In 1855 Joseph Joachim, aged twenty-three, wrote these words to Herman Grimm, the friend to whom he felt spiritually closest at the time. He was informing Grimm of his forthcoming “turn” to Christianity and his baptism in the Aegidien Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hanover. He explained his reasons: during a recent conversation about Bach with his employer, King George V of Hanover, the king had expressed surprise that, coming from Catholic Austria, Joachim could value Bach so highly. Joachim's explanation that he was not Catholic but Jewish encouraged the king to urge him to embrace Christianity, and to offer to stand godfather should Joachim be ready.

Joachim's words startled me profoundly. While Jews commonly suffered discrimination, insults, and persecution in all Europe, surely Joachim was not among them. Renowned, admired, connected in high places artistically and socially even as a youth, what could he mean by “the inner harm that I had to suffer … as a result of my Jewish upbringing”? What Jewish upbringing might he be referring to? Since childhood, he had spent many hours in the company of Gentile teachers and supporters. If his parents were observant, they were not especially so, or they could not have allowed him to spend so much time in non-Jewish environments, both in Budapest and later in Vienna. He lived for several years in the home of his Catholic violin teacher, cared for daily by the devout wife who attended Mass every day. True, he was nominally in the care of his grandfather, the wealthy Jewish wool trader, a “Tolerated Jew,” one of very few Jews permitted to live within Vienna. There is no evidence of Jewish schooling during that period, however, and no evidence of a Bar Mitzva. By age thirteen, he was already in Leipzig, under the care of his Wittgenstein cousins—baptized Jews, but inimical to things Jewish—and Felix Mendelssohn, also a baptized Jew.

At the time of his letter, young Joachim was a renowned violinist, admired and befriended by members of the uppermost rank of musicians in England and German-speaking Europe.