Moses Mendelssohn

Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) was a German-Jewish philosopher and a father of the Jewish Enlightenment, born in Dessau. Destined for the rabbinate, he followed his teacher to Berlin in 1743 and educated himself in languages and philosophy, becoming a silk merchant's partner and a Berlin writer.

In 1763 he won the Berlin Academy's essay prize, ahead of Kant; his Platonic dialogue Phaedo (1767) made him famous as the German Socrates. He defended religious liberty in Jerusalem (1783) and translated the Pentateuch into German. A lifelong friend of Lessing, he died in Berlin in 1786.