An Evening on the Town

Beginning yesterday, the Descendants of Moses Mendelssohn are celebrating a week-long family gathering that has been organized by the City of Berlin. The occasion is the renovation of Mendelssohn graves at the Jüdisches Friedhof (Jewish Cemetery) in the Schönhauser Allee. Since our great-grandmother was a von Mendelssohn, we were one of the hundreds of descendants worldwide who were invited to attend the events. This evening the City hosted a dinner at the Rathaus (City Hall), which about 270 of us attended.

While Papa and Mama dressed quite quickly for the dinner, the rest of us attired ourselves and made our toilette with much ceremony. When it was nearly dark, we took the bus to the Rathaus, a large, ornate red brick edifice (built in the 1860s and much repaired in the 1950s) in a medieval/Renaissance style, with a distinctive clock tower. The front portals were open, though a sign said, "Für Besucher geschlossen."* We passed through to the inner doors, where we showed our invitations, which were printed on white cardboard and bore the embossed crest of the City, and then ascended the velvety red-orange carpet that flows down the stairs.

* "Closed to visitors."

The room at the top has a dark grey and dark red marbled floor, a high vaulted ceiling, and a large chandelier. There were two or three tables with brochures and programmes; a row of vitrines contained Mendelssohnian artifacts, including a copy of Moses Mendelssohn's Phädon, an aquarell painting by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and the "Adelsbrief" that made our ancestor Franz a "von" in 1888. The "Adelsbrief" was not really a letter, but a booklet covered in dark red velvet that contains, in festive calligraphy with an illustration of the family coat-of-arms, a formal pronouncement of the title; attached to it by a silvery, tassled cord is a round silvery box, as large as a saucer, which held the family seal. Behind the vitrines there was a security person, and behind him there was a large dark green map of Berlin.

Scattered around this room and around the antechamber to the "Wappensaal," there were our distant relatives, mostly clad in black and surprisingly diverse in age and appearance. Among these, waiters circulated with silvery trays of glasses containing wine, orange juice, and water. We children knew Uncle Pu and Aunt K., of course, but no one else, though we were introduced to three other people. But over two hundred and sixty people were in the same situation, so I didn't mind it at all. Besides, I'm too self-absorbed now to have much interest in meeting people for the sake of meeting people; I only feel the urge to get to know people who are congenial, or have interesting and admirable qualities, and even then I'm quite shy about it.

At length we were summoned into the antechamber. There the "Staatssekretär" André Schmitz and the president of Berlin's Abgeordnetenhaus* Walter Momper held brief speeches from a black podium, honouring the past contributions of the Mendelssohn family -- in terms of music, learning, and finance -- to the city. The speeches, when I paid attention, were refreshingly free of ego-stroking, though I was also quite touched that the speakers (or their assistants) had gone to the trouble of reading up on our history.

* house of representatives

The speeches also reassured me that the dinner was not an unwarranted use of taxpayer money, as I had feared. Though, to be quite honest, I still think that I have nothing to do with the achievements of my forebears, it is true that those forebears were very important to the history, cultural and otherwise, of Berlin, so one might as well celebrate them in this manner. And it is rather flattering to be an indirect Mendelssohn even if I have none of the family attributes: profound learning, knowledge of philosophy, musical genius, social brilliance, wealth, drawing talent, skill in business matters, or even a particle of illustriousness.

To return to the speeches, it surprised me again how ill-mannered grown-ups can be, since the room was humming with conversation as Mr. Momper spoke. I'll admit that his voice had an unintentionally bored intonation, but still! Appreciative laughter did break out at the end, when Mr. Momper quipped, with reference to the symbolical crane lifting a stone in one claw on the von Mendelssohn family crest, that he wished that senators would also be equipped with such a stone to keep them awake.

Then we were let into the Wappensaal, a large salmon-pink hall with old bubbly-glassed windows looking out onto the street, two great chandeliers, and a light parquet floor in a big checkerboard design. To the left there hangs a huge painting of the Berlin Congress of 1878 by Anton von Werner, in a simple gilt frame. The human figures, among them Benjamin Disraeli and a rather burly Otto von Bismarck, fairly leapt from the canvas, and I liked the detail in the background of the transparent white lace curtains showing the faint brown outlines of trees or houses. T. and I briefly debated whether the officers wearing the red fezes were Turkish or not; it turns out that they were, even though their faces didn't look it. The room was full of round tables draped in white cloths, with a clear tealight and a stem of greenery surrounded with red petals adorning each, and signs in long holders bearing the names of different families. We spotted our table immediately, but there were only four chairs (beige plastic) there. So Mama, T., Ge., J., and I wandered off to a high table at the corner where the Chagall Quartet was playing:

Fanny Hensel, "String quartet in E flat major" (1834), Mvt. 1+2
Arnold Mendelssohn, "String quartet in D major," Op. 67 (1915),
Mvt. 1+3
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,
"String quartet in D major," Op. 44 No. 1 (1838), Mvt. 2
"String quartet in f minor," Op. 80 (1847), Mvt. 1

After a while, there were three speeches: one by the founder of the Mendelssohn Gesellschaft; another by the director-general of the Staatsbibliothek (State Library), which has an extensive Mendelssohn archive; and a third by the head of the Mendelssohn Archive, who explained a new CD of the Mendelssohn genealogy. By the third speech, T., Gi., J., and I pulled up velvety blue chairs to the "von Bismarck" table, where no one had showed up, and sat down in good time for the "flying buffet." Promptly after the speech, the waiters came around with silvery platters full of appetizers:

Seafood wrapped in crispy noodle, in spicy oriental sauce
Porcini soup (excellent, said T. and Ge.)
Baguette slices (e.g. with smoked salmon, frilly green lettuce, a white sauce, dill, a pistachio, a sliver of black olive, and a small square of red bell pepper)
Spinach-and-potato quiche with shrimp and gorgonzola sauce, dill
Roast beef (served, rolled, on an arugula leaf tip in a spoon whose handle was oddly curved)
Antipasti: green stuffed olive and sundried tomato on a silver plastic sword, with two small cubes of feta in an olive oil and parsley dressing
Raspberry tarts (lined with chocolate, filled with vanilla foam and dusted with powdered sugar)
Chocolate-covered pineapple skewers (tremendously juicy)
Fruit skewers: pineapple, melon, red grape, Cape gooseberry (orange-coloured, tastes like kiwi), and green grape, drizzled with chocolate
Gingered rice ball with oriental-style beef and vegetable sauce

I enjoyed this dinner very much. Firstly, I had only had a small lunch and was very hungry; secondly, it was delicious; and, thirdly, it feels splendid to eat something that someone else has had the (paid) trouble of cooking. Also, I've become so used to being economical with everything that fine art, books, music, architecture, clothing, and (in this case) food are a great indulgence. This isn't a complaint, either; I appreciate things much better this way than I would otherwise.

Finally A. von Mendelssohn, my grandfather's cousin, stepped to the podium and thanked the city of Berlin, as well as the individuals and groups who had helped restore the Mendelssohn monuments, on our behalf. Then, at last, we filed out of the warm Rathaus into the chilly October air, and went home on the bus with two or three girls chattering away and continually saying "krass" in the background.