sciples, friends, and
descendants of Moses Mendelssohn, were the transplanters of the foreign
product to German soil. Untrammelled as they were in this respect by
traditions, they hearkened eagerly to the new dispensation issuing from
Weimar, and they were in no way hampered in the choice of their
hero-guides to Olympus. Berlin irony, French sparkle, and Jewish wit
moulded the social forms which thereafter were to be characteristic of
society at the capital, and called forth pretty much all that was
charming in the society and pleasing in the light literature of the
Berlin of the day.

To judge Henriette Herz justly we must beware alike of the extravagance
of her biographer and the malice of her friend Varnhagen von Ense; the
former extols her cleverness to the skies, the other degrades her to the
level of the commonplace. The two seem equally unreliable. She was
neither extremely witty nor extremely cultured. She had a singularly
clear mind, and possessed the rare faculty of spreading about her an
atmosphere of ease and cheer--good substitutes for wit and
intellectuality. Upon her beauty and amiability rested the popularity of
her _salon_, which succeeded in uniting all the social factors of that
period.

The nucleus of her social gatherings consisted of the representatives of
the old literary traditions, Nicolai, Ramler, Engel, and Moritz, and
they curiously enough attracted the theologians Spalding, Teller,
Zoellner, and later Schleiermacher, whose intimacy with his hostess is a
matter of history. Music was represented by Reichardt and Wesseli; art,
by Schadow; and the nobility by Bernstorff, Dotina, Brinkmann, Friedrich
von Gentz, and the Humboldts. Her drawing-room was the hearth of the
romantic movement, and as may be imagined, her example was followed for
better and for worse by her friends and sisters in faith, so that by the
end of the century, Berlin could boast a number of _salons_,
meeting-places of the nobility, literary men, and cultured Jews, for the
friendly exchange of spiritual and intellectual experiences. Henriette
Herz's _salon_ became important not only for society in Berlin, but also
for German literature, three great literary movements being sheltered in
it: the classical, the romantic, and, through Ludwig Boerne, that of
"Young Germany." Judaism alone was left unrepresented. In fact, she and
all her cultured Jewish friends hastened to free themselves of their
troublesome Jewish affiliations, o