Beethoven’s

Immortal Beloved
Solving the Mystery

Edward Walden
Introduction by William Meredith

THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
2011

10-622_Walden.indb i 12/17/10 7:33 AM

 Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
http://www.scarecrowpress.com

Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2011 by Edward Walden

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Walden, Edward, 1933–
Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved : solving the mystery / Edward Walden ; introduction by
William Meredith.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8108-7773-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7774-0 (ebook)
1. Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827—Relations with women. 2. Arnim, Bettina von,
1785-1859. 3. Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827—Correspondence. I. Title.
ML410.B4W217 2011
780.92—dc22
[B] 2010039075
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

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 To the memories of Mrs. Hedwig Salzer of New York City,
Professor Hans Eichner of Rockwood, Ontario,
and Konstanze Baumer of Syracuse, New York,
all of whom provided inspiration and support in the author’s quest.

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10-622_Walden.indb iv 12/17/10 7:33 AM
 Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction William Meredith, Director, Ira F. Brilliant
Center for Beethoven Studies, San José State University ix
Background xxxv

1 Beethoven’s Letter to the Immortal Beloved 1

2 The Case for Bettina 6
3 Beethoven and Bettina after 1812 21
4 The Mysterious Missing Letters 27
5 The Teplitz Letter and the Ilius Manuscript 36
6 Bettina’s Concept of Love 42
7 The Beethoven–Bettina Romance 50
8 Beethoven the Poet 63
9 The Tarnishing of Bettina’s Reputation 67
10 Beethoven’s Goethe Songs 81
11 A Modern Analysis 93
12 The Antonie Theory 102
13 Synopsis and Conclusion 120

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 vi Contents

Appendix A: English Translation of Beethoven’s Letter to the

Immortal Beloved 129
Appendix B: English Translation of Beethoven’s Surviving 1811 Letter
to Bettina 133
Appendix C: English Translation of Beethoven’s Missing 1812 Teplitz
Letter to Bettina 135
Bibliography 137
Index 139
About the Author 145

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 Acknowledgments

I would like to express my thanks and gratitude to the many people who
gave me guidance and help during my quest. Some but not all of them are
noted and briefly described below, in alphabetical order.
Peter Anton (Tony) von Arnim (Brandenburg, Germany), Bettina’s
great-great grandson, provided invaluable assistance to me before his death in
the summer of 2009.
Dr. Wolfgang Bunzel (Frankfurt, Germany), a German scholar and spe-
cialist in areas of literature that include Bettina, is co-editor of the Internation-
ales Jahrbuch der Bettina von Arnim Gesellschaft, which published my paper on
the 1812 Teplitz Letter described in chapter 5. Although he does not share
my views on the truthfulness of Bettina, he has been consistently helpful and
dispassionate, providing me with sources that supported my views when he
encountered them. I have tried to be equally magnanimous whenever I came
across material that would support his views.
Bram Costin (Toronto, Ontario) is a former legal colleague who read
my manuscripts and provided moral support. In particular, he acted as my
guarantor to gain access to Bettina’s extremely valuable papers in the Morgan
Library in New York.
Dr. Hans Eichner (Rockwood, Ontario) was, before his death in 2009,
one of the world’s leading scholars of Romantic German literature, and a
poet and novelist as well. He provided me with translations of key German
passages, analyzed and supported the authenticity of Beethoven’s sonnet, and
assisted me in responding to a particularly acerbic academic attack on one of
my published papers in the Beethoven Journal. His wife, Kari, a former professor
of German, collaborated with him on the especially difficult German passages.
Freundeskreis Schloss Wiepersdorf gave their kind permission to use
the painting of Bettina reproduced in this book. This and other paintings and
vii

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 viii Acknowledgments

correspondence of Bettina and her family may be found in the Bettina und
Achim von Arnim Museum at Schloss Wiepersdorf, which is near the little
village of Wiepersdorf, Germany, approximately 50 miles south of Berlin.
Sylvi Goode, B.A. (Salzburg, Austria), supported my project from the
very beginning and helped me with the translation of difficult passages of
German sources.
Dr. Stanley Hamilton (Vancouver, B.C.), a professor of business and
commerce, took the time to read my manuscripts and give me advice on the
expectations of academia in the technical portions of the papers reprinted in
the Beethoven Journal.
Dr. Michael Ladenburger and his assistants at the Beethoven-Haus in
Bonn spent several days helping me in my research there.
Chisholm Lyons, Q.C. (Ajjic, Mexico), a former legal colleague who
reads all sorts of literature voraciously, spent many hours reading my manu-
scripts, recommending corrections, and pointing out gaps in sequential narra-
tive and argument.
Mag. Lukas Mayerhofer (Vienna, Austria) is a skilled academician whose
research helped me considerably, especially his sorting through old handwrit-
ten Imperial Austrian Protocols and discovering what I was seeking but in a
form I had never envisaged.
Dr. William Meredith and Patricia Stroh of the Ira F. Brilliant Center
for Beethoven Studies in San José, California, provided me with encourag-
ing words at the very beginning and continued to help me in my research
throughout the past two decades.
Gordon Sato (Toronto) is a former legal colleague and voracious reader,
extremely knowledgeable about literary formalities, who took the time to read
my drafts and provide me with critical comments.
Patrick Saunderson (Toronto) is a friend who acted as my sounding board
throughout, giving me moral and literary support and comments.
Bruce Thomas, Q.C. (Toronto), a former legal colleague, provided sage,
realistic advice in developing the structure of my theory.
Jennifer Walden, my eldest daughter, read through my final manuscript,
gave invaluable suggestions, and accompanied me to visit Mrs. Felix Salzer in
New York.
Brian Young (Toronto) graciously took the time to read my manuscripts
and cut out frequent repetitions, for which I am somewhat notorious.

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 Introduction
William Meredith, Director
Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies
San José State University

BETTINA BRENTANO, THE IMMORTAL BELOVED,

AND BEETHOVEN HISTORIOGRAPHY

To enter, or reenter, consideration of the identity of the woman Beethoven

called his “Unsterbliche Geliebte” (Immortal Beloved) is to come face to
face with one of the most disputed topics in Beethoven historiography. Just
as biographies often reveal as many—if not more—insights into their writers
as their subjects, so the most commonly accepted theories about the identity
of the Immortal Beloved reveal a great deal about their authors and the field
of Beethoven research in general. As well, a close examination of the topic
exposes the widely divergent and heated opinions on the importance of biog-
raphy in musicology as a broad topic, as well as the complex interplay between
biography and music. Though many Beethoven scholars—especially those
who were trained in and subsequently adopted essentially positivist/modernist
frameworks—regard the question of the identity of the Immortal Beloved as a
subgenre of lightweight scholarship that cannot result in new insights into the
“music itself,” other Beethoven scholars, including myself, regard the subject
to be extremely revealing—a sort of Rorschach music-biography test.
As editor of The Beethoven Newsletter/Journal published by the Ira F. Bril-
liant Center for Beethoven Studies at San José State University and the Ameri-
can Beethoven Society since 1986, I have been drawn—sometimes willingly,
at other times somewhat unwillingly by virtue of my position and the conse-
quences of peer review decisions about articles submitted to the journal—into
the passionate debates over the identity of the Immortal Beloved.1 Because
we established at its founding that the newsletter should be an open forum to
publish both new information about Beethoven as well as new interpretations

ix

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 x Introduction

of subjects, it contained a significant number of substantive articles either on or

