Mendelssohn family

The Mendelssohn family are the descendants of the German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and include his grandson, the composer Felix Mendelssohn and his granddaughter, the composer Fanny Mendelssohn.

Moses Mendelssohn was a significant figure in the Age of Enlightenment in Germany. Mendelssohn had ten children, of whom six lived to adulthood. Of those six children, only Recha and Joseph retained the Jewish faith. Abraham Mendelssohn, because of his conversion to Christianity, adopted the surname Bartholdy at the suggestion of his wife's brother, Jakob Salomon Bartholdy, who had adopted the name from a property owned by the Salomon family.

Mendelssohn's wife, Fromet (Frumet) Guggenheim, was a great-granddaughter of Samuel Oppenheimer.

In 1795 the eldest son Joseph Mendelssohn established the bank Mendelssohn & Co. in Berlin, and his brother Abraham joined the company in 1804. Many members of the family worked for the bank until it was forced to shut down in 1938. In 2004 relatives of the banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1875–1935), led by his great-nephew Julius H. Schoeps (born 1942), tried to reclaim paintings once owned by him and later sold in the 1940s by his widow, in breach of his will.

The family members include: