Life
Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy was the second son of the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Cécile Jeanrenaud. He studied sciences at Heidelberg University, where Robert Bunsen was amongst his colleagues. After graduating in 1863 he went to Berlin to study with Wilhelm Hoffmann.
He volunteered as a soldier in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, taking part in the Battle of Königgrätz and becoming an officer. (He was later to be recalled for the Franco-Prussian War, where he won the Iron Cross).
After the Austro-Prussian War he met with Alexander Martius, a former student of Justus von Liebig, who had set up a dye factory in England. They decided to enter a partnership to manufacture aniline in Germany, setting up a factory at the Rummelsburg Lake near Berlin. In 1873 the firm took the name 'Aktien-Gesellschaft für Anilin-Fabrikation', becoming in 1898 'AGFA'.
Mendelssohn Bartholdy married his cousin Elisabeth Oppenheim (grand-daughter of his great-uncle Joseph Mendelssohn). She died shortly after the birth of their son Otto. Paul later married Elisabeth's sister Enole, by whom he had four children.
In 1880, Mendelssohn Bartholdy died of a heart attack. After his death the company was led by his nephew Franz Oppenheim. In 1925 the firm was taken over by IG Farben.
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“All my life I’ve been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.”
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