Congratulations to Professor Willi Goetschel for receiving the 2020 Dessauer Moses Mendelssohn Prize. The Moses Mendelssohn Society in Dessau, Germany, dedicated to scholarship and education in the realm of German Jewish history and culture, awards the prize biennially to recognize scholarly work that advances “enlightened reason, the tolerant co-operation between cultures and religious creeds, and the valuation of the humanities and of philosophy.”
The Jüdische Allgemeine published an article about the prize and this year’s winner (in German), and you can also watch a TV clip.
The society’s namesake, Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), was a pathbreaking Jewish philosopher who resided in Dessau and Berlin and was known for the unfaltering examination of political positions and questions of his day. Contemporaries often referred to Mendelssohn as the “German Socrates,” and reverence for his person extended to Immanuel Kant.
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