The hive of activity in nineteenth-century salons, especially those of Jewish women in Berlin, was the formative ground in which both Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn’s engagement with literature ostensibly developed. In such circles song as social document and song as a semi-confessional art were contexts that were as vibrant then as they are today. The classical and European contemporary poets who captured both siblings’ musical imagination serve as portals to their shared world and at the same time offer a strong conceptual sense of each individual self. It was, however, in the private salon of their own home where their poetic genius took root. Two literary traditions within their family circle – Moses Mendelssohn and Goethe, who was profoundly influenced by their grandfather’s writing and with whom both artists were personally acquainted –- offers a unique key to understanding Fanny and Felix’s literary inheritance and how each expressed themselves creatively.