Berlin  - On a drab, gray February day it takes quite a while to locate the grave of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy in the Bethlehem Cemetery in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg.

A sombre black iron fence surrounds the site where the great composer-conductor lies buried alongside the grave of his gifted pianist sister Fanny, and other distinguished relatives.

Born 200 years ago, Felix Mendelssohn - as he was commonly known - may have been a composer with great universal appeal, but surprisingly, in his native Germany, his greatness was all too often questioned, despite his having written more than 400 works, including some significant oratorios.

His grandfather was the famous German-Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and Felix grew up in an environment of intense intellectual ferment. Some of the greatest minds in Germany were frequent visitors to his family's home in Berlin, including Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt.

However, during the Nazi era, mere mention of his name was enough to provoke a scandal - on account of his Jewish ancestry. This, despite the fact that he was raised a Christian, his parents having converted to that religion in the early 1800s.

In the 1930s, the Nazis banned his music and tore down a city statue in his honour. For years after World War II the majority of Berliners remained ignorant of the fact that the composer was buried in their city, while his burial site became a rodent-infested mound covered with weeds.

A US soldier - and lover of Mendelssohn's music - come across the site in 1970. Enraged over its condition, he fired off a sharp protest to Berlin's then mayor Klaus Schuetz.

Schuetz ordered the burial site designated an "honorary city grave" and three years later, backed moves for a Mendelssohn Music Festival in Berlin to mark the 125th anniversary of the composer's death.

This year, on the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth, the Berliner Philharmonic chamber music hall has been hosting events in his honour. Mendelssohn's String Octet in E Flat Major - a masterpiece written when the composer was just 16 years old - has also been performed at a commemorative event.

Members of The Singakademie, a Berlin choir, have appeared at his graveside to give a rendering of his work, and violinist Nikolaj Znaider under the baton of Daniel Baremboim has played Mendelssohn's violin concert e-Moll op. 64 at a state opera performance.

Even so, international music experts ponder why the anniversary of one of the most famous 19th century artists is being played out relatively quietly in Germany, with far more attention to the Austrian-born Joseph Haydn who died 200 years ago.

"Orchestras and concert organisers are focusing on him (Haydn)," German music critic Axel Brueggemann said in this month's German Times magazine. "Mendelssohn is, one could say, stuck in Joseph Haydn's shadow."

Mendelssohn's music still enjoys popularity worldwide, especially in the United States, Canada, and Britain where, he made 10 visits over a 20-month period, around 1830.

Scotland inspired two of Mendelssohn's most famous works, the overture Fingal's Cave (also known as the Hebrides Overture) and the Scottish Symphony. His oratorio Elijah was premiered in Birmingham at the Triennial Music Festival in 1846.

The New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur has celebrated the anniversary with an "all-Mendelssohn" programme, including his Violin Concerto, with violin superstar Sophie Mutter.

A Mendelssohn concert, co-produced by the Calgary Philharmonic and the Honens International Piano Competition, is to be staged in Canada on May 11.

By the time he died at the age of 38 in Leipzig in November, 1847, Mendelssohn's music was enormously popular worldwide. In Germany, however, critics were swift in condemning his work.

Famed fellow composer Richard Wagner saw Mendelssohn as a major rival. A raving anti-Semite, Wagner raged about "das Judenthum in Musik" (Judaism in Music), claiming that what Jews had produced was an "artificial" and "imitative" culture. (dpa)