Letters from the Mendelssohn family: A cultural treasure is being digitized!

Letters from the Mendelssohn family: A cultural treasure is being digitized!

On May 19, 2025, a significant step was taken in the area of ​​preserving German intellectual history. The letter estate of Rebecka Dirichlet (née Mendelssohn Bartholdy) and her husband Gustav Dirichlet has been completely digitized. Anyone interested can now access this valuable treasure via the online repository ORKA. The collection includes over 1,000 letters, and more than two-thirds of them were written by Dr. Andrea Linnebach-Wegener transcribed on behalf of the Kassel University Library. These letters come from the estate of the philosopher Leonard Nelson, the great-grandson of the Dirichlet couple.

Leonard Nelson bequeathed his library and property to the Philosophical-Political Academy (PPA). The collection was transferred to the Kassel State Library during the National Socialist era. Tragically, many of the library holdings in the Fridericianum burned in 1941, but fortunately the letter estate was saved. In 2019 it was donated to the university library, and now the letters can be studied online.

The return of a lost volume

At the same time, the Federal Archives in Berlin announce the return of a valuable volume, which also comes from the PPA library. It is a 16-page typescript entitled “The Fulling Mill”, including a programmatic speech by Hellmut Rauschenplat and personal memories by the teacher Anna Stein. Rauschenplat, who took the name Fritz Eberhard while emigrating, was director of the Süddeutscher Rundfunk from 1949 to 1958.

In 1934, the PPA's library holdings were partly transferred to the Kassel State Library and partly to Berlin by the Gestapo. The volume that has now been returned was part of the collection that ended up in Moscow after the war before ultimately ending up in the Federal Archives in Berlin. Dr. Ralf Schaper, who grew up in the Walkemühle and is now working on a book about the rural education center, came across this volume during his research in the Federal Archives.

The fulling mill and its history

The fulling mill, which served as the PPA's educational facility in the early 20th century, was occupied and converted by the National Socialists in 1933. The residents fled into exile in Denmark while the PPA was expropriated and dissolved. Some of the books from this institution, including letters and other documents, were published in 1934 by Heinrich von Gagern and Dr. Wilhelm Hopf saved from being destroyed by the NSDAP.

Despite the destruction that resulted in many holdings being destroyed in a bombing raid in 1941, the letter material survived the war unscathed and is evidence of the intellectual heyday of the 19th century. The legacy of letters, which is now made available to the public, is considered culturally and scientifically valuable. The Philosophical-Political Academy in Bonn had previously decided to transfer this partial estate in order to secure its importance.

Rebecka Mendelssohn Bartholdy, known for her remarkable salon and her relationships with prominent artists and scientists, was born in Hamburg in 1811. She was the sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn and the daughter of Abraham Mendelssohn, a banker who later changed his surname to Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Her marriage to the mathematician Lejeune Dirichlet confirmed her position in the intellectual landscape of the 19th century.

In summary, the digitization of the letter estate and the return of the volume from the fulling mill represent important progress in the preservation of German cultural history. These measures underline the relevance and ongoing influence of the Dirichlet family and the cross-institutional efforts to recover treasures from history that were thought to be lost and make them accessible.