related to the Immortal Beloved topic by Virginia Beahrs (1986, 1990), May-
nard Solomon (1987), Marie-Elisabeth Tellenbach (1987, 1993–94), Susan
Lund (1988, 1991), and Christopher Reynolds (1988) during the nine years
the publication was titled the Beethoven Newsletter.2 These included not only
challenges to Maynard Solomon’s popular theory that the Immortal Beloved
was Antonie Brentano from Virginia Beahrs and Marie-Elisabeth Tellenbach
(both of whom supported the candidacy of Josephine Brunswick), but also
endorsement of his theory from Susan Lund, who built on it with her own
hypothesis that Antonie’s son born on March 8, 1813, was Beethoven’s own
child. (Solomon had not included the information that Antonie had borne a
son in either the article in which he first put forth his theory or in the subse-
quent chapter on his theory in his biography.)3 The decision to publish articles
on Beethoven’s biography in the newsletter drew praise from esteemed Eng-
lish Beethoven scholar Alan Tyson, who wrote to me on October 3, 1987,
“The ordinary musicological journals usually contain very little information
about Beethoven’s personal life; it’s very good for us to have today a place for
comments on his personality, his letters, etc.”
For an editor trained in the traditional Beethoven topic of sketch studies,
however, I quickly learned that dealing with such articles was a plunge into hot
water. Solomon, for example, did not believe that the newsletter should have
published Lund’s theory because it was “sensationalistic,” as he told me at a
national meeting of the American Musicological Society in 1988. Some of the
articles were less controversial, such as the literal scholarly translation in English
that Virginia Beahrs made of the letter to the Immortal Beloved, which we
published in 1990 and which still remains the most accurate translation.
I also had to accept early on that my own opinion on the identity of the
Immortal Beloved, speaking in my role as director of the only Beethoven cen-
ter in the United States, was of interest to some people. As I revisited Maynard
Solomon’s theory and argument, became more familiar with the competing
theories, discovered the weak points in the arguments for every candidate,
and realized that uncontested confirmatory evidence does not exist, I officially
adopted the position that the matter remains contested but that there may well
be evidence that has yet to come to light that will help solve the problem, and
that it is best to keep an open mind on the issue. Indeed, instead of the matter
becoming clearer over the past two decades, it now appears to be fraught with
complexities that have obscured what I naively once imagined to be a purely
scholarly matter whose solution would eventually succumb to the normal
tools and methodologies of musicological inquiry. Before turning to Bettina
Brentano’s musicality and other facts that make her an attractive candidate, let
me elucidate some of these complexities.

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 Introduction xi

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BIOGRAPHY AND MUSIC

The complexity that plays a decisive role in the Immortal Beloved debate is
the matter of the relationship of a composer’s biography to his or her music.
The ways in which we answer the straightforward question “Did the circum-
stances of Beethoven’s life affect his music?” have profound implications. Ev-
ery Beethoven article, monograph, and biography answers the question either
by replying to it directly or by ignoring it. Let me give an example that may
seem at first unfair. In 1961, the eminent modernist Schenkerian theorist Allen
Forte published an elegant, well-written study on the sketches for Beethoven’s
Piano Sonata in E Major, Opus 109. The monograph was published by the
Music Teachers National Association.4 In the book’s 12 chapters, Forte sur-
veyed the “traditional bases of Beethoven’s compositional technique,” ana-
lyzed the three movements of the sonata, and discussed the sketches for each
movement. In a remarkably concise, Webern-like conclusion (all of seven
sentences!), Forte wrote:

The nature of Beethoven’s original musical idea for Op. 109 remains con-
cealed. However, the sketches and autograph revisions suggest that he had
in mind a plan for the entire work, a plan which during the composition
process was amplified and refined until all elements had been coordinated
to form a cogent tonality. . . . In Example 38 we see that the thirds of the
variation’s theme bass (Example 38c) are implicit in the tetrachords of the
second movement (Example 38b, mm. 4 and 8), while both tetrachords and
thirds are given by the bass line in the first movement (Example 38a). The
intervallic basis of this extended relationship also enables us to understand
more fully the significance of detail, for we see that the first four notes of
the composition constitute a microcosm, a concise linear statement of the
two intervals which are to control the whole work.5

As elegant and valuable as Forte’s analysis is, at the same time it is as clear
an example as possible of a methodology of interpreting music that divorces
the notes not only from the generally accepted sphere of “meaning” that was
articulated by Classical period writers on aesthetics but even further from the
realm of a composer’s biography. In such writings, the value of Opus 109 ap-
pears not to lie in its immensely rich depiction of human emotions but in its
“cogent tonality” and the microcosm of the first four notes that “control the
whole work.”6
Contrast this position with the words of one of the most important aes-
theticians of the second half of the 18th century, Johann Georg Sulzer: “We
have seen that music is essentially a succession of sounds that originates in a

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 xii Introduction

passionate emotion, and which has the power to depict, arouse, and strengthen
such emotions” (italics mine).7 Or, in the words of Heinrich Christoph Koch
from 1782–93, “the proper aim of music is to awaken feelings. Accepting this
a given, we now wish to consider more closely the principal aspect of this
art, that is, compositions and the works arising therefrom.”8 Such conclusions
from writers of Beethoven’s lifetime would seem to imply that music analysis
and criticism have as their most important task the unveiling of emotions in
music and how those emotions are depicted and symbolized: in other words,
the origins of the music.
To be fair, Forte did not set out to explicate the “passionate emotion”
that was the origin of Opus 109 or the manner in which the sonata communi-
cates meaning. And what he did set out to do, he accomplished with a finesse
and skill I deeply admire. But his 20th-century view of the “compositional
matrix” of the origins of the sonata demonstrates how distant his approach was
from that of Beethoven’s own time.
If we adopt the opposite approach and proceed from the Classical period
framework that this sonata was designed to “depict, arouse, and strengthen”
emotions, are there any connections between the sonata and the composer’s
biography in general and also specifically to the identity of the Immortal
Beloved in particular? In the latter case, the answer is clearly yes. We need
only consider the moving letter that Beethoven wrote to the dedicatee of the
sonata, Maximiliane Brentano (1802–61), one of the daughters of Antonie
Brentano, who remains the leading candidate for the Immortal Beloved in the
United States. On December 6, 1821, the composer explained the rationale
for his dedication to “Maxi,” directly linking it back to the years 1810–12
when he had been accepted into the intimate circle of the entire family:

A dedication!!!—now it is not one [of those dedications] that are misused

by a great many—It is the spirit that unites the noble and better people on
this earth, and which time can never destroy, this is the spirit of which I
speak to you now, and which makes me see you still in your childhood
years, likewise your beloved parents [geliebte Eltern], your excellent and
gifted mother, your father inspired by truthful, good, and noble qualities,
always thinking about the well-being of his children, and so I am in this
moment [again] in the Landstrasse—and see you before me, and when I
think on the excellent qualities of your parents, I have not the slightest
doubt that you will have been and are daily inspired to be a noble imitation
of them—never can the memory of such a noble family fade in me, may
you sometimes remember me fondly—my heartfelt wishes, may heaven
bless you your life and the loves of those around you forever.—Affection-
ately and always your friend Beethoven.9

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 Introduction xiii

The backstory of the letter begins with Antonie’s father, Johann Melchior von
Birkenstock, who owned a large house on the Landstrasse (destroyed today)
that contained his immense collection of art, books, and scientific objects.
After his death in late October 1809, his daughter Antonie, along with her
family, moved from Frankfurt to handle the sale of many of these objects, a
sale that took place in 1812. Though she may have met Beethoven already in
the 1790s (according to two sources), it was during the period 1810–12 that
Beethoven became close to the family. According to family lore, the children
brought the composer flowers and fruit, and the composer returned the favor
with chocolates. In addition, in June 1812 he dedicated the Piano Trio in E-
flat Major, WoO 38, to Maxi “to encourage her in her fortepiano playing.”
Beethoven is supposed to have visited the family often, attended chamber
music concerts at the Landstrasse house, and improvised for Antonie when she
was indisposed. In August 1812, in the aftermath of what appears to be some
catastrophe regarding the Immortal Beloved, perhaps in Teplitz, Beethoven
traveled to Karlsbad and Franzensbad with the family, immersing himself once
more in their family life.
Any interpretation of Beethoven’s dedication letter for Opus 109—one
of the most personal dedications of his entire career—must, it seems to me,
take into account the riddle of the Immortal Beloved. If, as Yayoi Aoki
and Maynard Solomon have argued,10 Antonie was the Immortal Beloved,
Beethoven’s poignant remembering of what the entire family meant to him
must somehow be reconciled with the fact that the composer and Antonie,
during those very same years of 1809–12, were not only in love with each
other but writing to each other about their love (not to mention the possibil-
ity that Antonie’s child, Karl Joseph, born on March 8, 1813, may have been
Beethoven’s son). If Antonie were the Immortal Beloved, it is difficult for
me not to interpret the dedication letter as disingenuous if not deliberately
deceitful. How could Antonie be one of the “noble and better people on this
earth” if, as Maynard Solomon suggests, she “may well have asserted that the
conditions of her existence were not an insuperable bar to their union, and
advised Beethoven that she was willing to leave her husband and remain in
Vienna, rather than return to Frankfurt”?11
On the other hand, it is difficult to know what to make of the fact of
Beethoven’s attempted and successful dedications of three of his most im-
portant piano works to Antonie in 1823. Antonie herself was the intended
dedicatee of the English editions of Beethoven’s last two sonatas, Opuses
110 and 111. In an undated letter probably from February 1823, Beethoven
instructed Ferdinand Ries, “The dedications of the two sonatas in A-flat and
in c minor are to Mrs. von [?] Brentano born von Birkenstock.”12 For some

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 xiv Introduction

reason, Beethoven’s directions were not followed exactly: the English first edi-
tion of Opus 110 bore no dedicatee, but the English first edition of Opus 111
was indeed dedicated to “Antonia Brentano.” (The continental first edition of
Opus 110 does not have a dedicatee; Opus 111 was dedicated to Archduke
Rudolph, who was seemingly Beethoven’s default dedicatee.) Antonie did re-
ceive the continental dedication of the Diabelli Variations, Opus 120, in June
1823. Was this flurry of dedications to Maximiliane and Antonie in 1821 and
1823 somehow related to the Immortal Beloved affair—or were they simply
in reaction to the fact that Beethoven was involved in questionable financial
dealings with Franz Brentano on the sale of the Missa solemnis, a complex mat-
ter far beyond the scope of this preface?
If one chooses to attribute these letters and dedications not to memories of
the Immortal Beloved or to ongoing financial misdealing, it would be equally
if not more reasonable, in my opinion, to interpret them as evidence of yet
another example of Beethoven’s deep attachment to a family that had meant
much to him over the years. This is especially true because the last three sona-
tas have a striking nostalgic quality. In this regard, we can look not only at his
first and most important “substitute” family, the Breunings from Bonn, who so
“adopted” the young composer that their home became his second home, but
also at families like the Malfattis, with whom Beethoven was extremely close
for several months in the spring of 1810. Beethoven wrote to Baron Ignaz von
Gleichenstein, who had introduced him to the family, “I am so happy when
I am with them. I feel that they may be capable of healing the wounds with
which wicked persons have torn my soul apart.”13 Beethoven’s close relationship
with the Giannastasio del Rio family in 1816 (through 1820)—as seen below,
a relationship that resulted in important clues about the Immortal Beloved and
Beethoven’s views on romantic relationships—is yet another instance of inti-
mate bonds with a substitute family. Fanny Giannastasio del Rio’s diary clearly
reveals that the composer turned to this family as a substitute as well.
If we, then, subscribe to the school of thought that allows for works to be
connected to their composers’ lives, the Sonata in E Major, Opus 109, had a
deeper origin than mere tetrachords and intervals: the Idee (idea) that inspired
the work, to use the word of Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny,14 may reside in
a deeply felt nostalgia about what the relationship with the Immortal Beloved
might have meant for the composer’s life, in an attempt to curry favor with
Franz Brentano indirectly through dedications to his daughter and wife, or to
Beethoven being consumed by a desire to depict his remembering of what it
felt like to be embraced and loved by an artistic noble family.
Of course, many if not most writers have refused to divorce music from
biography. On the opposite end of the spectrum from Forte’s works are

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 Introduction xv

studies where interpretations of the works depend to one degree or another

on knowledge of some aspect of biography—either of specific events in the
composer’s life or of his personality or character. Many are not controversial: I
don’t recall a single study of the Eroica Symphony that does not somehow take
into account Beethoven’s relationship to Napoleon on one of several levels.
Other studies connecting biography and music have generated substantial
opposition. Unfortunately, several of the most important and controversial
studies about the Immortal Beloved have never appeared in English transla-
tion, which has substantially restricted their impact. The first is a monograph
by Jean and Brigitte Massin, Recherche de Beethoven, that appeared in 1970. The
first part of the work is titled “‘L’unique bien-aimée’ de Beethoven: Joséphine
von Brunswick”; this part is divided into two sections. In the first, the Mas-
sins argue that Josephine was the Immortal Beloved, and in the second that
the presence of Josephine in Beethoven’s life left traces in his music. Over 65
pages, the Massins connect the opening rhythmic motive of the single move-
ment piano work, the Andante favori—which Beethoven gave to Josephine
with the words “here—your—your Andante”—to the reappearance of the
same motive in a set of later works. From the standpoint of music theory,
the connections make eminent sense. Among other works, they discussed the
beginning of the Sonata in F Major, Opus 54; sections of Fidelio; the opening
of the Appassionata; no. 6 of To the Distant Beloved, Opus 98; and the theme
of the slow movement of the Sonata in E Major, Opus 109. As the Massins
noted, the close similarity between Opus 109 and the song cycle had already
been pointed out by Romain Rolland decades earlier in 1937. The melodic
shape and rhythmic motives of the setting of the words “Und ein liebend
Herz erreichet was ein lieben Herz geweiht” (“And a loving heart attains that
which a loving heart consecrates”) in the sixth song of To the Distant Beloved
are strikingly similar to the melodic and rhythmic shape of the second phrase
of the variation theme of Opus 109.15 The sonata phrase appears to be an in-
strumental recomposition and rethinking of the song phrase:

An die ferne Geliebte, Opus 98, no. 6

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 xvi Introduction

Sonata, Opus 109

Seven years later, the Massins’ work was elaborated on and extended by the
Swiss/German musicologist Harry Goldschmidt in a lengthy monograph enti-
tled Um die Unsterbliche Geliebte: Eine Bestandsaufnahme (Concerning the Immor-
tal Beloved: A Stock-Taking).16 It too has never been translated into English.
The monograph is divided into five sections: a review of the topic, the Brentano
family, the Brunswick family, consideration of the candidacies of Antonie versus
Josephine, and “Music as Biographical Document.” This last section is most
important for my purposes here. In it, Goldschmidt argues that music can serve
as a biographical document and that many works, Opus 109 again among them,
contain musical encodings of the solution to the Immortal Beloved.
At first encounter, Goldschmidt’s theory would suggest that Antonie Bren-
tano was indeed the Immortal Beloved, since her daughter was the dedicatee of
the sonata. However, he followed the Massins by connecting the music back to
the Andante favori. Furthermore, Goldschmidt theorized that the opening is a mu-
sical encoding of Josephine’s name, which makes sense in the light of the rhyth-
mic settings of the name Leonore in the opera examples provided by the Massins:17

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 Introduction xvii

Goldschmidt’s and the Massins’ theories that the Immortal Beloved was
Josephine Brunswick and that the music contained coded references to her
found much broader circulation in German-speaking countries in a book
from 1983 by Marie-Elisabeth Tellenbach titled—I give it here in English
even though it too has unfortunately never appeared in English translation—
Beethoven and His “Immortal Beloved” Josephine Brunswick: Their Fate and Its In-
fluence on Beethoven’s Work.18 Trained in musicology, history, German history,
and Latin, Tellenbach adopted many of the same works discussed by the Mas-
sins, including Opus 109, as her evidence while adding previously unknown
documents from the Deym family archive. (Some of these are briefly discussed
in the English-language synopsis article of Tellenbach’s main points in 1987
and also in an essay by Virginia Beahrs that revisited the entire question; each
appeared in the Beethoven Newsletter.)
Over time, Goldschmidt’s preoccupation with the theory that many
pieces of Beethoven’s music contained coded references to Josephine seemed
to become an obsession that threatened to derail his reputation as a—and I
select this adjective carefully—sane Beethoven scholar. In the fall of 1985, at
a conference organized by Beethoven scholar William Kinderman in Victoria,
Goldschmidt gave an extended and bizarre presentation on the transformation
of the Andante favori motive and its reappearance in later works. To those of
us who were not then familiar with the Massins’ work and Goldschmidt’s own
monograph, his obsession seemed not only excessive but also a clear demon-
stration of the perils of the approach.
It should not have surprised us, then, when the clearly exasperated May-
nard Solomon vented his irritation in an essay from 1987. (It was not entirely
clear if the source of the irritation was the continuing opposition to his own
theory about the identity of the Immortal Beloved in English-language publi-
cations or to the connecting of music and autobiography.) In an essay that first
appeared in the Beethoven Newsletter in 1987, he opined against Tellenbach,
Goldschmidt, Beahrs, and the Massins. With learned sarcasm, Solomon closed
his entire essay with these words:

