Paul Robert Ernst von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (born 14 November 1875 in Berlin; died 10 May 1935) was a German Jewish banker and art collector. The persecution of his family under the Nazis has resulted in numerous lawsuits for restitution.
Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was the eldest son of the banker Ernst von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1846âÂÂ1909) and Marie, née Warschauer (1855âÂÂ1906), alumna of Somerville College, Oxford, and great-great-granddaughter of Moses Mendelssohn. After a few months at Balliol College in Oxford, studying law in Bonn and Berlin, and joining the Society of Friends in 1901, he became a partner in the family bank Mendelssohn & Co. in early 1902. A few months later, he married Charlotte (Lotte) Reichenheim, who became known as Lotte von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. The couple remained childless. After the divorce, he married Elsa Lucy Emmy Lolo von Lavergne-Péguilhen (born 8 January 1899 in Strasbourg; died 11 March 1986).
Together with his wife, Lotte, Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy built a collection of the finest quality paintings by Pablo Picasso (Boy with Horse and Le Moulin de La Galette) in the Stadtpalais Alsenstrasse 3 / 3a (architect: Bruno Paul) and in Schloss Börnicke (rebuilt by the same architect), Vincent van Gogh ("Sunflowers", "Mutter Roulin im Profil, mit ihren Bab"y, "St. Paul's Krankenhaus", "Junges Mädschen mit Kornblume" and "Trunk of an old yellow tree"). They also owned artworks by Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Georges Braque as well as by Henri Rousseau, Dégas, Cézanne, Derain, and Toulouse-Lautrec.
When the Nazis rose to power in 1933, von Mendelssohn-Bartholdly was persecuted because of his Jewish origin. Nazi laws designed to ostracize, bankrupt and plunder the Jews were applied to the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy family.
Much controversy surrounds the circumstances under which Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and his heirs relinquished the artworks in his collection, under the Third Reich's racial laws, which forced family members into exile and the destruction via Aryanisation of their bank Mendelssohn & Co.
A series of lawsuits demanding the restitution of the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy artworks was initiated in 2008 by the heirs of Mendelssohn, with Julius H. Schoeps as their spokesman. The artworks claimed included:
There was also a question concerning the Picasso's Boy with a Pipe which Mendelssohn-Bartoldy's widow had sold to Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zürich, who sold it to Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney in 1950.