Moritz Daniel Oppenheim

1800–1882

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, an observant Jew born in Hanau, Germany, became the first Jewish member of the Frankfurt Museum Society, in 1825. Early in his career, he distinguished himself as a pioneer of Jewish self-representation in the European easel-painting tradition with portraits of prominent German Jewish figures like the Rothschild family and Heinrich Heine and his famous meditation on Jewish integration into German nationhood, The Return of the Jewish Volunteer from the Wars of Liberation to His Family Still Living in Accordance with Old Customs (1833– 1834). In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Oppenheim produced many works portraying Jewish family life and scenes of Jewish observances in the home; these include his Scenes from Traditional Jewish Family Life (1866), some twenty works on the subject that received wide distribution in several portfolios and bound editions, and his late work, Das Licht-oder Weihe-Fest (The Kindling of the Hanukkah Lights). 

Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator

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Portrait of Heinrich Heine

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A German romantic poet and essayist, Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) was born in Düsseldorf. Unsuccessful in his early business career, he studied law, and settled in Berlin in 1821. There he met with…

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Lavater and Lessing Visit Moses Mendelssohn, 1856

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This painting portrays an imagined meeting of Jewish scholar Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), and the Swiss theologian Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801)…

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The Return of the Jewish Volunteer from the Wars of Liberation to His Family Still Living in Accordance with Old Customs

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This one painting conveys many messages about the benefits of integration and emancipation as well as the inner conflicts they provoked.

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The Bar Mitzvah Discourse

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In this lamplit scene, the brightest spots are the mother’s dress and the white tablecloth on the table. (The mother and a maid at right, coming out of the kitchen, are the only women in the room.)…

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The Kindling of the Hanukkah Lights

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The Kindling of the Hanukkah Lights is one of the many works portraying Jewish family life and scenes of Jewish domestic observances by German Jewish artist Moritz Oppenheim. Though painted in the…