Mendelssohn NOT Jewish except by Nazi definition Mendelssohn may have had Jewish antecedents but he was born into baptized and brought up in a Lutheran family He later became a Roman Catholic At no stage in his life was he Jewish nor did he ever identify himself as Jewish Please see the discussion pages and don t revert my edits He was defined as Jewish by the Nazi Party because they made the innovation of treating Jews as a race not a religious community Up until the early 20th century German Jews were regarded correctly as Germans For Wikipaedia to succumb to a racial or genetic definition of Jewishness is highly contentious Please read the discussion page very carefully and make up your mind but for the time being leave the categories out