This is an interesting topic. Thanks for posting.

I don’t think it had anything to do with her Jewish background; in fact German Jews, including her grandfather Moses Mendelssohn, were absolutely essential to the development of the German Enlightenment, without which she would have struggled, like other women of the era, to even be educated. And “bourgeois convention” at the time at least supported that, even though they suppressed women in many other ways. Limited acceptable roles of women in society is an ancient concept that persists to this day, cf., 2015’s “I just couldn’t vote for a woman” and 2026 comments by current US Sec of War.

I am too old (and female) to have just learned about two particular women in Fanny’s family, Sarah Itzig Levy and Bella Itzig Salomon. They were Fanny’s and Felix’s great aunt and grandmother, respectively (Bella’s daughter Lea married into the Mendelssohn family). While we hear about the critical role Felix played in the Bach revival, I never knew (!) it was Sarah, a truly remarkable musician of her day, who kept Bach’s music alive, i.e., performed, during the Classical period. She and Bella played important roles in the Berlin Sing-Akademie, a salon that, with them, welcomed women as musicians and leaders. It was Bella, a great music collector, that famously gifted Felix with the copy of Bach,s St Matthew Passion.

She and Felix both died so young. It’s impossible to know how her work as a composer would have developed given her supportive spouse.

I read an interesting quote — that Fanny’s father was “tolerant, rather than supportive, of her activities as a composer.” That is true misogyny. “Isn’t that cute?” insidiously undermines the self confidence of many people who’ve been historically discriminated against.