The Price of Assimilation: Felix Mendelssohn and the Nineteenth-Century Anti-Semitic Tradition

This book examines the relationship of composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47) to his Jewish heritage. Most scholars since World War Two have assumed that Mendelssohn, who was born Jewish but was converted to Protestantism at age seven, maintained a strong attachment to Judaism throughout his lifetime. Through a close examination of the libretto drafts of Mendelssohn's oratorios Paulus, Elias, and Christus; his libretto for Adolf Bernhard Marx's oratorio Mose; and his edition of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion, this book provides new answers to the so-called "Mendelssohn Jewish question". The book demonstrates how Mendelssohn's father, Abraham Mendelssohn, worked to distance the family from its Jewish past, and how Mendelssohn's reputation as a composer of Christian sacred music was threatened by the reverence with which German Jews viewed his family name. In order to prove the sincerity of his Christian faith to both his father and his audiences, Mendelssohn aligned his early sacred works with a 19th-century anti-Semitic musical tradition, and did so more fervently than even his Christian collaborators required. With the death of Mendelssohn's father and the near simultaneous establishment of the composer's career in Leipzig in 1835, however, Mendelssohn's fear of his background began to dissipate, and he began to explore ways in which he could prove the sincerity of his Christian faith without having to disparage publicly his Jewish heritage.