Henriette Mendelssohn

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Henriette "Jette" Mendelssohn (born August 23 or August 24, 1775 in Berlin ; † November 9, 1831 there ) was a German educator and daughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn .

Life

Henriette Mendelssohn came in the summer of 1775 as the fourth daughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and his wife Fromet Mendelssohn , née. Guggenheim, in Berlin to the world. She was a granddaughter of Mendel Heymann , the progenitor of the extensive Jewish Mendelssohn family, from whom many scholars, artists and bankers descended. Henriette Mendelssohn's older sister Brendel was the writer Dorothea Schlegel , her two brothers the bankers Joseph Mendelssohn and Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy . She was an aunt of the musicians and composers Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the two painters Johannes and Philipp Veit .

Together with her sister Brendel and her brother Joseph, Henriette Mendelssohn was tutored at home by private tutors under the supervision of her father. Her interests lay in music , the fine arts and literature ; she was a good piano player . As a child, she often spent the summer holidays with her siblings in the north German residence of the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, where Mendel Meyer, a close friend of her father's, worked as a chamber agent. From 1786 Henriette Mendelssohn lived for a few years with her widowed mother and younger brothers in Neustrelitz with her sister Recha , who was married to a son Mendel Meyers. Henriette Mendelssohn returned to Berlin around 1793, where she frequented the literary salons of her friend Rahel Levin and the writer Henriette Herz .

Henriette Mendelssohn's first job as a teacher was in Vienna in 1799 ; However, she moved to Paris as early as 1802 and opened a boarding school for girls in the garden of the Jewish banking family Fould . In her apartment, a popular meeting place for Germans in Paris, personalities such as Madame de Staël , Benjamin Constant , Gaspare Spontini , Alexander von Humboldt , David Koreff and Helmine von Chezy were guests.

Following the example of her older sister Brendel, Henriette Mendelssohn also converted to Christianity in 1812 ; at her Catholic baptism in Paris she consciously took the baptismal name Maria. In the same year Henriette Mendelssohn took the position of educator of Fanny Sebastiani, whose father, General Sebastiani, had become a widower at an early age. In the years that followed, she led a more secluded life in Paris, but met her brothers Joseph and Abraham when they were in the city for banking. Several trips with Fanny Sebastiani took Henriette Mendelssohn to Switzerland , Bad Ems and Provence .

After her pupil married in 1824, Henriette Mendelssohn left Paris in the spring of 1825 and returned to Berlin. There she spent the last years of her life close to her brothers. During a visit to Dresden in 1830, after 26 years, she met her sister Brendel again in person.

Henriette Mendelssohn was only 56 years old. She died in Berlin in November 1831, just a few months after the death of her sister Recha Meyer. Her grave was initially in the Catholic St. Hedwig's cemetery in Chausseestrasse ; later it was moved to the newly created St. Hedwigs Friedhof (today: the old cathedral cemetery of the St. Hedwigs parish) in Liesenstraße and finally closed in 1955.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Henriette M. in: Hans-Günter Klein: Short biography of Henriette Mendelssohn , panwitz.net, accessed on January 25, 2016
  2. ↑ Henriette M. in: Sebastian Panwitz: Short biography of Joseph Mendelssohn , panwitz.net, accessed on January 25, 2016.
  3. ↑ Henriette M. in: Sebastian Panwitz: Short biography of Henriette Mendelssohn, née Meyer , panwitz.net, accessed on January 25, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Mendelssohn, Henriette
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mendelssohn, Jette; Mendelssohn, Maria (baptismal name); Mendelssohn, Henriette Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Educator, daughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1775 or August 24, 1775
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1831
Place of death Berlin