By elaborating the assumption that all music is concealed autobiography,

Josephine Deym advocacy has become close kin to the more extreme
speculations on the identity of the “onlie begetter” of Shakespeare’s son-
nets; and by resorting to the unriddling of secret codes and hidden texts
in Beethoven’s instrumental music, such advocates bid fair to become the
new Baconians and Oxfordians. The pursuit of Josephine Deym threatens
to convert the works of Beethoven into a new “Great Cryptogram,” whose
mysteries may be plumbed only by the initiate.19

Other Beethoven scholars had different reactions to Tellenbach’s argu-

ments as they appeared in 1987 in the English-language condensed synopsis

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 xviii Introduction

of her book. Alan Tyson wrote Beethoven Center curator Patricia Stroh on
January 7, 1988, to thank her for sending three copies of the issue containing
the essay:

It is very useful for me to have two extra copies of the Newsletter be-
cause of the especial value of Marie-Elisabeth Tellenbach’s account of
Beethoven and the Countess Josephine Brunswick—I shall want to show
this very important article to lots of people (and I wouldn’t like to risk
the loss of my only copy!). Of course her point of view is in great op-
position to Maynard Solomon’s identification of the Immortal Beloved
(which I accepted in the New Grove Beethoven); but I think it should
at least be available to English-language folks who will not read her large
German-language book on the subject. So I expect to see references to
this Newsletter in a lot of footnotes!

Tellenbach herself generously wrote to me on February 6, 1988, “I perfectly

understand Maynard Solomon’s irony and can’t blame him for this.”
Stepping back from the fray and revisiting these competing theories, I
was struck by the overlapping musical conclusions in two studies. The first I
have already mentioned. In his Schenkerian analysis of Opus 109, Allen Forte
made the following observations:

1. The possibility for interaction of [the third and fifth of the triad] and
for their connection by means of the passing note A (or A#) is implicit.
Indeed, it will become increasingly clear that to a considerable extent the
melodic development of the [first] movement resides in the composing-out
of relationships which are inherent in the upper third of the triad where A
plays a primal role.20

2. [Codetta of the second movement:] Beginning on C in the upper voice

of the third measure from the end we have a “diminutional” tetrachord
which supports the more fundamental motion, B-A-G. . . . Clearly one
of the main melodic considerations here is the descent from fifth to third.
This may be regarded as a means of preparing the interval—the upper third
of the tried—which is to be composed out in the subsequent movement.21

To pare down Forte’s argument, in the sonata the interval of the third from
B-G# (or B-G) and the notes A or A# and C (and C#) are “composed out”
in each movement. What strikes me as particularly important about Forte’s
brilliant analysis is that, once transposed from E Major to E-flat Major, these
are exactly the same notes and intervals that shape the phrase singled out by
the Massins in the sixth song of To the Distant Beloved.
The second conclusion was put forward in 1988 by Christopher Rey-
nolds in a sophisticated analysis of To the Distant Beloved. In it, he demonstrated

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 Introduction xix

that “Beethoven remarkably, yet surreptitiously, depends on motivic trans-

formation to derive songs 2 through 6 from individual phrases of song 1.”22
Reynolds labeled the motive of the phrase quoted by the Massins “Motive 3”;
he focused on it when he discussed the coda, remarking, “No other motive
compares.” Near the end of his article, Reynolds suggested that “Beethoven
himself may have attached special significance to Motive 3, judging from its
appearance on at least three other occasions. He first used a strikingly similar
motive in his Andante favori of 1805. . . . Subsequently Beethoven used it in
the variation movement of the Pianoforte Sonata in E Major, Opus 109, in
the second phrase of the theme. And lastly it appeared again in 1825 when
George Smart heard Beethoven improvise ‘for twenty minutes in a most ex-
traordinary manner’ on the motive.”23 Reynolds concluded his article with
a middle-ground position. After pointing out that scholars have “interpreted
the recurrences of its opening motive as evidence of Beethoven’s unabated
love for the Countess” [Josephine], he ended: “While the possibility exists
that Beethoven—like Schumann, Brahms, and others afterwards—associated
particular motives with specific people and ideas, one cannot make such a
claim on the basis of the evidence now available. In any case, it is not necessary
to associate specific motives in An die ferne Geliebte with specific individuals
to show that the meaning of the text—and thus also of the music—parallel
Beethoven’s life circumstances.”24
The debate on whether music can—even should—be connected in a
general or specific way to a composer’s biography is one that will assuredly
continue, even though postmodern theories that are still influential in musi-
cology support analyses and arguments that contextualize music in the richest
ways possible.

BEETHOVEN SCHOLARSHIP AND THE

INFORMATIONAL CASCADE EFFECT

When I was a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel

Hill, I was fortunate to study Beethoven’s sketches in a graduate seminar with
visiting professor Douglas Johnson, then on the faculty of the University of
Virginia, Charlottesville. Johnson had written his dissertation on Beethoven’s
early sketches, was completing what has become known as the “Sketch Bible”
with Alan Tyson and Robert Winter,25 and was, as he mentioned in class one
afternoon, a self-confessed member of the “Beethoven mafia,” as he labeled
it. Anyone familiar with Johnson’s work knows both that he thinks critically
about every issue he visits and that he is not afraid to stir up matters, as he did
with an opinion essay published in 1978 that appears to have altered the course

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 xx Introduction

of sketch studies.26 His admittedly casual remark about a “Beethoven mafia”

and its influences has made me question over the years whether the world
of American Beethoven scholarship was indeed controlled by a relatively self-
contained circle of scholars who were the go-to choices for vetting Beethoven
articles and books for scholarly journals, arranged Beethoven conferences
for each other at which members of the circle gave papers without issuing
the standard scholarly “call for papers,” and supported each other’s work
in very significant ways such as writing supportive letters for grants and pro-
motions.
In two ways, Johnson’s comment made sense. As the entire field of
musicology became more and more responsive to postmodern theories about
music, culture, and the arts in the 1980s and 1990s, the world of Beethoven
scholarship appeared to remain, for the most part, stubbornly impervious to
change. Even new subfields like sketch scholarship continued to be valued not
for what the sketches could tell us about the meaning of the works (character-
ized in recent musicology as the field of “hermeneutics,” which has proven
to be especially fruitful in the writings of Lawrence Kramer),27 but how they
detailed the purely musical genesis of the themes and the formal construction
of the pieces. Feminist work on Beethoven met with either outright ridicule
or cool disinterest.
One possible example of the control of the field in journals intended
primarily for musicologists is the absence of a single article about the Immortal
Beloved in the 13 volumes of the prestigious journal Beethoven Forum that ap-
peared from 1992 to 2006. I say possible because, while I was a member of the
advisory board for the journal, I was never asked to vet an article, although I
did on more than one occasion recommend that authors send their work to
the editorial board. At one of the last annual meetings of the advisory board of
the journal at the national conference of the American Musicological Society,
one of the editors asked, after mentioning an article that had been submitted
on the topic, if there was not an informal agreement in place to “embargo”
any Immortal Beloved article. Perhaps the total absence of any articles on the
subject simply reflects the fact that none substantive enough for publication
were submitted.
It may also be true that something parallel to the “informational cascade
effect” of behavioral economics has played a role in the belief that Maynard
Solomon had solved the Immortal Beloved question once and for all, even
though the cascade theory was developed based on actions and behavior more
than information itself.28 Briefly, an informational cascade “occurs when it is
optimal for an individual, having observed the actions of those ahead of him,
to follow the behavior of the preceding individual without regard to his own
information. . . . Four primary mechanisms have been suggested for uniform

