The Open court . led in Austria,and many privileges were with-drawn. As in Catholic Austria, so inProtestant Prussia an amend-ment in the condition of theJews began to appear and de-velop itself as early as theeighteenth century. Under theElector of Brandenburg, Fred-erick William (1640-1688), theJews had again an asylum anda safe abode in Prussia. Dur-ing the reign of King Fred-erick I. the synagogue at Berlin was built. Frederick William,the father of Frederick the Great, was equally favorable to theJews, although Frederick the Great is thought not to have lookedfavorably upon them. He did n
The Open court . led in Austria,and many privileges were with-drawn. As in Catholic Austria, so inProtestant Prussia an amend-ment in the condition of theJews began to appear and de-velop itself as early as theeighteenth century. Under theElector of Brandenburg, Fred-erick William (1640-1688), theJews had again an asylum anda safe abode in Prussia. Dur-ing the reign of King Fred-erick I. the synagogue at Berlin was built. Frederick William,the father of Frederick the Great, was equally favorable to theJews, although Frederick the Great is thought not to have lookedfavorably upon them. He did not persecute them, but, on thewhole, they were treated as inferior to the other inhabitants of thecountry, and the whole community was considered responsible forthe crimes of its individual members. The successor of Frederickthe Great endeavored by new laws to effect a salutary change forthe Jews ; the result was, that some of them attained to consider-able wealth, but the majority of them retained a degraded and. A Wealthy Jewess of Warsaw. 3^6 THE OPEN COURT. dependent position, which continued till toward the close of theeighteenth century. Mendelssohn, it is true, tried to elevate hispeople, and to bring about this task he was assisted by suchmen as Hartwig Wessely (1725-1805), Isaac Euchel (1716-1804),David Friedlander (1750-1834) and others. But the effect pro-duced by his writings was precisely the same as that occasioned bythe writings of Maimonides six centuries earlier—to render theJews dissatisfied with their religion, as has already been statedabove. The French Revolution marked a new era in the history of theJews. Not only the Jews, but also the Christians, or, more properlyspeaking, the civilised world, had become intoxicated with the ideaof reforming everything. Several writers, as Dohm and Gr^goire,advocated the regeneration of the Jews, and the French revolutionfurnished an opportunity of realising some of their ideas. TheJews had been much neglected or cruel
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade188, booksubjectreligion, bookyear1887
