Mendelssohn’s friendships were politicized by Christians, not by himself

Evidence

While France was the land of political glory for the Jews, the first to recognize them as citizens, Prussia seemed on the way to becoming the country of social splendor. Enlightened Berlin, where Mendelssohn had established close connections with many famous men of his time, was only a beginning. His connections with non-Jewish society still had much in common with the scholarly ties that had bound Jewish and Christian learned men together in nearly all periods of European history. The new and surprising element was that Mendelssohn’s friends used these relationships for nonpersonal, ideological, or even political purposes. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 199

Categorization

• XREF: The politicization of personal relations as a mechanism connects to the toolkit theme of how dominant society constructs the minority subject it needs, not the minority as it exists.