The Mendelssohn family are the descendants of Mendel of Dessau. The German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and his brother Saul were the first to adopt the surname Mendelssohn. The family includes his grandson, the composer Felix Mendelssohn, and his granddaughter, the composer Fanny Mendelssohn.

Moses 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 religion.^[1] Abraham Mendelssohn, because of his conversion to Reformed 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.^{[citation needed]}

Mendelssohn's wife, Fromet (Frumet) Guggenheim, was a great-granddaughter of Samuel Oppenheimer.^[2]

Mendelssohn & Co. Bank

In 1795 Moses Mendelssohn's eldest son Joseph 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.^[3]

Mendelssohn family

Descendants of Moses Mendelssohn

Descendants of Saul Mendelssohn include:

• Philibert Mendelssohn, as a mathematician appointed as 'Koenigliche Rechnungsrat' in the Prussian State Survey

• Kurt Mendelssohn, mathematician, one of Philibert's grandchildren
• Heinrich Mendelssohn, biologist, also one of Philibert's grandchildren

Gallery

Children of Moses and Fromet Mendelssohn:

• 
  Dorothea von Schlegel née Mendelssohn c. 1790, by Anton Graff
• 
  Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy, 1823, by his son-in-law, Wilhelm Hensel

Children of Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy:

• 
  Fanny Hensel née Mendelssohn, 1842, by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim
• 
  Felix Mendelssohn, 1829, by James Warren Childe
• 
  Rebecka Mendelssohn, 1823, by Wilhelm Hensel