B

Beethoven was in contact with several other ladies during his early Viennese years, but although he composed or dedicated musical pieces to some of them, it is unlikely that he had with them any relationship more intimate than friendship or esteem. Countess Josephine Clary, an amateur singer; Christine Gherardi, who at the end of the 1700s and the beginning of the 1800s was the most famous amateur singer in Vienna and whom Beethoven often accompanied at the piano during musical evenings at the home of her fiancé, Dr. Joseph von Frank. Countess Anna Luise Barbara Keglevich, who in 1801 became Princess Odescalchi, received the dedication of four important Beethoven compositions, among which stand out the Piano Sonata Op. 7 and the Piano Concerto Op. 15. But there is no reliable evidence of an emotional bond with these women.]

“This transformation is due to a dear, enchanting girl who loves me and whom I love. After two years I again have moments of bliss, and for the first time I feel that marriage might bring me happiness. Unfortunately she is not of my class—and now—I certainly could not marry.” Letter from Beethoven to Wegeler, Vienna, 16 November 1801 [A.54]. [Beethoven’s biographers believe that here he is referring to Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, to whom he gave piano lessons and to whom he dedicated the Sonata Op. 27 No. 2, “Moonlight.”]

It is difficult to say what role love played in Beethoven’s emotional life. Except for the letters addressed to the Immortal Beloved [and to Josephine Deym], his correspondence contains only a small number of vague and obscure allusions to episodes of his sentimental life.

Beethoven’s conception of love was as bourgeois as possible. For him, love and marriage were inseparable. Schindler confirms this by reporting the following words from Beethoven: “Nur Liebe – ja nur sie vermag dir ein glücklicheres Leben zu geben! O Gott – lass mich sie – jene endlich finden, die mich in Tugend bestärkt – die erlaubt mein ist.” (Only love—yes, only it can give you a happier life! O God, let me finally find the one who strengthens me in virtue, who is mine lawfully.)

And to Ries he wrote on 8 May 1816: “My best greetings to your wife; unfortunately I have no wife; I have found only one whom, I suppose, I shall never possess; but for this I am not a misogynist.”

To the women who touched his heart, Beethoven dedicated several works. He offered to Countess Odescalchi the Piano Concerto Op. 15, composed in 1797, and the Piano Variations Op. 34. To Giulietta Guicciardi he dedicated the Piano Sonata Op. 27 No. 2, quasi una fantasia, in C‑sharp minor (1802), whose first movement (the famous Adagio sostenuto, “Moonlight”) is full of melancholy. To Therese von Brunsvik he dedicated the Sonata Op. 78.

In many of his Lieder there is a clear predominance of melancholy feelings; it is above all unhappy or impossible love that provided Beethoven with inspiration for his songs. There is probably a correspondence here with the regret, expressed to Schindler and Ries, of not having been able to build a home with a beloved woman. Boyer [a]

In the early 1800s Beethoven’s relationships with women were essentially limited to those with the young ladies of the Brunsvik and Guicciardi families, both noble. Some have claimed that there was a love affair with Therese Brunsvik, but this appears to be entirely untrue. Therese was rather the concerned witness—though, as her memoirs tell us, certainly favorable to Ludwig’s relationship with her sister Josephine.

The story with Guicciardi is emblematic of Beethoven’s relationships with women. He was certainly in love with her, and she reciprocated. At the same time, while she returned Beethoven’s affection, Giulietta was already seriously involved with a young ballet composer—whose abilities some Beethoven scholars have strongly criticized, though he was very successful in his time—Count Wenzel Robert Gallenberg. Inevitably Beethoven was left, and Giulietta married Gallenberg in November 1803, moving with him to Naples, where he worked for twenty years.

Beethoven, of course, was aware of her relationship with Gallenberg. But what were the terms, on both sides, of this relationship? In 1823 Beethoven revealed to Schindler the triangular nature of their connection, which has certainly been misunderstood by many—even distinguished—scholars. But it is enough to read the original text in Schindler or in Ludwig van Beethovens Leben by Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Second Volume, newly edited and supplemented by Hugo Riemann [3rd edition, Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1922], p. 309, to realize how often texts and facts have been misinterpreted.

Schindler reports a conversation with Beethoven in 1823. The Gallenbergs had returned to Vienna after many years, and Count Gallenberg had become, under the protection of the Italian impresario Barbaja, director of the Kärntnertortheater and supervisor of its library. Schindler had been sent by Count Gallenberg to request the score of Fidelio, which was in the theatre library. Gallenberg made some remarks about Beethoven, which Schindler repeated to him, and which the Master did not appreciate.

A conversation followed, conducted mostly in writing because, as Schindler says, they were in a public place, and of which Schindler claims to have preserved the text. Concerning his past love for Giulietta, Beethoven wrote in French: “J’étois bien aimé d’elle et plus que jamais son époux. Il est pourtant plutôt son amant que moi…”

If one weighs the words carefully, there is no doubt about the nature of the relationship between Giulietta and Beethoven; one must remember that at that time, as any good nineteenth‑century French dictionary tells us, the term amant indicates not only one who loves passionately and has a complete relationship, but also a person “qui tâche de se faire aimer”—who tries to make himself loved.

But many have certainly misread this text. Salomon, for example, writes: “She loved me very much, much more than her husband. And yet it was he who was her lover, not I…” —and thus the meaning becomes quite different!

Here we have a typical example of Beethoven’s love stories: he was attracted to women who were often already attached to others before he met them, or who were unreachable for him because of social class differences. Moreover, as many have rightly observed, it seems almost as if Beethoven sought out unattainable women because this, in any case, offered considerable advantages for someone like him, for whom celibacy was a necessary condition to devote himself entirely to his creative work—a man who, as Solomon says, “considered romantic relationships an obstacle to his creative mission.”

