This was Berlin’s first Jewish cemetery. It was given to the tiny Jewish community in 1673, and by 1827, when it had well more than 2,700 graves, it was closed.Much of this cemetery was destroyed during the Second World War and it was even used as a common grave in the last months of the war in 1945.Aside from some gnarled looking grave markers laid against the wall, the only gravestone here belongs to that of Moses Mendelsohn, 1729 to 1786, and it is not in its original place.Feel free to walk around, and I’ll give you a bit of background.Moses Mendelssohn arrived in Berlin as a teenager in 1743—word has it that he was allowed to enter through the city gates at Rosenthaler Tor, the city gate open to livestock—and Jews.Now to give us context, Frederick the Great had become the King of Prussia just three years before Mendelssohn arrived here.Frederick certainly changed the face of Prussia. He made his kingdom a major European power. Many of the great buildings he had erected in Berlin still stand today.Moses Mendelssohn built no buildings but he changed the face of Judaism. Mendelssohn was a philosopher in the age of the Enlightenment—this was the time of Voltaire, Rousseau and Hume.Mendelssohn was at the forefront of explaining to his co-religionists that they could indeed live as part of the greater world, yet keep their Judaism intact. He wrote extensively on philosophy and Judaism, and in his final years, he completed one of his greatest projects: he had the entire Five Books of Moses, the Old Testament, translated into German, so that everyone could understand it.Ironic to think that in early 1786, Mendelssohn died in Berlin, leaving behind a legacy that would grow—in a very positive way—through the decades.A few months later, Frederick the Great died. Compared to many of his counterparts, Frederick was enlightened ruler. He also invested massively in Prussian militarism. And that had its legacy too. Not a good one.