 Mendelssohn grew up in an intellectual environment . Frequent visitors to the salon organised by his parents at the family 's home in Berlin included artists , musicians and scientists , amongst them Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt , and the mathematician Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet ( whom Mendelssohn 's sister Rebecka would later marry ) . Sarah Rothenburg wrote of the household that " Europe came to their living room " . 
