany. His dialogue Phaedon (1767), on the immortality of the soul, earned him the nickname 'the German Socrates'. In 1769 the Swiss pastor Johann Kaspar Lavater publicly challenged him either to refute Christianity or convert; Mendelssohn responded with dignity, defending tolerance and declining a religious dispute.

He translated the Torah into German, printed in Hebrew letters, to help Jews learn German and engage with wider culture while remaining observant. His book Jerusalem (1783) argued that the state should not coerce belief and that religious communities should not punish dissent. Mendelssohn became a founder of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment; he also encouraged Christian Wilhelm von Dohm's 1781 treatise urging civil rights for Jews.

Yet Frederick II refused to confirm his election to the Prussian Academy, showing the limits of toleration even in an 'enlightened' state.