Travel tips for Classic lovers – Weimar and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

In 1821, 12-year-old Felix Mendelssohn and his patron Zelter visited the poet prince at his home in Weimar. Zelter had been a friend of Goethe’s since 1802 and one of his few close friends. He had already announced the young Felix by letter (the text of which had an anti-Semitic tone that was probably common at the time). Ludwig Rellstab witnessed the meeting and reported how Mendelssohn enraptured the old Goethe. First, Mendelssohn played a piano quartet of his own composition with three other musicians. Then he had to solve various tasks with improvisations and from sight-reading, which the young boy solved with bravura. And at the end he took out of a pack an autograph of a Beethoven composition with the almost illegible scrawl of the composer, which Mendelssohn played flawlessly from the sheet.

Goethe, then 12 years old, had heard the 9-year-old Mozart 58 years earlier on the latter’s Wunderkind Reise in Frankfurt and compared Mendelssohn to Mozart. Goethe was so enthusiastic that he invited Mendelssohn to stay for a while, and this turned into 16 days until Mendelssohn returned to Berlin. The two disparate people remained on friendly terms until Goethe’s death, three further meetings took place and a lively correspondence testifies to the warm affection of the two.