Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy ( born as Paul Felix Abraham Mendelssohn Bartholdy, born January 18, 1841 in Leipzig, † February 17, 1880 in Berlin) was a German chemist and industrialist.

Life

Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy was a son of the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and his wife Cecile. After the early death of his parents, he grew up in the home of his uncle, the banker Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Berlin. He was expected to take a commercial profession, but decided for the study of chemistry at the University of Heidelberg. He was just like his brother Charles a member of the fraternity Allemannia Heidelberg. In 1863 he completed his doctorate. Since 1865 he worked as an assistant in the laboratory of August Wilhelm von Hofmann at the University of Berlin. There he met Carl Alexander von Martius, with whom he in 1867 in the Berlin suburb Rummelsburg a company for the manufacture of aniline founded the joint stock company for Anilinfabrikation (Agfa ). The production range to include the dyes fuchsin, aniline blue and methyl violet was expanded with the acquisition of Jordanschschen paint factory in Treptow in 1872. In 1877 the company acquired Agfa also the procedure for the preparation of malachite green. By purchasing a license, it also procured Access to the azo dyes. The preparation of azo dyes shaped the further development of the company.

During his lifetime, Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy the focus of the production of Agfa was on the production of aniline and aniline dyes. The extension of the scope to the field of photography took place after his death under the company headed by Carl Alexander von Martius and Franz Oppenheim.

Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy in 1867 married the four years younger Else Oppenheim ( 1845-1868 ), with whom he was already in use, as their mother Margarethe Henriette Anna Oppenheim ( 1823-1890 ) was born a Mendelssohn. On August 20, 1868 shortly after the birth of her first child, Otto, Else Oppenheim died of typhoid fever. Her son Otto Mendelssohn Bartholdy ( 1868-1949 ), who was to be an influential banker who was later knighted. Five years after the death of his first wife he married in 1873 her younger sister enols Oppenheim ( 1855-1939 ), with whom he had four more children. The birth of his youngest child, Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy ( 1879-1956 ) he survived only for a short time. He is buried in the cemetery of the church of Jerusalem III and New Church in Berlin- Kreuzberg.

Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy the Younger followed in the footsteps of his father, received his doctorate in chemistry and took a position as director of Agfa.