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 Introduction xxi

social behavior: (1) sanctions of deviants, (2) positive payoff externalities, (3)
conformity preference, and (4) communication. . . . These effects tend to
bring about a rigid conformity that cannot be broken with small shocks. In-
deed, the longer the bandwagon continues, the more robust it becomes.29 . . .
The fundamental reason the outcome with observable actions is so different
from the observable-signals benchmark is that once a cascade starts, public
information stops accumulating.”30 Cascades can, however, be broken: “in
reality we do not expect a cascade to last forever. Several possible kinds of
shocks could dislodge a cascade; for example, the arrival of better informed
individuals, the release of new public information, and shifts in the underlying
value of adoption versus rejection.”31
The endorsement of Solomon’s solution in the Beethoven entry by Jo-
seph Kerman and Alan Tyson in the 20th edition of The New Grove Diction-
ary of Music and Musicians in 1980 did much to solidify support: “Of recent
conjectures as to her identity the most plausible (by Maynard Solomon) is
that she was Antonie Brentano. . . . Brentano fulfils all the chronological and
topographical requirements for being the addressee of the famous letter.” In
the next sentence, however, Tyson and Kerman note: “Whether the psycho-
logical requirements are fulfilled depends on one’s reading of her personality
and of the letter’s intended meaning.”32 Kerman and Tyson’s endorsement
of Solomon’s theory as the “most plausible” became a point of fact in the
revision of their article for Grove Music Online credited to Beethoven scholar
Scott Burnham. Now the sentence reads: “Maynard Solomon showed in the
1970s that she [the Immortal Beloved] was Antonie Brentano, an aristocratic
Viennese lady ten years younger than Beethoven who at 18 had married a
Frankfurt businessman, Franz Brentano, Bettina Brentano’s half-brother. (As
there are no explicit letters from Antonie Brentano to Beethoven, some do
not accept that the case is closed; but no plausible alternative has been pre-
sented.)” With the transformation of Solomon’s “conjecture” (Kerman and
Solomon’s term) into statement of fact and the denial of the existence of at
least one if not two plausible alternatives, Solomon’s theory might seem con-
firmed.33 Recently, a major American Beethoven scholar commented to me
privately that those who refuse to accept the Antonie theory are “impervious”
to the facts of the case.
Although I am old-fashioned enough to believe in “facts”—that is, dis-
crete pieces of information that scholars and researchers use to construct their
theories—my ears pricked up at the assertion that Solomon’s case was indeed
built of facts, even though the argument is masterfully constructed. The Eng-
lish Beethoven scholar Barry Cooper made two valuable observations about
the case of the Immortal Beloved as it relates to facts at the end of an extended
1996 book review of Gail Altman’s Beethoven: A Man of His Word / Undisclosed

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 xxii Introduction

Evidence for His Immortal Beloved.34 First, Cooper wrote: “Frequently it hap-
pens that a hypothesis by one scholar becomes accepted as fact without proper
scrutiny. . . . She demonstrates, as indeed Tellenbach has done, that much of
the basis for the claims of Antonie’s supporters consists of distortions, supposi-
tions, opinions, and even plain inaccuracies.”35 He then goes on in blistering
detail to elucidate Altman’s many substantial errors and concludes, “The book
is most useful, then, for reminding us how little we know for certain about
Beethoven’s personal life.” Second, he states, “Although Antonie Brentano
may seem completely unsuitable from a psychological angle (and not everyone
is agreed about this), it begins to appear again that she must be the Immortal
Beloved. The only other possibility is that Beethoven kept his relationship
so guardedly that his connections to the woman in question are otherwise
virtually undocumented. If that is the case, her name should be found on the
Karlsbad arrival lists. Before there is any more speculation, a re-examination of
these seems to be the next step.”36 Cooper’s point, it seemed to me then, was
well taken: the only “fact” of the case is that Beethoven believed the woman
was in Karlsbad when he wrote the letter. As you will read in this monograph,
however, another possibility must be considered: Beethoven only needed to
have thought that the woman was in Karlsbad. If it can be demonstrated that
any of the candidates intended to go to Karlsbad and may have communicated
that information to Beethoven, she should be considered with an open mind.
Cascade theorists argue that the introduction of “new public informa-
tion” has the potential to dislodge a cascade. In my opinion, Walden’s research
on Bettina Brentano has resulted in the injection of just such new information
and arguments into the Immortal Beloved controversy. Whether or not his
arguments succeed in displacing Antonie—and in the absence of any indisput-
able evidence in any candidate’s favor—they surely warrant wider distribution
and critical attention. I’ll close with some of my own reactions to his theory.

BETTINA BRENTANO, THE MUSICIAN,

AS THE IMMORTAL BELOVED

Having mulled over arguments in favor of Antonie Brentano, Josephine

Brunsvik, Almeria Esterhazy, and Bettina Brentano over the past 25 years, I
find three parts of the Bettina theory to be persuasive enough that I believe
Walden’s proposal merits unbiased consideration.
First, to the best of my knowledge there are only two extant Beethoven
letters in which he unequivocally uses the informal “du” with a woman. The
first three usages occur at the end of his letter of January 16, 1811, to Bettina

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 Introduction xxiii

Brentano: “nun lebwohl liebe liebe B. ich küsse dich so mit Schmerzen auf
deine Stirne, und drücke damit, wie mit einem Siegel, alle meine Gedanken
für dich auf ”37 (“now best wishes dear dear B. I kiss you thus with pain on
your brow, and impress thereby, as with a seal, all of my thoughts for you”;
Beethoven crossed out “so with pain”). The second letter containing “du” is
the letter to the unidentified woman now known as the Immortal Beloved
written on July 6 and 7, 1812, 18 months after the first letter. Unlike the
first letter, Beethoven uses the informal forms of you throughout the letter,
even in the famous closing “ewig dein[,] ewig mein[,], ewig unß[.]” (It is
difficult to translate the close into English with any assurance of accuracy as
to Beethoven’s meaning.38) Since the consistent use of “du” in the second
letter occurs in what is clearly a love letter—even though one primarily of
ambivalence, even rejection, as several writers have noted—such use makes
logical sense. In the letter to Bettina, however, Beethoven began the letter,
as he should have when writing to a married woman, using formal address
(sie, ihren, ihnen, seinen) and continued with the formal you until he began the
emotional close quoted above.
Is it really conceivable that Beethoven used the familiar you with the
recently married Bettina in 1811, then used it again in 1812 with her mar-
ried sister-in-law Antonie, and that these are the only two women whom
Beethoven ever addressed with the familiar you? Besides the repeated use of
“du” at the first letter’s close, Beethoven also revealed in the 1811 letter, in my
opinion, that he was at the least infatuated with Bettina and had been since his
summer of 1810 in Baden: “I carried your first letter about with me the whole
summer, and it often made me feel blissful39 . . . yet in my thoughts I write
you however 1,000 times thousand letters in my thoughts” (that is, a million
letters!). Is it a coincidence that Beethoven begins the Immortal Beloved let-
ter stating that he is writing “only a few words today, and to be sure in pencil
(with yours),” meaning that he has been carrying around, again in the sum-
mer away from Vienna, a physical object that represented on some level the
woman with whom he was in love?40 Was it possible for Beethoven to be in
love with Bettina and with her sister-in-law Antonie during the same months
preceding the Immortal Beloved letter?
My second argument focuses on a single unusual word Beethoven used
to describe the possibility of a life with the Immortal Beloved: “Chimäre.”
In the middle of September 1816, again spending the summer in Baden,
Beethoven and the father of Fanny Giannastasio del Rio had a conversation
that was later recorded by Fanny. According to Fanny, “er liebe unglücklich!
Vor fünf Jahren hab er eine Dame kennen gelernt, mit welcher sich näher zu
verbinden er für das höchste Glück seines Lebens gehalten hätte. Es sei nich
daran zu denken, fast Unmöglichkeit, eine Chimäre” (“he loves unhappily!

