Moritz Daniel Oppenheim (1800–1882) is generally considered to be the first professional Jewish painter in Germany. For many of his portraits and compositions, he looked at already existent models from the visual arts, and from Christian tradition. In Goethe’s poem Hermann and Dorothea (1799), Oppenheim found a literary text that turned the classical tradition of the idyll into contemporary, political verse; Oppenheim translated Goethe’s project into classically inspired line drawings in 1828. These illustrations in turn inspired Oppenheim’s most famous work, his images of Jewish life. In tracing Oppenheim’s work of translation and adaptation, and his use of visual and literary models, the present essay gives evidence of Oppenheim’s invention of a Jewish bourgeoisie, and his claim of its existence even before Jewish emancipation.