 Mendelssohn married Cécile Charlotte Sophie <unk> ( 10 October 1817 – 25 September 1853 ) , the daughter of a French Reformed Church clergyman , on 28 March 1837 . The couple had five children : Carl , Marie , Paul , Lili and Felix . The second youngest child , Felix August , contracted measles in 1844 and was left with his health impaired ; he died in 1851 . The eldest , Carl Mendelssohn Bartholdy ( 7 February 1838 – 23 February 1897 ) , became a distinguished historian , and professor of history at Heidelberg and Freiburg universities , dying in 1897 in a psychiatric institution in Freiburg . Paul Mendelssohn Bartholdy ( 1841 – 1880 ) was a noted chemist and pioneered the manufacture of aniline dye . Marie married Victor Benecke and lived in London . Lili married Adolph Wach , later Professor of Law at Leipzig University . The family papers inherited by Marie and Lili 's children form the basis of the extensive collection of Mendelssohn manuscripts , including the so @-@ called ' Green Books ' of his correspondence , now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University . 
