FRIEDRICHSFELD, DAVID

FRIEDRICHSFELD, DAVID (c. 1755–1810), German author. Friedrichsfeld was born in Berlin, where he was inflluenced by the Jewish Enlightenment movement. In 1781 he settled in Amsterdam, where he became one of the leaders in the fight for Jewish emancipation. After Amsterdam was occupied by the French revolutionary forces, he became one of the leaders of the felix libertate society. A follower of Moses Mendelssohn, he expounded his views in works such as Beleuchtung… in Betreff des Buergerrecht der Juden (Amsterdam, 1795), De Messias der Jooden… (The Hague, 1796), Appell an die Staende Hollands (Amsterdam, 1797), and Kol Mevasser (Amsterdam, 1802). He also wrote a work on Hebrew phonetics, Ma'aneh Rakh (Amsterdam, 1808), and contributed short articles and poems to Ha-Me'assef. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Graetz, Hist, 5 (1895), 400–1, 454; Klausner, Sifrut, 1 (19522), index. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: H. Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, 2 (1900); M. Brenner, S. Jersch-Wenzel, and M.A. Meyer, Deutsch-jüdische Geschichte in der Neuzeit, vol. 2 (1996).