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 xxiv Introduction

Five years ago he made the acquaintance of a lady, whom to bind himself
nearer to would have been the greatest happiness life could have afforded
him. It was not to be thought of, almost an impossibility, a chimera”). Liter-
ally, a chimera was, according to Homer, “a thing of immortal make, not
human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle, and snorting
out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire.” Such a combination fire-
breathing creature was of course an impossibility; as is clear from Beethoven’s
combination of the terms impossibility and chimera in his conversation with
Giannastasio, he was remembering the possibility of binding himself to the
Immortal Beloved as an almost impossible fantasy, a chimera. But why did
Beethoven chose such a strange descriptor for this impossibility, one that
would evoke—particularly for a learned teacher like Giannastasio—the weird
Greek combination of creatures? Is it possible that the Immortal Beloved her-
self was chimera-like, that is, a combination of characters that do not belong
together, a character with the potential to breathe fire?41
Viewed from the perspective of the 19th century (let alone the 21st), it
is difficult for me not to view Bettina as a chimera: a beautiful woman who
was famous for her ability to improvise songs, a woman composer, a feminist
and intellectual, a writer, seducer of Goethe, a social reformer intensely inter-
ested in the political situation of the day and later in life an advocate for the
oppressed Jewish community, a wife and mother, an early Romantic idealist,
and a fiery figure on every level. By the end of her life, she had occupied at
least three positions normally reserved for men: composer, published writer,
and social reformer.
As feminist scholars have recently argued, Bettina rejected many societal
models: she revolted “against any a priori limitations on particular biological
entities” and sought to “dismantle the very categories on which notions of
gender rest.” According to Elke Frederiksen and Katherine Goodman,

Unlike those of her contemporaries such as Goethe, Schiller, and Friedrich

and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Brentano von Arnim’s views on gender
do not rely on Romantic understandings of the complemental nature of
gender or on the realization or re-evaluation of virtues thought to be
“feminine.” Rather, she dismantles dichotomistic definitions of reality.
. . . Brentano von Arnim’s understanding of her own more complex
identity obliges her to engage in activities traditionally thought to be the
prerogative of men. That they are thought to be masculine, however, is
shown to be the perspective of her culture and not her own.42

It is difficult not to add her dismantling of gender categories to the list of

ways in which Bettina was chimera-like. In fact, in combination with her
many activities, it is difficult to imagine how a life with her would have given

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 Introduction xxv

Beethoven the “stability and regularity” he said that he sought in the Im-
mortal Beloved letter. I must note that many of Bettina’s accomplishments
mentioned above postdate her time with Beethoven. However, by the time she
met him in the spring of 1810, Bettina had been fascinated and was immersed
in three subjects that also preoccupied Beethoven: freedom and the ideals of
the French Revolution (introduced to her by her grandmother), Goethe’s
writings,43 and music.
It is this last item in my list of Bettina’s accomplishments that leads to my
third and final argument in favor of Walden’s theory that she may be the Im-
mortal Beloved. In my opinion, it is also the strongest. As mentioned above,
some writers and scholars have opined that Antonie Brentano does not meet
the “psychological requirements” for being the Immortal Beloved. Except
for her “lack of regularity,” Bettina seems to me to have been exactly the
kind of woman to whom Beethoven would have been most attracted—most
particularly because of her genius at improvisation. Her abilities in this regard
and a serious assessment of her musical creativity are discussed in Ann Wil-
lison’s excellent essay on Bettina’s musical life, “Bettina Brentano von Arnim:
The Unknown Musician.”44 The following survey of her musical biography is
drawn entirely from Willison’s work.
While attending the Ursuline school in Fritzlar in 1794–97, Bettina re-
ceived her first music instruction. When she moved to Frankfurt, she studied
piano and music theory with Philip Carl Hoffmann. At the age of 19, she de-
scribed her musical activities to her brother-in-law: “I am taking [forte]piano
lessons from Mr. Hoffmann again, despite the temptations that I am exposed
to; I am also diligently learning to sing, and I am in the theater whenever
operas are performed; music is now my only resource and refreshment.”45 In
1809, she traveled to Munich to study voice and composition with the opera
composer Peter von Winter, whom Willison describes as her most important
teacher. In February 1809, she wrote to Achim von Arnim and the Savignys
that she had two 90-minute voice lessons a day in addition to piano and Ital-
ian lessons with other teachers. Upon her return to Landshut, she studied
Generalbaß with Eixdorfer. In 1810, Bettina enlisted the assistance of a law
student named Alois Bihler to help her transcribe her songs. Bihler helped her
with harmony and the notation of rhythm and she returned the favor: “He
gives rhythm to my music, I expand on his melodies, he writes a purer bass
setting for me, I invent the instrumental countermelodies for him.”46 Her final
formal voice lessons with Vincenzo Righini ended shortly after her marriage
to Achim in 1811.
Beethoven must have been impressed with what Willison calls her “stron-
gest musical talent, one for which she consistently received approbation”:
improvising music to poetry. Bihler enthused: “Irresistibly . . . Bettina ruled

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in the realm of song. Here she fully unfolded her wonderful individuality.
. . . She seldom chose written songs—singing she created poetry and creating
poetry she sang with a glorious voice in a kind of improvisation. For example,
she knew how to pour a wealth of soulful emotion into the simple, slow scale
as well as into the spontaneous improvisations welling up from within her, so
that I listened enraptured by her creative genius.”47 Bihler was not alone in
his praise; in 1806 the famous writer Ludwig Tieck was brought to tears by
her improvisation. Clemens Brentano described the occasion: “she sang before
him so wonderfully and beautifully, the wild cry of her soul, no Aria brillante
like she used to sing. . . . As for her singing, her extemporaneous singing—I
saw him shedding tears, and he assured me that he, the church musician, had
never heard anything like it and he now knew how music originated.”48
Though there are no records of Beethoven having heard Bettina impro-
vise, if he did hear her on a similar occasion, it must have been a remarkable
moment in the history of music: the most gifted instrumental improviser of his
time, who was also famous for bringing music lovers to tears with his playing,
listening to the spontaneous creation of music and words.
It may be that Bettina’s genius at improvisation and deeply Romantic
approach to the creative process held back her progress as a composer: in her
own self-critiques, her technical musical skills remained far below her lofty
inspirations. In 1810—the year she met Beethoven—she lamented: “I firmly
believe that music would become my daily occupation, but more difficulties
appear each day; for example, I have a true inclination to the most profound
thoughts, but my technical ability does not match up to my imagination,
which remains unfulfilled in consequence.”49 In later years, she expressed
similar frustrations in her epistolary novels: “I am also exasperated with thor-
oughbass. I would like to blast this fraternity of tonalities into the air,”50 and
“I can invent a melody more easily than analyze it in terms of its origins.
With music, everything must be grasped more deeply by introspection than
by following the law; this law is so narrow that the musical spirit overflows it
at every instant.”51
The same disdain for pedantry reappears in her description of the seven
songs published in 1842 in what is called the Spontini Songbook:

I have kept my word to Spontini, by having seven songs engraved, together

with their completely obstinate accompaniments. . . . As for the musical
turnings, the craggy, uneven path of this product, I could not decide, even
for the sakes of the foolish bigwigs who make laws governing an art which is
much too powerful for their pedantic ears, to give up a single false fifth. . . .
How many thousand times I repeated with rapture these tones that pleased
only me, in whose place I never found any others, but only these, although
they played for me such beautiful harmonic progression! Therefore ev-

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 Introduction xxvii

erything had to remain as the true, original, stuttering conversation of my

soul newly in love with music; and I could not bear that my bass—which
dances with quick leaps and bounds around the melody like a deer, often
chimes in and echoes more clearly in its feelings what the melody is unable
to express—that they master its willful turning and spinning.52

Despite Bettina’s statement that the songs will not make pedantic bigwigs
happy, the set as a whole is remarkable. In fact, I think it is impossible to un-
derstand Bettina fully unless the music of this set is known and appreciated.53
One of the most beautiful songs in the collection is “Aus dem Wintergarten von
Arnim,” no. 3 (see the music example).54
Achim von Arnim’s Der Wintergarten, published in 1809 before he mar-
ried Bettina, is a collection of short stories and novellas based on 17th-century
German works of varying sorts. The stories are recounted by a group of people
in a country house to pass the time during a long winter, a winter that is an
explicit political metaphor for the French occupation of Germany.55 The first
of the four stanzas reads:

The sluggish day is pursued by the moon,

it breathes peace [Ruh] onto all living things,
the sea is not accustomed to such peace,
to unrest [Unruh] I am in this manner elected;
my only happiness, the dream,
I must foremost hate:
in the highest bliss it will
abandon me once more.56

In the second stanza, a wind from the east throws asunder the fruits and
weaker blossoms of a fruit tree. In the last two stanzas, Achim writes about
a secret love whose identity cannot be revealed because of “silent vows and
virtue”: “my completely hidden light of love must surely not reveal its flame.”
Bettina’s 15-measure strophic setting depicts, brilliantly and with so-
phistication, both the joyful subjects of the text (peace/fortune/dream,
fruitfulness, love, Concordia) and their loss (hate, fruits and blossoms thrown
asunder, the pain of secret love). Though set in the key of E-flat Major—a
key associated by some writers with “love, devotion, of intimate conversation
with God”57—Bettina blights the happiness traditional for this major key with
a harmonic progression to F Minor—a key associated with sorrow, grief, and
despair—on the word “Unruh” (unrest, agitation) in m. 7. In m. 9 she ironi-
cally tonicizes F Minor with its secondary dominant on the words “my highest
happiness.” When the music wants to turn to B-flat Major, a key associated
with love, it stalls at F Minor.58

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Another important musical symbol in the setting is seen in Bettina’s use

of rhythmic suspensions. Just as the progression toward happiness, fruitfulness,
and the dream of revelation is delayed by the long winter, so the progress of
the melody is constantly impeded with suspensions across the beats and mea-
sures. The voice part contains suspensions in 13 of its 14 measures, and the

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 Introduction xxix

piano part is laden throughout with single and double suspensions. Another
“suspension” is the fact that the song begins not with its tonic chord but on
the dominant—and resolves to the tonic midway through the first measure on
the rhythmically weaker half of the measure.
Three more symbols stand out. The first involves the striking use of fall-
ing sixths in mm. 1 and 12. The melody begins on the fifth scale step, leaps up
a fifth to the second scale step, and then descends a major sixth to the fourth
scale step (the pitch A-flat, which she almost always harmonized as the third
of the F-Minor triad). Falling major sixths are frequently used as symbols of
incoming happiness, and indeed, in both measures, the sixth resolves with a
suspension to the third degree of the scale, the note that most importantly
signals the “major-ness” (happiness) of major keys. Thus, Bettina begins the
song with a depiction of the happiness that eludes the singer throughout the
poem, a happiness most clearly enunciated at its end: “O sweet last moment,
there I will be able to speak, there will the stream of love break through my
eyes and lips.”
The desired happiness is also depicted masterfully in Bettina’s construc-
tion of the melody. The melody rises again and again by step toward the goal
of B-flat (the dominant note of the key) but never attains it. Such an ascent
appears most clearly in mm. 3–4, but the stubborn withholding of the longed-
for note returns three more times in this tiny jewel of a song.
The last symbol I will mention occurs in the last two measures. Just as
the poet remains deprived of his dream, so the singer does not find musical
completion: she stops singing on the weakest beat of the penultimate mea-
sure on a highly expressive diminished seventh chord on the note A-natural,
and the piano completes the final cadence of the song in the only measure in
which it plays alone. The singer’s last note—on a weak beat and harmonized
with a diminished chord—feels as unfinished as the poem in performance.
Willison suggests, though without supplying any evidence, that someone
may have assisted Bettina with the accompaniments of the Spontini songs.59
If she did indeed have assistance polishing the piano parts, such assistance
would not contradict the fact that Bettina herself created the musical symbols
discussed here. The use of key symbolism, melodic and harmonic suspensions,
falling sixths, and the failure of the melody to reach the dominant note in its
ascent are all aspects of the music that originated in the melody itself, and the
creation of melody was—according to her contemporaries and this music—
one of her greatest gifts and skills.
The fact that Bettina was a supremely gifted singer and very talented
composer does not, of course, make her the Immortal Beloved. But the
several completed songs that survive and her skill at improvisation document
that she was indeed the kind of woman Beethoven found most compelling.
It is surely no coincidence that Josephine Brunsvik, the only woman we

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 xxx Introduction

know for a fact Beethoven loved, was a very gifted pianist and had a pro-
found understanding of music.
Despite the opinions of some in the musicological world, uncover-
ing the true identity of the Immortal Beloved remains an important goal
for Beethoven biographical work. Walden’s carefully drawn arguments and
theories warrant our serious consideration. If they do not topple Antonie as
a favored candidate in English-speaking countries, at the very least they will
enrich our understanding of a brilliant and unique woman who meant a great
deal to Beethoven in 1810 and 1811.60

NOTES

1. The most difficult series of events concerned the publication of an extended

review article by Marie-Elisabeth Tellenbach titled “Psychoanalysis and the Historio-
critical Method: On Maynard Solomon’s Image of Beethoven,” which was published
in volumes 8 and 9 of The Beethoven Newsletter in 1993–94. Tellenbach had sent a
manuscript of her critique of Solomon’s work to Dr. Thomas Wendel, president of
the executive board of the American Beethoven Society, who was a professor of his-
tory at San José State University. Wendel wrote her back that her critique “had to
be” published, if I remember his conversation with me accurately; I foresaw—cor-
rectly—that there would be a significant backlash to its publication given the accep-
tance of Solomon’s Immortal Beloved theory and the popularity of his work among
Beethoven scholars and the public. The first half of the article, which does not concern
the Immortal Beloved but Solomon’s psychoanalytic interpretations of Beethoven’s
biography (the Family Romance, Beethoven’s dreams, etc.), appeared in a double issue
(Winter 1993–Spring 1994; vol. 8, no. 3, and vol. 9, no. 1). As with all such cases,
I invited Solomon to write a response to Tellenbach’s critique of the application of
psychoanalysis to historical figures as opposed to traditional historiocritical approaches
to the writing of biography. He declined the invitation to respond in the newsletter
and subsequently resigned from the Center’s advisory board, for this as well as other
reasons. The resignation of one of the most popular Beethoven scholars in the United
States from the Center’s advisory board was hardly a fortuitous event in the history
of the fledgling Center. The second half of Tellenbach’s article critiques his Immortal
Beloved theory.
2. For a list of the titles and citations, see the website of The Ira F. Brilliant Center
for Beethoven Studies, www.sjsu.edu/beethoven.
3. Maynard Solomon, “Antonie Brentano and Beethoven,” Music & Letters 58, no.
2 (1977): 153–89; and the chapter on the Immortal Beloved in his Beethoven (New
York: Schirmer, 1977; rev. 1998).
4. Allen Forte, Compositional Matrix, vol. 1 of Monographs in Theory and Composition
(New York: Music Teachers National Association, 1961).
5. Forte, 85.

