Can you connect Felix Mendelssohn, German composer, to our tree?

Question

Felix Mendelssohn, German composer, died 4 November 1847. Mendelssohn is not yet connected to our one Global Family Tree.  His profile has no family listed, even though his father, grandfather, sister, and son were also famous.  Please jump in if you feel inclined.

Comments

Felix Mendelssohn's profile appears to be inconsistent the the Wikipedia article that is sole reference.

He was born Felix Mendelssohn. This father several years later changed their surname to "Mendelssohn Bartholdy." Thus "Mendelssohn" is not a middle name, his last name at birth is not "Bartholdy," and current last name is not "Bartholdy."

He was apparently known widely as Felix Mendelssohn, sometimes Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (with or without the hyphen).

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"Scanning" the Mendelssohn tree on German and English wikipedia, I only found Dirichlet-1 on wikitree but he isn't connected to the main tree either.

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I just asked the profile manager to change the LNAB.

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Thanks, Erik.  Every correction and bit of additional information helps.

Answer 1

It took me a while but now he is connected to the main tree. Wikitree hasn't computed the connection yet, so here it is:

Felix mother was Lea (Salomon) Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Her mother was Bella (Itzig) Salomon. Her sister Blümchen Margarete (Itzig) Friedländer was the mother of Benoni Friedländer. Benoni married Rebecca von Halle. Rebeccas sister was Fanny Eleonore von Halle. Her son Eduard Bendemann married Lida Schadow. Lida was a daughter of Carolina Henrietta Maria (Rosenstiel) Schadow who already was connected to the main tree.

For that to happen I collected 428 profiles into a online webtree pedigree (but I will collect more). I needed to go further away from main Mendelssohn tree to get a connection. It also means that all the other profiles are now connected to the main tree.

The Mendelssohn family is interesting. I visited an exhibition at a graveyard in Berlin that displays a large pedigree on a wall. His gravestone is there.

Comments

Hi. I'm trying to trace back the Salomons which married into the Mendelssohn's. Thank you for connecting Felix to the tree. How exciting! I also looking at your links and am interested in how you compiled 428 profiles to find out this information. Most of my family was killed in Auschwitz, so I'm trying to find the ancestors that lived before WWII. Jacobus Salomon Kauffman Heymann (Heinenmann?) Any guidance is apprecaited

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Kat, I started at the pedrigree at german Wikipedia and now I am cross checking it against the pedigree by Hanspeter Frey, shown at an exhibition in Berlin (see photos in the wikipedia article). Moreover, there are sources on ancestry.de for people born in 19th century that I can use. Note that most of the Mendelssohns did convert to christianity at some point.

Do you have more information on Jacob Heymann?

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WOW!  Terrific work, Erik!

Answer 2

I would normally jump at the chance to connect a Notable but because most of the records are from Germany or nearby countries I have decided to not work on this one. I could very easily make things worse and make even bigger mistakes than already exist on the profile. We need some members from Europe to work on this one.

Answer 3

For the Mendelssohn family much genealogical research was done already. A book was published ten years ago:
"Die Familie Mendelssohn: Stammbaum von Moses Mendelssohn bis zur siebenten Generation" https://books.google.com/books?id=tqEWAQAAIAAJ

Comments

Looks like this will be a great resource - thanks for suggesting it, Norbert.  I agree with Dale - I think this project requires someone with some German background to ensure that the information is translated correctly.

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I can get that source. I wonder about the copyright - whether it is allowed to "copy" genealogical information from the book.

There seem to be a CD-ROM version of it.