And this is not a deduction or conjecture of later generations; Beethoven said and wrote it repeatedly and explicitly, as in the letter [E.70] of 1801 to Wegeler, in which he communicates his joy at meeting Giulietta but, after saying he is loved in return, adds: “It is the first time I feel that marriage could bring happiness; unfortunately she is not of my class, and now—I really could not marry… For me there is no greater joy than exercising and displaying my art.”

Another love story similar to the previous one was that with Josephine von Brunsvik, Giulietta’s cousin. Beethoven had taught her years earlier, in 1799. The girl was then forced by her mother to marry Count Deym, thirty years older than she, whom she had met precisely during the days when she was taking lessons from Beethoven in Vienna—and in which the divine one had probably already become infatuated with her: his lessons, conducted under the watchful eye of her sister Therese and her mother, lasted four or five hours.

When the girls left on 23 May 1799 for Martonvásár in Hungary, where they lived, Beethoven wrote in their Album of Memories the lied “Ich denke dein” with four variations and the following dedication…

In the album of the two Brunsvik countesses

my dearest wish is that they may sometimes, when playing and singing this small musical offering, remember their sincere admirer Ludwig van Beethoven Vienna, 23 May 1799

In January 1804 Deym died, and toward the end of 1804 people began to speak of Beethoven’s love for Josephine. The letters exchanged between the sisters provide irrefutable testimony. Charlotte, who at the time—before her marriage—was living in Vienna in Josephine’s house, wrote on 19 December to Therese: “Beethoven comes very often, he gives lessons to Pepi (as Josephine was nicknamed) — it is a little dangerous, I confess to you.” Therese replied on 20 January 1805: “But tell me, Pepi and Beethoven—now that is news indeed.”

These Brunsvik sisters were a perfect example of the free behaviour of the youth of the time, whatever their social class. Reading Therese’s diary, one is immediately struck by the suspicion—almost a certainty—that she and Josephine swung from extremes of chastity to the opposite. A police report on Josephine, dated 12 July 1815, notes: “the morality of the countess does not seem to enjoy a good reputation.”

Although Beethoven’s letters to Josephine overflow with the effusions any lover might reserve for the woman he loves, it seems that Josephine, at this time, did not fully return Beethoven’s love. Her letters speak of “affection,” “deep interest,” “enthusiasm” for Beethoven, but rarely of love, and never without reservations and a veil of spirituality. Certainly, in Beethoven—judging from his letters—there is a passion that suggests a relationship not purely spiritual. Yet he seems to have yielded to her resistance and accepted a spiritual relationship on the conditions she set, expressed in a letter in which she tells Beethoven that she loves him as a devoted soul loves another, and that the joy of his company would have been the finest homage if only he had desired her less sensually.

Had the aims of physical gratification and marriage been set aside? In the summer of 1805 Beethoven’s letters took on a less ardent tone: in September An die Hoffnung Op. 32 was published, a composition born for her and given to her in the original manuscript, but her name does not appear in the dedication, replaced by that of Princess Kinsky. In autumn 1805 Josephine left Vienna, returning in 1806, and then departed for Budapest. Several months after Josephine’s return to Vienna, around mid‑1807, Beethoven attempted to resume their friendship, but was turned away at the door by her servants. Things changed again a few months later. In any case, in Therese’s diary there is an explicit regret that Beethoven had not married Josephine.

A similar story was Beethoven’s courtship of Therese Malfatti, an eighteen‑year‑old from a distinguished family—an adventure of the spring of 1810 that followed the pattern of earlier episodes. For Beethoven it was a hopeless attempt, opposed from the outset by her parents, and probably without the slightest encouragement from her. Beethoven met the Malfatti family through his friend Gleichenstein, a talented cellist, who was engaged to—and in 1811 married—Therese’s younger sister Anna, then sixteen. The girls were daughters of Giovanni Malfatti, a famous physician who also treated Beethoven. They owned a house in Mödling but spent the winter in Vienna.

Beethoven, then forty, became infatuated with Therese and wished to marry her—so much so that he asked his friend Wegeler, living in Koblenz, to travel to Bonn—only 150 kilometres!—to obtain his baptismal certificate, a document required for marriage. Beethoven sent Therese music, procured a piano for her, urged her to devote herself to music. The girl regarded him, ultimately, for what he was: a deaf forty‑year‑old, somewhat eccentric, who—even if he were the genius people said—had the habit of spitting into his handkerchief and looking into it.

Naturally, some time later she too married the usual nobleman of solid social standing, Baron von Drosdick, who worked at the War Chancellery in Vienna. Among the pieces Beethoven sent her was the famous album leaf that entered history—through a transcription error—as Für Elise, though at the top, as Ludwig Nohl later confirmed when it came into his hands, it bore the inscription Für Therese. He sent it with a very long farewell letter, in which sighs, moral reflections, and thinly veiled excuses mingle. The letter, written toward the end of May 1810, concludes [K.245]:

“Farewell now, beloved Teresa… Remember me… Forget my follies. No one more than I can wish you a joyful and happy life, even if you remain indifferent toward your most devoted servant and friend Beethowen.”

These are precisely the days in which Napoleon Bonaparte wins Maria Luisa. Resigned to Therese Malfatti’s refusal, Beethoven wrote to Gleichenstein [spring 1810, K.244]:

“Thus I must seek support only in my own heart; outside myself there is none for me. No, nothing but wounds are reserved for me by friendship and similar sentiments—so be it then: for you, poor Beethoven, there is no happiness in the external world; you must create it within yourself, only in the ideal world do you find friends.”

