After Anton Graff · Public domain

A philosopher who rose from poverty and rabbinical training in Dessau to become one of the most respected intellectual figures of Enlightenment Berlin, read and admired equally by Christian and Jewish contemporaries. His writing on Judaism and Jewish identity became a founding text of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, arguing that Jews could take up European philosophy and culture without abandoning their faith. His descendants include the composers Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn.