Raphael Mostel on Felix's Jewishness:
There is, however, no reason to doubt the composer’s sincerity in living his life as a devout Lutheran. At the same time, he was keenly aware — as with the tale of the monkey — of his heritage. He insisted on seeing the world whole, and in the same rational spirit as his philosopher grandfather. Indeed, when his father tried to drop the Mendelssohn name entirely and rename the whole family Bartholdy (from a family dairy property with title attached), Felix insisted on being known as Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Alongside that porcelain monkey, what Abraham wrote to his son on seeing that newspapers often dropped the Bartholdy part of the composer’s last name is perhaps the most sadly tortured epitaph to the challenge of the entire concept of Bildung: “a Christian Mendelssohn is as impossible as a Jewish Confucius.”