Beethoven’s relationships with women suggest the same idealizing tendency that he attempted to bring into the world of sound. It seems quite clear that each woman, in the long series of his love affairs, represented for him a projection of the feminine ideal; and whether he realized it or not—and he was spiritually intuitive enough to do so—his experience was in general quite similar to that described by Dante in the Vita Nuova. It also appears obvious, and entirely characteristic, that his deepest and most secret love relationship was with Leonora, the ideal wife of his only opera, heroine and champion of freedom. Barford [a]

Beethoven longed to feel the warmth of an experience within the bosom of a real family. During the two years (1816–1817) in which [his nephew] Karl attended the Giannattasio Institute, Beethoven felt at home with Giannattasio and his two now‑adult daughters, the elder of whom, Fanny, kept a moving diary. She recalled that Beethoven “seemed to wish to devote himself body and soul” to Karl. Fanny, who had recently lived through a love affair that ended tragically, fell in love with Beethoven, but he—consistent with his habitual pattern of behaviour, the attraction to an unattainable woman—claimed to prefer the younger sister, Anna, who was engaged to another. Solomon [b]

In September the Giannattasio family spent a day in Baden with Beethoven and Karl; Fanny noted in her diary that while they were there Beethoven had a quarrel with a servant and came away with his face “scratched,” and that while walking he confided to her father that he was “unhappy in love.”

The explanation of Beethoven’s relations with women may perhaps be found in two entries from his diary. One, undated, probably from 1816–1817 [Tagebuch nr. 122]:

“Without the union of souls, sensual pleasure is—and will always remain—bestial; afterwards there is no trace of noble feeling, but rather remorse.”

The other, dated Baden, 27 July — 1817? —:

“Only love, yes only love can give you a happy life. O God, let me finally find her, the one who strengthens me in virtue and whom I may be permitted to make mine—when M. (? or R.) passed before me and seemed to cast a glance at me.”

Like most men of cultivated circles at the time, Beethoven seems in his youth to have led a sexual life on two different planes: on the one hand, “affairs of the heart” with girls of his own milieu, generally with minimal sensual gratification; on the other, recourse to prostitutes.

On the other hand, the “affairs of the heart” that Beethoven admitted having were, without exception, unsuccessful. Some have advanced the rather convincing theory that he fell in love only with women whom age, rank, and circumstance rendered unattainable. It seems that his attraction to his aristocratic pupils—Therese von Brunsvik, Josephine Brunsvik von Deym, and Giulietta Guicciardi among the most famous—grew stronger the more impossible the union became; and in the letters to the “Immortal Beloved,” assuming they were sent and were not merely a literary outpouring, we hear him hiding behind vague pretexts to justify the impossibility of fulfilling his passion.

All that we know with certainty—what matters for our understanding of the man—is this: the gap between ideal love and the reality of the senses was, in his case, greater than usual, and he never succeeded in reaching that compromise which men generally find in marriage. M. Cooper [a]

Let us not forget that we are speaking of the last years of the eighteenth century and the first of the nineteenth. The unrestrained erotic customs of the time—and since we are speaking of a musician, let us not forget that much information on this subject comes to us from the Mozart household and its maids—were such that we can safely exclude the idea that the desire for love found fulfilment, even among the upper classes, solely in marriage.

The behaviour of young noblewomen was not very different from that of bourgeois girls or of young women of the lower classes. If anyone should prudishly wish to believe that Beethoven’s loves for his many noble admirers never led him to those concrete behaviours so habitual even then in relations between the sexes—on the grounds that his noble beloveds always recoiled from him because, by some extraordinary alignment of the stars, they were “all” superior beings—we have precise information that will quickly disillusion them.

Decisive in this respect is the diary of Therese von Brunsvik. As Solomon writes, from Therese’s diary it is clear that she and Josephine swung from extremes of chastity to the opposite, which for Therese resulted in feelings of guilt following her amorous encounters; the situation was entirely different for Josephine who, as Therese wrote in her diary on 19 April 1809, “was able to give herself freely and without concern.”

There also exists a police report on Josephine, dated 12 July 1815—thus long after her relationship with Beethoven—which notes: “the morality of the countess does not seem to enjoy a good reputation, and it is maintained that she cannot be absolved from having provided grounds for marital quarrels.” But I do not believe that Josephine could have changed—for the worse!—only after the period of her relationship with Beethoven.

It must also be said that certain phrases written by Josephine to Beethoven, such as: “Does it perhaps anger you that I cannot satisfy this sensual love?”, have been taken as proof that with Beethoven there was only the usual idealised relationship.

On the other hand, in the writings of those close to him that have come down to us, even situations that might be delicate are shown to us through a veil. Ries, for example, recounts this episode:

“One evening I arrived in Baden to continue my lessons. I found him sitting on the sofa next to a young and beautiful woman. Since it seemed to me that I had arrived at an inopportune moment, I was about to leave, but Beethoven held me back, saying: ‘Play a little in the meantime.’ The two remained seated behind me. I had already played for some time when Beethoven suddenly said loudly: ‘Ries! Play something very sentimental.’ And after a while: ‘Something melancholy.’ And again: ‘Something passionate,’ and so on… The lady left, and Beethoven told me he did not know who she was… Much later I met her in Vienna and learned that she was the mistress of a foreign prince.”

Such is the account—but it leaves us free to imagine many things!

The so‑called “Immortal Beloved” letter and its enigma

The enigma of the “Immortal Beloved” is a true romantic detective story that begins immediately after Beethoven’s death. Beethoven had left to his nephew Karl, by will, seven bank securities worth about 4,000 florins C.M. Immediately after his death, on 27 March 1827, the frantic search for these securities began, conducted by Johann van Beethoven, Stephan von Breuning, Anton Schindler and Holz.

