Page "Giacomo Meyerbeer" Paragraph 6

Judah Beer was a leader of the Berlin Jewish community and maintained a private synagogue in his house which leaned towards reformist views.

Jacob Beer wrote an early cantata for performance at this synagogue.

Both Judah Herz Beer and his wife were close to the Prussian court ; when Amalia was awarded in 1816 the Order of Louise, she was given, by Royal dispensation, not the traditional Cross but a portrait bust of the Queen.

The Beer children were provided with a fine education ; their tutors included two of the leaders of the enlightened Jewish intelligentsia, the author Aaron Halle-Wolfssohn and Edmund Kley, ( later a reform movement rabbi in Hamburg ) to whom they remained attached into their maturity.

The brothers the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt and the politician Wilhelm von Humboldt were close friends of the family circle.