Looking for Mr. Moses

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Movie
Original title Looking for Mr. Moses
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1990
length 60 minutes
Rod
Director Tamara Wyss
script Tamara Wyss
production Leon Janucek for ESON-Film on behalf of ZDF
camera Ingo Krati
cut Rosemarie Stein
Bettina Stein
occupation

Looking for Mr. Moses is a documentary by Tamara Wyss from the year 1990 .

action

The director Tamara Wyss finds a notebook from Clara Westphal , her grandmother's grandmother. This gives her the idea of ​​making a film about Moses Mendelssohn , who in turn is Clara’s great-grandfather. The slowly opening borders to the GDR make your project easier. It is now possible to drive to East Berlin and also to film. One of the places visited is the Jewish cemetery on Grosse Hamburger Strasse , where Moses Mendelssohn was once buried. In addition to other work, a copy of his tombstone will also be renewed, with the stonemason Carlo Wloch being accompanied until the inauguration in the presence of Cantor Estrongo Nachama and Rabbi Ernst Stein .

This is followed by a visit to the Jewish cemetery in Schönhauser Allee , where there are other descendants of Moses Mendelssohn. In the interviews, two family members are also confronted with a family photo of Clara Westphal's seven children, all of whom were baptized. In particular, it was about how the portrayed fared during the Nazi era . On Spandauer Strasse , opposite the Rotes Rathaus , where Mendelssohn's house was located, reference is made to the permanent restrictions on Moses Mendelsohn's rights (the immigration and settlement rights for Jews were limited). This particularly affected the intended marriage to Fromet Guggenheim , who was still in Hamburg .

But even in 1990 you still had to pass border controls - on the way from Berlin to Potsdam, for example, which Moses Mendelssohn partially covered on foot on a Sabbath in 1771 to discuss philosophy with a minister of state on behalf of Friedrich II . The film was also about the admission to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences , which ultimately did not materialize, although the best minds of the time were for the admission of Moses Mendelssohn. In the West Berlin State Library , Mendelssohn's first writings and documents can be viewed, which are presented by Hans-Günter Klein: “Phaedon or about the immortality of the soul” from 1767, the translation of the Bible from Hebrew (German in Hebrew letters), the treatise “Evidenz in metaphysical sciences ”from 1763, for which Mendelssohn received the first prize of the Royal Academy before Kant, a business journal from 1779–1781, which Mendelssohn kept as authorized signatory.

The search for Moses Mendelssohn is accompanied by the actor Tayfun Bademsoy , who reads from his letters and texts again and again.

production

As interlocutors were Carlo Wloch , Just Boedeker , Robert von Mendelssohn , Hans-Günter Klein , Kantor Estrongo Nachama and Rabbi Ernst Stein available.

Web links

In search of Mr. Moses in Tamara Wyss family stories