As Gerard von Breuning recounts, the securities did not appear, to the point that Johann—whose greed and hostility toward his brother’s friends were well known—hinted that the search was being conducted only for show. But in the afternoon, as the situation became almost unbearable, “Holz pulled, by chance, a nail protruding from a cupboard, revealing a compartment in which the long‑sought securities were kept together with other papers.”

The other papers were the Heiligenstadt Testament, a three‑part letter now known as the letter to the Immortal Beloved, and two miniatures of young women. In fact, according to Schindler, Holz knew where the hiding place was; arriving in the afternoon, he immediately joined the search and made it appear—not by chance.

The letter consists of three separate parts. But why was the letter in Beethoven’s possession? There was no envelope, and naturally, in the absence of postal marks, we can never know whether it was ever sent. Thus we shall never know whether it was returned to Beethoven by the recipient or whether it had always remained in the Master’s hands.

Here is the letter

[A.373] To an unknown woman. Autograph in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Berlin

6 July, morning

My angel, my all, my very self—Only a few words today, and even these in pencil (with yours). I shall not be certain of my lodgings until tomorrow; what a useless waste of time all this is! Why this deep sorrow, when necessity speaks? Can our love endure without sacrifices, without each of us demanding everything from the other? Can you alter the fact that you are not wholly mine, and I am not wholly yours? O God! Turn your gaze to the beautiful nature around you and let your mind be at peace with what must be. Love demands everything, and rightly so; thus it is for me toward you, and for you toward me. But you forget so easily that I must live for me and for you. If we were wholly united, you would feel this painful necessity no more than I do.

The journey was dreadful. I arrived here only at four in the morning. Since there were few horses, the coach took another route; but what a terrible road! At the second‑to‑last station they advised me not to travel by night, trying to frighten me with tales of a forest, but this only spurred me on—and I was wrong. The carriage ended up breaking apart on that horrible road, a mere bottomless country track. Had it not been for the two postilions, I would have been stranded. By the usual road, Esterházy with eight horses fared no better than I with four. Yet in a certain sense the whole thing pleased me, as always happens when I overcome some obstacle.

Now I want to pass quickly from external events to those of the heart. I trust we shall see each other soon; and even today I lack the time to tell you the thoughts I have pondered these last days about my life. If our hearts were always close to one another, I would certainly not have such thoughts. My heart overflows with the desire to tell you so many things. Alas, there are moments when I feel that words are inadequate. Try to be calm—and be forever my faithful, my only treasure, my all, as I am for you. The gods must provide for whatever our destiny may be.

Your faithful Ludwig

Monday evening, 6 July

You are suffering, you my most beloved soul — Only now do I realise that the letters must be delivered early in the morning, on Monday — or Thursday — the only days on which the post leaves from here for “K”. You are suffering — Oh! wherever I am, you are with me — I shall find a way for you and me… for me to be able to live with you. What a life!!! What it is now!!!! without you — pursued here and there by people’s kindness, a kindness, I believe, that I would like to deserve as little as I actually deserve it — homage of man to man — this pains me — and if I consider myself within the frame of the universe, what am I, and what is he who is called the greatest of men — and yet — it is here that the divine element of man is found — I weep when I think that only on Saturday will you receive my first news — However much you love me — I love you more — but do not ever hide yourself from me — good night — Since I am taking the baths, I must go to sleep. Oh God — so near! So far! Is not our love a creation of heaven? — and what matters most, as firm as the celestial firmament?

Good morning, 7 July

Even in bed my thoughts run to you, my immortal beloved, joyful at times, then again sad, waiting to know whether fate will grant our wish — To face life, I must live only with you, or never see you again. Yes, I have decided to wander far away until I can fly into your arms, truly call myself at home with you, and, surrounded by your arms, let my soul be carried into the realm of blessed spirits — Alas, it must be so — You will resign yourself, all the more because you know my fidelity to you, no other woman will ever possess my heart, never — never — Oh God, why must one be far from the one one loves so deeply; and yet my life in V[ienna] at this moment is an atrocious life — Your love has made me the happiest and the most unhappy of mortals — Now, at my age, I would need regularity and stability in my life — can this be reconciled with our relationship? My angel, only now do I learn that the post leaves every day — and so I must finish, so that you may receive the letter at once — Be calm; only by considering our existence calmly can we reach our goal, which is to live together — Be calm — love me — Today — yesterday — what a longing, to the point of tears, for you — for you — you — my life — my all, farewell. Oh continue, continue to love me — never doubt the most faithful heart of your beloved

eternally yours eternally mine eternally one another’s L.

Critical note on Schindler

Anton Schindler, who upon the Master’s death took possession of the “Immortal Beloved” letter, was the first to publish it in his biography of the composer, which appeared in 1840. And naturally he was also the first to advance a hypothesis — entirely without evidence — regarding the identity of the recipient.

In the first edition of his book (1840), he claimed that the addressee was Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, and that the letter had been written in 1806 from a Hungarian spa. Only much later was it discovered that he himself had inserted, in his own hand, the date 1806 three times on the letter, which originally lacked the year entirely.

It is well known that Schindler had no — and could not have had any — first‑hand knowledge of Beethoven’s Viennese years before at least 1820, to the point that he had tried to involve Stephan von Breuning and Wegeler in preparing a biography of Beethoven. Schindler learned of Giulietta only years later, that she had married Count Gallenberg in 1803 and had immediately afterwards moved to Italy, settling permanently in Naples.

Thus, in the third edition of his book, he casually back‑dated the letter from 1806 to 1801.

