e Jews with the other
citizens was animatedly discussed, by partisans and opponents. In the
theatre-going public, a respectable minority, having once seen "Nathan
the Wise" enacted, protested against the appearance upon the stage of
the trade-Jew, speaking the sing-song, drawling German vulgarly supposed
to be peculiar to all Jews (_Mauscheln_). As early as 1771, Marcus Herz
had entered a vigorous protest against _mauscheln_, and at the first
performance of "The Merchant of Venice" on August 16, 1788, the famous
actor Fleck declaimed a prologue, composed by Ramler, in which he
disavowed any intention to "sow hatred against the Jews, the brethren in
faith of wise Mendelssohn," and asserted the sole purpose of the drama
to be the combating of folly and vice wherever they appear.

Marcus Herz's wife was Henriette Herz, and in 1790, when Alexander and
Wilhelm Humboldt first came to her house, the real history of the Berlin
_salon_ begins. The Humboldts' acquaintance with the Herz family dates
from the visit of state councillor Kunth, the tutor of the Humboldt
brothers, to Marcus Herz to advise with him about setting up a
lightning-rod, an extraordinary novelty at the time, on the castle at
Tegel. Shortly afterward, Kunth introduced his two pupils to Herz and
his wife. So the Berlin _salon_ owed its origin to a lightning-rod;
indeed, it may itself be called an electrical conductor for all the
spiritual forces, recently brought into play, and still struggling to
manifest their undeveloped strength. Up to that time there had been
nothing like society in the city of intelligence. Of course there was no
dearth of scholars and clever, brilliant people, but insuperable
obstacles seemed to prevent their social contact with one another.
Outside of Moses Mendelssohn's house, until the end of the eighties the
only _rendezvous_ of wits, scholars, and literary men, the preference
was for magnificent banquets and noisy carousals, each rank entertaining
its own members. In the middle class, the burghers, the social instinct
had not awakened at all. Alexander Humboldt significantly dated his
first letter to Henriette Herz from _Schloss Langeweile_. In the course
of time the desire for spiritual sympathy led to the formation of
reading clubs and _conversazioni_. These were the elements that finally
produced Berlin society.

The prototype of the German _salon_ naturally was the _salon_ of the
rococo period. Strangely enough, Berlin Jews, di