Recha Meyer

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Recha Meyer born Mendelssohn (December 1830), pencil drawing by Wilhelm Hensel

Recha "Reikel", also Rebecca Meyer, b. Mendelssohn (born July 14, 1767 in Berlin ; † April 24, 1831 there ) was a daughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn .

Live and act

Recha Mendelssohn came in the summer of 1767 as the third 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. Recha Mendelssohn's older sister Brendel was the writer Dorothea Schlegel , her two younger brothers the bankers Joseph Mendelssohn and Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy . She was an aunt of the composers Fanny Hensel and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the two painters Johannes and Philipp Veit .

Together with her sister Brendel and her brother Joseph , Recha Mendelssohn was tutored at home by private tutors under the supervision of her father. 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.

In the summer of 1786, at the request of her father, Recha Mendelssohn married Meyer's son Mendel Nathan Meyer at the age of about nineteen , whose sister Henriette later married her brother Joseph. Recha Meyer initially lived with her widowed mother and younger siblings with her husband in Neustrelitz .

In October 1793 their only child, daughter Rebecca "Betty" Meyer (1793–1850), was born. Recha Meyer's marriage was not successful and they divorced again in 1800. After her divorce, Recha Meyer moved with her mother to Altona , where she ran a boarding school for young girls from 1802, first on Palmaillenstrasse and later on Kleine Mühlenstrasse. She later returned to Berlin and lived with her brother Abraham's family. In 1818 her daughter Betty married the banker Heinrich Beer (1794–1842), a brother of the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer , in Berlin ; Her grandson Anton Ludwig Beer was born in 1821, but he died at the age of ten.

While most of her siblings converted to Christianity, Recha Meyer remained a Jew throughout her life.

Recha Meyer was sickly all her life and often had to rely on relatives to look after her. After several years of illness, she died on April 23, 1831 in Berlin of " lung addiction ". Just a few months earlier, the painter Wilhelm Hensel , the husband of her niece Fanny , had made the only portrait drawing she had survived. Recha Meyer was buried in the Jewish cemetery at Schönhauser Allee . Her daughter Betty dedicated a memorial plaque to her next to the grave of honor of her brother-in-law Giacomo Meyerbeer.

literature

  • Josef Körner: Mendelssohn's daughters ; In: Prussian year books 214 (1928).
  • Sebastian Panwitz: The will of Fromet Mendelssohn, b. Gugenheim (1737–1812) from December 31, 1792 . In: Mendelssohn Studies 19 (2015), pp. 27–43.
  • Siegfried Silberstein : Moses Mendelssohn's widow in Neustrelitz. (With addendum from Max Freudenthal). In: Journal for the History of the Jews in Germany 3 (1931), pp. 123–129.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Recha M. in: Hans-Günter Klein: The Mendelssohn family. Family tree from Moses Mendelssohn to the seventh generation . Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Berlin 2007 (2nd edition), p. 15. - Date of death according to the death register of the Jewish community in Berlin, deaths of foreign Jews, p. 58, no. 1831/1.
  2. ↑ Recha M. in: Sebastian Panwitz: Short biography of Joseph Mendelssohn , panwitz.net, accessed on January 25, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b Recha M. in: Sebastian Panwitz: Short biography of Henriette Meyer , panwitz.net, accessed on January 25, 2016.
  4. ↑ a b Deutsche Biographie , deutsche-biographie.de, accessed on February 2, 2016.
  5. ↑ Recha M. in: Hans-Günter Klein: Short biography of Henriette Mendelssohn , panwitz.net, accessed on January 25, 2016.
  6. ↑ Thomas Lackmann: The son of my father: Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the ways of the Mendelssohns . Wallstein Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0111-5 , pp. 105 .
  7. ^ Recha M. in: Peter Schleuning: Fanny Hensel, born. Mendelssohn: Romantic musician . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne Weimar 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-04806-8 , p. 21.
  8. ↑ family database Jews in the German Reich , online-ofb.de, accessed on February 3, 2016th
  9. ↑ See death register of the Jewish community in Berlin, deaths of foreign Jews, p. 58, no. 1831/1.
  10. ^ Recha M. in: Wilhelm Hensel, Lucius Grisebach , Cécile Lowenthal-Hensel , Horst Ludwig: Prussian images of the 19th century. Drawings by Wilhelm Hensel. Published by the Nationalgalerie Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-88609-059-0 , p. 78.
  11. ↑ See death register of the Jewish community in Berlin, deaths of foreign Jews, p. 58, no. 1831/1.
  12. ↑ Thomas Lackmann: The son of my father: Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the ways of the Mendelssohns . Wallstein Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0111-5 , pp. 8 .
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Recha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meyer, Reikel (nickname); Mendelssohn, Recha (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German house and business woman
DATE OF BIRTH July 14, 1767
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH April 23, 1831
Place of death Berlin