Naturally, in the nineteenth century—before it became known how many manipulations Schindler had carried out on the materials in his possession and on the facts of Beethoven’s life—Schindler’s opinion was taken at face value. So much so that even Nohl, in his Beethovens Leben (1864–1867), still identified Guicciardi as the Immortal Beloved.

In the 1879 edition of his book (Ludwig van Beethovens Leben by Thayer–Deiters, Berlin 1866–1879), it was Thayer who criticised and demolished Schindler’s assertions and advanced the hypothesis that the recipient of the letter was Therese von Brunsvik. This hypothesis, too, rested on very weak evidence: there had certainly been a well‑documented friendship between Beethoven and the Brunsvik siblings—Franz, Therese, and Josephine; there are a few references to Therese in some letters to the Brunsviks; and the Sonata Op. 78 had been dedicated to Therese in 1809.

Today we know that in 1804 Beethoven frequented Josephine, the widow Deym, with whom—and not with Therese—he certainly established a love relationship. Thayer, who had been the first to recognise that the only years in which the letter could have been written were 1795, 1801, 1807, 1812, and 1818 (since only in those years did 6 July fall on a Monday), nevertheless, in order to support his thesis—which required 1806 as the date of the letter—went so far as to write that Beethoven had made a one‑day error in the date. But Thayer was such an authority in Beethoven studies that his opinion was accepted as valid until 1909, when it was demonstrated, as Solomon reminds us, that at the beginning of July 1806 Beethoven was in Vienna and Therese Brunsvik in Transylvania.

As Solomon wrote, “the most objective and scrupulous of Beethoven’s biographers had fallen victim to his own desire to protect Beethoven, preventing him from being accused of having fallen in love with a woman whose character, age, or marital status did not conform to the parameters of Victorian moralism. He chose Therese Brunsvik in order to counter the idea that the Immortal Beloved was a married woman, Giulietta Guicciardi, or the then fourteen‑year‑old Therese Malfatti.”

The value of Therese von Brunsvik as candidate rose even further—and convinced even the hesitant—when Marie Hrussoczy (Mariam Tenger) published in 1890, in Bonn, the book Beethovens unsterbliche Geliebte, nach persönlichen Erinnerungen (“Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved: Personal Recollections”). It was an enormous success and was immediately translated into English. It was, as Solomon says, “a detailed and melodramatic account of the love story between Therese Brunsvik and Beethoven and of their secret engagement of 1806.”

And although A. C. Kalischer demonstrated in 1891 that the book was entirely a work of fiction, the myth persisted. This explains the erroneous quotations found in certain Beethoven biographers regarding the women he loved in the early 1800s.

The identification of Therese von Brunsvik with the Immortal Beloved was still accepted by La Mara (Marie Lipsius) in her 1909 book Beethovens unsterbliche Geliebte, whose conclusions were based on Therese’s memoirs—published at that time—and on conversations with descendants of the Brunsvik and Guicciardi‑Gallenberg families. La Mara believed that the “K”, the initial of the place to which the letter was addressed, referred to the Brunsvik castle at Korompa, and not, as we know today, to Karlsbad.

With the publication of W. A. Thomas San Galli’s Die Unsterbliche Geliebte Beethovens in 1909, the perspective changed radically. Thomas San Galli concluded that all years except 1812 could be excluded, that the letter had most likely been written in Teplitz, and that “K”, the destination of the letter, was Karlsbad. But the identification of the protagonist of the amorous drama was probably once again mistaken. He identified her as Amalia Sebald: in a letter of 17 July, written from Teplitz to Breitkopf & Härtel [A.375], which we shall discuss later, Beethoven asked the publisher to send to Sebald in Berlin the score of Christus am Ölberge, the Goethe Lieder, and all his other Lieder.

Thomas San Galli’s conclusions regarding the year 1812 were accepted by all subsequent scholars and were confirmed—and enriched with further details, which we shall examine—in Max Unger’s 1910 book Auf Spuren von Beethovens “Unsterbliche Geliebten” (“On the Trail of Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved”). Unger’s conclusion, however, was that the recipient of the letter remained unknown, since, he observed, if she had been Amalia Sebald, Beethoven could have given her directly the scores he asked Breitkopf & Härtel to send on 17 July. In fact, Amalia spent the summer of 1812 in Teplitz, where Beethoven also arrived, as we shall see.

Curiously, in 1910 Thomas San Galli, in a paper entitled Beethoven und die unsterbliche Geliebte: Amalie Sebald, Goethe, Therese Brunsvick und anderes (included in “Appendix F” of Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, revised and edited by Elliot Forbes, 1967, though not by Solomon in Beethoven), again identified the recipient of the letter as Therese von Brunsvik, who was in Moravia at the castle of Wittschap near Iglau with her sister Josephine—as if Beethoven, travelling to Teplitz, could have passed through Iglau, where the meeting referred to in the letter would have taken place.

In the 1911 Riemann edition of the Thayer–Deiters biography, the date 1812 was accepted, without naming the Immortal Beloved. But in the 1921 American edition, the editor Krehbiel, ignoring all other evidence and relying on La Mara’s 1909 work, resurrected the name of Therese and the date 1807. This idea was taken up again in 1928 by Rolland in Beethoven. Les grandes époques créatrices. De l’Héroïque à l’Appassionata.

Meanwhile, in 1920 a new candidate had appeared on the scene: Josephine von Brunsvik Deym. In her Beethoven und die Brunsviks, La Mara drew upon the concerns expressed in the letters of Josephine’s sisters, Charlotte and Therese, which speak of Beethoven’s continual visits to the widowed Josephine in 1804 and 1805, and she again placed the date of the letter in 1807. This hypothesis would later be taken up, as we shall see, by S. Kaznelson, who accepted the date—by then considered “certain” by all scholars—of 1812.

