Alongside of this external assimilation, attempts were also made to copy the literary models of Prussian Jewry. In 1796 a Jewish Mendelssohnian named Jacques Kalmansohn published a French pamphlet in Warsaw, under the title _Essai sur l'état actuel des Juifs de Pologne et leur perfectibilité_, dedicating it to the Prussian Minister Hoym, who had carried out Jewish reforms in the Polish provinces of Prussia. The pamphlet contains an account of the status of Polish Jewry of his time and a plan for its amelioration. The account is rather superficial, concocted after the approved Western recipe. In the judgment of the author, the misfortune of the Jews lies in their separation from the surrounding nations, and their happiness in merging with them. The scheme of reform proposed by the Jew Kalmansohn differs but slightly from the Polish projects of Butrymovich and Chatzki. It advocates equally the weakening of rabbinical and Kahal authority, the extermination of Hasidism and Tzaddikism, the introduction of German dress, the shaving of beards, the establishment of German schools, and in general the cultivation of "civism." The mould of Berlin fashion was overlaid with a Parisian veneer when soon afterwards (1807-1812), at the bidding of Napoleon, the Duchy of Warsaw sprang into being. Now a new note was sounded. A group of Parisian "dandies" claim equal rights as a compensation for having changed their dress and their "moral conduct."[263] Even respectable representatives of the Warsaw Jewish community designate themselves in their petition to the Senate as "members of the Polish nation of the Mosaic persuasion," copying the latest Parisian fashion, in vogue at the time of the Napoleonic Synhedrion.[264] This was the first, though as yet naïve and unsophisticated, attempt to secure the "transfer" from the Jewish nation to the Polish, the germ of the future "Poles of the Old Testament persuasion." The torch-bearers of Berlin culture from among the followers of David Friedländer encouraged this frame of mind in every possible manner, and in their organ[265] constantly appealed in this spirit to their Polish brethren. How long will you continue--one of these appeals reads--to speak a corrupt German dialect [Yiddish] instead of the language of your country, the Polish? How many misfortunes might have been averted by your forefathers, had they been able to express themselves adequately in the Polish tongue before the magnates and kings! Take a group of a hundred Jews in Germany, and you will find that either all or most of them can speak to the magnates and rulers, but in Poland scarcely five or ten out of a hundred are capable of doing so.