This richly illustrated family history describes for the first time the world of the Mendelssohns over five generations from the eighteenth century to 1938. Author Thomas Lackmann knowledgeably tells the fate of this large German family caught between tradition and innovation, power and morality, talent and luck. The story begins with the beggar student Mausche, a 14-year-old Talmud scholar-in-training from Dessau who came to Berlin as an educational migrant. Under the name Moses Mendelsso...