Let us now examine the pros—and above all the cons—of this hypothesis.

Siegmund Kaznelson’s hypothesis, presented with great detail and documentation in his Beethovens ferne und unsterbliche Geliebte (1954), is not only that the letter was written to Countess Josephine Brunsvik Deym‑Stackelberg, but also that Beethoven was the father of the third child she had during her second marriage—a girl named Minona, born on 9 April 1813.

That there had been an affectionate relationship between Beethoven and Josephine is well known. Josephine (1779–1821), third daughter of Count Anatol Brunsvik and Baroness Anna Barbara von Seeberg, Hungarians, had married Count Joseph Deym in June 1799, a man thirty years her senior. After her husband’s death in January 1804, Josephine continued to live in their Vienna residence until 1808. And it was during these years, from 1804 to 1808, that her relationship with Beethoven developed, as the Brunsvik sisters mention in their letters.

In the summer of 1808 she left Vienna with her children and her sister Therese. On 13 February 1810 Josephine married, for the second time, Count Christoph von Stackelberg, who had purchased an estate in Moravia, and from then on she returned to Vienna only rarely. As Kaznelson recounts, there were legal disputes concerning payments, ending in a lawsuit that Stackelberg lost. The ensuing financial ruin destroyed the marriage and, according to Kaznelson, after a scene in which Stackelberg accused Therese and Josephine of being the cause of the financial crisis, he disappeared toward the end of May or the beginning of June 1812. According to Therese, they did not see him again until 4 December 1812, when he made an unexpected visit.

Meanwhile, during the summer, Therese had taken the six nieces and nephews—the four Deym children and the two Stackelberg children—to Dornbach, while Josephine is said to have remained alone in Vienna. In Therese’s diary there is no entry between 9 June and 6 August 1812. On 9 April 1813 Josephine gave birth to a daughter, Minona. Since, according to the data he provides, she had been separated from her husband for ten months, Kaznelson advanced the hypothesis that the child was the daughter of a forbidden love with Beethoven.

Numerous elements allow this hypothesis to be refuted—indeed, many consider it untenable. Before proceeding, one must recall that at that time travellers always left a trace of their presence in police registers, where the arrival and lodging of tourists or passengers had to be reported. If the person was of high rank, information could easily be found in newspapers, which noted such arrivals, much as happens today with VIPs.

Against Kaznelson’s hypothesis, Solomon cites at least three letters from 1812 (one from Stackelberg to his mother, dated 14 June; one from Franz Brunsvik to his sister, dated 25 July; and one from a certain Hager to Josephine, dated 13 August) which seem to show that the marriage with Stackelberg had not yet completely collapsed in June 1812, and indeed that Stackelberg and Josephine were living together in Vienna at least until 13 August 1812.

There is no evidence—and as we shall see, this is crucial for sustaining her candidacy as the letter’s recipient—that Josephine was in the Bohemian spa towns during July–August 1812 (whereas police registers tell us that Countess Josephine Deym‑Stackelberg was in Karlsbad in August 1811!). Moreover, according to Solomon, citing H. Goldschmidt (Um die unsterbliche Geliebte, Leipzig 1977), Josephine’s marriage collapsed definitively only in April 1813.

Particularly significant is the recent discovery of thirteen letters written by Beethoven to Josephine between 1804 and 1807, which argues strongly against the hypothesis that she could have been the Immortal Beloved. The letters do not suggest a great passion on Josephine’s part; indeed, she was reluctant even to meet Beethoven, who—as the letters show—was left standing outside her door more than once.

Even though Therese writes in her diary that “Beethoven loved Josephine passionately,” and on 4 February 1846 noted, “Why did my sister J. not take Beethoven as her husband when she was the widow Deym?”, there is no document showing that after 1807 (the date of the last of the thirteen letters discovered) there were any further relations—let alone amorous ones—between Ludwig and Josephine, although Beethoven’s bond with Franz and Therese Brunsvik continued until the last years of the Master’s life.

This hypothesis was again supported in 2001 by Chris Stadtländer (Ewig unbehaust und verliebt … Beethoven und die Frauen), who insists that Therese wrote in her diary, after 22 September 1812, regarding Stackelberg, “it is six months since we last saw him,” and that Josephine could have been in Prague on 3–4 July 1812—a date that, as we shall see, is very important for the story of Beethoven and the Immortal Beloved—without appearing in police registers, since she might have been staying as a guest of her dear friend, Countess Victoria Golz, sister of her first husband.

But Stadtländer does not mention the letters cited by Solomon, nor the fact that Josephine does not appear to have been in Vienna and Karlsbad at that time.

Let us now consider, in attempting to identify the protagonist of this amorous drama, the historical facts that are not in dispute, and the “laws” of time and place to which the figure of the protagonist must correspond. The incontrovertible data, as also reported in the 1867 edition of Thayer’s Life of Beethoven, are the following:

1. The letter is unequivocally dated 6 July. The first postscript is from Monday evening, 6 July. The second postscript is from the morning of 7 July.
2. Beethoven laments his terrible journey, made at the same time—but by a different route—as that taken by an Esterházy: Beethoven’s carriage broke down, but Esterházy suffered the same fate. Beethoven says he arrived only “yesterday morning at 4” (that is, 5 July).
3. Beethoven writes (on 6 July) that “he will not be certain of his lodging until tomorrow.”
4. At first Beethoven writes, in the portion of the letter written on Monday evening, 6 July, that letters must be delivered on Monday or Thursday morning, the only days on which the post leaves for “K.”
5. In the postscript of 7 July, Beethoven says he has just learned that the post leaves every day.

Now, it is certain that 6 July fell on a Monday only in the years 1795, 1801, 1807, 1812, and 1818 (as Thayer had already noted). All of Beethoven’s travels and movements in those years have been established with reasonable certainty. The only year that corresponds to a journey on the dates implied by the letter, and to the incontrovertible facts listed by Thayer, is 1812. As we shall see, one may infer that he wrote the letter in Teplitz, immediately after his arrival from Prague on 5 July, where he had stayed for two or at most three days in early July 1812.

Before proceeding, let us recall what has been said about the registration of travellers and tourists at the time.

Let us now summarise certain facts, based on Solomon’s research (published in Beethoven), on the notes to Beethoven’s Epistolario in the editions of Anderson (1968) and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (2000), and on the letters collected by Kastner.

In 1812 Beethoven left Vienna on 28 or 29 June to travel to Prague, where he arrived on 1 July. His arrival was reported in the supplement no. 80 of the Prager Oberpostamts‑Zeitung of Friday, 3 July 1812; he lodged at the inn Zum Schwarzen Pferd (the Black Horse). Beethoven remained in Prague for three days, and on the last evening, the 3rd, he was to meet Varnhagen von Ense. As we shall see, 3 July is the date of arrival in Prague of a wealthy family then living in Vienna. The meeting with von Ense did not take place, and on 14 July Beethoven wrote him a letter apologising for not having been able to meet him, without giving the reason [A.374, E.583].

On Saturday 4 July Beethoven left Prague for Teplitz, at the same time as Prince Anton III Esterházy (1786–1866), Austrian ambassador to Dresden; his departure too was noted in the local Oberpostamts‑Zeitung. Confirming this, two messages signed by him have been found, one from Prague dated 30 June 1812, and the other from Teplitz dated 8 July, in which he informs Minister Metternich that he is leaving for Dresden.

Beethoven arrived in Teplitz on 5 July and was registered in the Civic Register on 6 July as lodging at the Zur goldenen Sonne (a photocopy of this document appears in the Epistolario published by the Accademia di Santa Cecilia); the next day, 7 July, he moved to the inn Zur Eiche. And this is why, on 6 July, he writes that he will not know his definitive lodging until the following day.

There is therefore no longer any doubt, as Solomon emphasizes, that Beethoven passed through Prague and then stayed in Teplitz at the beginning of July 1812.

The letter was supposed to reach the beloved at “K.” What place was this? The incontrovertible data contained in the letter allow us to conclude that the place was Karlsbad. Beethoven in fact writes that he had learned “that letters must be posted early on Monday and Thursday mornings.” Unger discovered a postal notice from that period which reads: “The Imperial Post departs for Saaz, Karlsbad and Eger on Mondays and Thursdays at about 8 o’clock.” This is clearly what Beethoven is referring to.

However, he had at first overlooked a footnote—mentioned in the second postscript—printed in smaller characters on the notice, which read: “Note: From 15 May to 15 September the post … departs every day before noon, at about 11 o’clock, for the aforementioned destinations.”

A definitive confirmation of all this is found in a letter from Beethoven dated Teplitz, 17 July 1812 [A.375] (the autograph is preserved at the Beethovenhaus in Bonn), addressed to Breitkopf & Härtel, which begins: “I tell you only that I have been here since 5 July.”

And to exclude decisively that the letter could belong to any year other than 1812, there is a fact not mentioned by earlier scholars of the Immortal Beloved letter: the letter is written on a type of paper that Beethoven used only in the summer of 1812 [E.582, note 2].

Beethoven then left Teplitz around 27 July for Karlsbad, where he was entered in the Civic Register on 31 July; he then went to Franzensbad, as the register of 8 August shows, and returned to Teplitz on 10 September.

But the problem remains: who was the recipient?

We must not forget that Thomas San Galli, after clearly identifying the year of the letter, believed in 1909 that the beloved was Amalia Sebald. This might have seemed plausible, since Beethoven had met Sebald in Teplitz in 1811 and saw her again in Teplitz after 10 September 1812, upon returning from Franzensbad.

But anyone who reads the letters exchanged between the two during that stay [K.343–350]—during which Beethoven suffered ailments that confined him to bed—cannot help being astonished by such an attribution: the tone of those notes absolutely excludes the possibility of the overwhelming love affair that radiates from the Immortal Beloved letter.

There must, however, have existed a woman with whom Beethoven could have formed a relationship that, in early July 1812, had reached the intensity reflected in the letter. In a penetrating analysis of the problem, Solomon listed a series of indispensable criteria.

The woman must have been living in Vienna at least in recent times, because, Solomon says, “it is absolutely improbable that the relationship could have reached such a degree of excitement solely through correspondence.” One must not forget that in September 1816, Fanny Giannattasio overheard a conversation between Beethoven and her father, in which the Master said he had met, five years earlier, a person who, if united with him, would have made him happy. “But it was unthinkable, a chimera. And yet everything was as on the first day.”

Thus, the first indispensable condition was that the woman lived in Vienna in close contact with Beethoven at least in the months preceding 12 July 1812. This immediately excludes several women who had been proposed as candidates for the role of Immortal Beloved but who, around 1810–1812, were not living in Vienna: Therese Malfatti, Bettina Brentano von Arnim, Amalie Sebald, Antonie Adamberger, Elise von der Recke, and Rahel Levin.

Since the letter seems to imply that Beethoven and the woman had met in the days immediately preceding 4 July—Beethoven describes only events occurring between 4 and 7 July—another indispensable condition is that the woman was in Prague on the same days Beethoven was there.

Finally, since the letter was addressed to Karlsbad, and Beethoven writes “we shall surely see each other soon,” and since we know he went to Karlsbad at the end of July, another indispensable condition is that the lady was in Karlsbad from the week of 6 July onward, where the letter was to arrive, and that she had naturally arrived there recently, coming from Prague.

This last point allows us to exclude Dorothea Ertmann, Elise von der Recke, and Princess Marie Lichtenstein, whose names already appeared in the Karlsbad police registers.

Further elements, according to Solomon, support the hypothesis that the Immortal Beloved was indeed Antonie Brentano. From the letter it is clear that the two lovers had planned to see each other again soon. And Beethoven did in fact travel to Karlsbad and, as the police register states, from 31 July lodged at the inn “Aug’ Gottes”, the same as the Brentanos, where they all remained until 8 August, when they all moved to Franzensbad, staying at the “Zwei goldenen Löwen.” From Franzensbad Beethoven returned to Karlsbad and then to Teplitz in early September, where he met Amalie Sebald.

Other facts lead Solomon to consider his interpretation correct. In December 1811 Beethoven composed the Lied An die Geliebte, WoO 140, on a poem by J. L. Stoll. In the upper right corner of the first page of the autograph, in handwriting previously unidentified, appear the words: “Den 2ten März 1812, mir vom Author erbeten” (“Requested of me by the author on 2 March 1812”). This note, as an examination of Antonie’s autograph letters shows, was written by her.

The song was published as a Lied with guitar accompaniment—unique in Beethoven’s output—and Antonie played the guitar very well.

Among Beethoven’s belongings two female portraits were found, two ivory miniatures. One was immediately identified as Giulietta Guicciardi; the other was thought to be Countess Erdödy. But comparisons made around 1930 with authenticated portraits of Countess Erdödy showed that the miniature could not represent her. When the miniature—now preserved at the Beethovenhaus in Bonn—was compared with two authenticated portraits of Antonie Brentano, it appeared to depict the same woman.

Finally, most Beethoven biographers believe that entry no. 8 of his Notes (see Beethovens persönliche Aufzeichnungen by A. Leitzmann), the second entry in the series of annotations now known as the Tagebuch, dates precisely from autumn 1812 and contains a reference to the Immortal Beloved:

“You had no right to be a man, not for yourself but only for others: for you there is no more happiness, only within yourself, in your art. O God! Give me the strength to overcome myself; nothing must bind me to life any longer. In this way everything goes to ruin with A.”

The letter “A” could be the initial of Antonie. And, Solomon writes, there are five women to whom this initial could refer: Amalie Sebald, Bettina von Arnim, Antonie Adamberger, Anna Marie Erdödy, and Antonie Brentano. But neither Amalie nor Bettina lived in Vienna at the relevant time; and Adamberger and Erdödy were not guests of the Bohemian spa towns that summer. Thus only Antonie Brentano remains.

Other later annotations in the Tagebuch refer to a mysterious “T”: and “Toni” was the diminutive commonly used for Antonia; Beethoven used it several times in letters to the Brentano family.

At the conclusion of his passionate investigation, Solomon wrote:

“Although this woman is well known in Beethoven literature, she has, almost inexplicably, never been proposed as a possible recipient of the Immortal Beloved letter. Her name is Antonie Brentano, née Antonie von Birkenstock (1780–1869). To her Beethoven dedicated his Thirty‑Three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120. The evidence in her favour is so overwhelming that one may affirm without the slightest presumption that the enigma of the Immortal Beloved has now been solved.”

Solomon’s conclusion on Beethoven’s emotional life

[The character and problems of Beethoven’s love relationships have been summarised in an extraordinary way by Solomon; I believe his words are the best way to close this chapter on Beethoven’s loves. Let us read them:]

“In all of Beethoven’s passions … from his youth in Bonn to 1810–1812 (the period of his love for Antonie Brentano, the probable ‘Immortal Beloved’), he had been rejected by the woman he loved, or had withdrawn in anticipation of rejection. Magdalena Willmann had mocked him as ‘ugly and half‑mad’; Giulietta Guicciardi had preferred the frivolous Gallenberg as her lover; Marie Bigot had reported his advances to her husband; Julie von Vering had chosen von Breuning; Countess Erdödy, though not among the women he loved, had wounded his feelings; Therese Malfatti had not returned his attentions; Bettina Brentano had flirted with him, encouraging his hopes without revealing that she was in love with Achim von Arnim and about to marry him. And a peasant girl, described by Grillparzer, preferred peasants to the great composer. Even Josephine Deym had forced Beethoven to restrain his passionate entreaties, insisting on the spirituality of their relationship, and then turned to Count Wolkenstein.

No lover can be so systematically rejected without unconsciously facilitating the negative outcomes he expects. Nevertheless, the unbroken series of refusals—some of which he may even have considered betrayals—must have had disastrous effects on his pride. For Beethoven, therefore, the relationship with the ‘Immortal Beloved’ had a miraculous significance, because Antonie Brentano was the first (and as far as we know, the only) woman who accepted him fully as a man and granted him her love, apparently risking social condemnation in order to live with him. Thus, for Beethoven, the possibility was emerging of transforming into reality his conscious and declared desires for marriage and fatherhood.

… But the Brentanos left Vienna probably in November 1812, and Antonie never again returned to the city where she had been born. … The nature of this love affair would no longer allow Beethoven to return to his habitual pattern of imaginary love. After the ‘Immortal Beloved’ we know of no further love story for the rest of Beethoven’s life. … During his final years, women are entirely absent from the list of Beethoven’s friends.”

Solomon [b].