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 Introduction xxxi

6. In a famous complaint about Forte’s book that appears in an essay criticizing

analysis that does not include aesthetic criteria, Beethoven scholar Joseph Kerman ar-
gued that “the distinguished analyst Forte wrote an entire small book . . . from which
all affective or valuational terms (such as ‘nice’ or ‘good’) are meticulously excluded.”
See Kerman, “How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out,” Write All These
Down (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 14.
7. Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment: Selected
Writings of Johann Georg Sulzer and Heinrich Christoph Koch, ed. Nancy Kovaleff Baker
and Thomas Christensen, no. 7 of Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis, ed.
Ian Bent (Cambridge: University Press, 1995), 83.
8. Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition, 144.
9. The translation, which is my own, is based on the original German given in
Ludwig van Beethoven: Briefwechsel Gesamtausgabe, ed. Sieghard Brandenburg, 7 vols.
(Munich: Henle, 1996), 4:462, letter no. 1449. In Emily Anderson’s edition, the let-
ter is no. 1062: The Letters of Beethoven, 3 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1961), 3:932–3.
10. Yayoi Aoki’s first article predates Solomon’s by 18 years: “Ai no dsensetsu—
Betoven to ‘fumetsu no koibito’” (“Love-legends—Beethoven and the ‘Immortal Be-
loved’”), Philharmony 31, no. 7 (1959): 8–21. (Philharmony is the magazine of the NHK
Symphony Orchestra.) Her next study appeared in 1968: Ai no densetsu—geijutsuka
to joseitachi (Love-legends—Artists and Women) (Tokyo: San’ichishobo, 1968). The
most recent is Beethoven: Die Entschlüsselung des Rätsels um die “unsterbliche Geliebte,”
trans. from the Japanese Bētōven fumetsu no koibito no nazo o toku by Annette Boronnia
(Munich: ludicium, 2008). On the cover of this monograph, Aoki is credited with
being “the first person to propose internationally that Antonie von Brentano was the
Immortal Beloved.” While this is true, the appearance of her theory in Japanese in a
magazine of a symphony ensured that knowledge of it would hardly register in the
West. It was not listed in the bibliography of new Beethoven literature of 1957–61
published by the Beethoven-Haus in its Beethoven-Jahrbuch.
11. Solomon, Beethoven, 2nd ed., 241. On the other hand, if Antonie was the
Immortal Beloved and decided to remain with her family rather than leave them for
Beethoven, that would have been evidence qualifying her as one of the “noble and
better people on this earth.”
12. My translation of Brandenburg no. 1592; Brandenburg expressed doubt on the
struck-out “von”; the letter is no. 1118 in Anderson’s edition. The first continental
editions of Opuses 110 and 111 had already appeared with Maurice Schlesinger in
July 1822.
13. Anderson no. 235; Brandenburg no. 436.
14. Carl Czerny, On the Proper Performance of All Beethoven’s Works for the Piano, ed.
Paul Badura-Skoda (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1970), 50.
15. Jean and Brigitte Massin, Recherche de Beethoven (Paris: Fayard, 1970), 134–36.
16. Harry Goldschmidt, Um die Unsterbliche Geliebte: Eine Bestandsaufnahme, vol. 2
of his Beethoven-Studien (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1977), 551 pages.
The monograph was also published in the West by Rogner and Bernhard (Berlin) in
an undated edition.
17. Goldschmidt, 298.

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 xxxii Introduction

18. Marie-Elisabeth Tellenbach, Beethoven und seine “Unsterbliche Geliebte” Josephine

Brunswick: Ihr Schicksal und der Einfluß auf Beethovens Werk (Zurich: Atlantis Musikbuch
Verlag, 1983), 340 pages.
19. Maynard Solomon, “Recherche de Josephine Deym,” Beethoven Newsletter 2
(1987): 26.
20. Forte, 19.
21. Forte, 54.
22. Christopher Reynolds, “Separated Lovers and Separated Motives: The Musical
Message of An die ferne Geliebte,” Beethoven Newsletter 3, no. 3 (1988): 50.
23. Reynolds, 55.
24. Reynolds, 55.
25. The Beethoven Sketchbooks (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
26. Douglas Johnson, “Beethoven Scholars and Beethoven Sketches,” 19th-century
Music 2, no. 1 (1978): 3–17.
27. See, for example, his essay “Hands On, Lights Off: The ‘Moonlight’ Sonata and
the Birth of Sex at the Piano,” Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002), 29–50.
28. Though the informational cascade effect was developed as an economic theory,
researchers have applied the theory to other fields of research: “Most doctors cannot
stay fully informed about relevant medical research advances in all areas. The theory of
information cascades predicts fads, idiosyncrasy, and imitation in medical treatments.”
See Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch, “Learning from the Be-
havior of Others: Conformity, Fads, and Informational Cascades,” Journal of Economic
Perspectives 12, no. 3 (1998): 167.
29. Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch, “A Theory of Fads,
Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades,” Journal of Political
Economy 100, no. 5 (1992): 992–93.
30. Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer, and Welch, “Learning from the Behavior of Oth-
ers,” 155.
31. Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer, and Welch, “Learning from the Behavior of Oth-
ers,” 157.
32. The dictionary article was published separately as Joseph Kerman and Alan Ty-
son, The New Grove Beethoven (New York: Norton, 1980, 1983), 55.
33. The Wikipedia article on “Immortal Beloved,” which badly needs editing for
both historical accuracy and objectivity as defined by Wikipedia, does contain a review
of the contesting theories.
34. Barry Cooper, “Book Review: Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved and Countess
Erdödy: A Case of Mistaken Identity?,” Beethoven Journal 11, no. 2 (1996): 18–24.
35. Cooper, 18.
36. Cooper, 24.
37. Quoting from the transcription in Goldschmidt, Um die Unsterbliche Geliebte:
Eine Bestandsaufnahme, 206. In his edition of the letters, Brandenburg did not transcribe
“so mit Schmerzen,” which was crossed out; see his letter no. 485.
38. Emily Anderson translated the close as “ever yours[,] ever mine[,] ever ours[.]”
See her letter no. 373. Virginia Beahrs translated the close as “forever yours[,] forever

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 Introduction xxxiii

mine[,] forever us[.]” See her “’My Angel, My All, My Self ’: A Literal Translation
of Beethoven’s Letter to the Immortal Beloved,” Beethoven Newsletter 5, no. 2 (1990):
36, 39. The sense of the close seems to be that Beethoven was ever the Immortal
Beloved’s, she was eternally his, and that their relationship was also eternal. Lund
theorized that the “unß” referred to Antonie’s child born in 1813.
39. In the letter Beethoven spells the word “seelig” instead of “selig”; because he
was a terrible speller, one might not want to make too much of the misspelling, but his
error combines the concept of the soul (Seele) and blissfulness (selig) into a new word.
40. Considering the topic of Beethoven retaining objects from Bettina, I should
mention the Beethoven letter in the Center’s collection that contains an impression
that Sieghard Brandenburg identified to Ira Brilliant as one of her seals when he in-
spected the letter in Arizona. Since the date of the letter is 1817, this means that seven
years after having met her, Beethoven either retained her seal or stationery that had
belonged to her or that she had sent him. On the topic of Bettina sending blank pages
to her correspondents such as Goethe, see Marjorie Goozé, “A Language of Her Own:
Bettina Brentano von Arnim’s Translation and Her English Translation Project,” in
Bettina Brentano von Arnim: Gender and Politics, ed. Elke Fredericksen and Katherine
Goodman (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1995), 288. See Walden’s discussion of
the Beethoven Center letter for further details.
41. The myths of the chimera were described in Virgil’s Aeneid, Homer’s
Iliad, Hesiod’s Theogony, and Ovid’s Metamophoses. Owen Jander has argued that
Beethoven knew the last source in a famous 1791 Viennese edition in which the
chimera is mentioned in book 6; see his Beethoven’s “Orpheus” Concerto (Hillsdale,
N.Y.: Pendragon, 2009).
42. See Elke Fredericksen and Katherine Goodman, “‘Locating’ Bettina Brentano
von Arnim, A Nineteenth Century German Woman Writer,” Bettina Brentano von
Arnim, 24–25.
43. Fredericksen and Goodman, 14–17.
44. Ann Willison, “Bettina Brentano von Arnim: The Unknown Musician,” Bet-
tina Brentano von Arnim, 304–45.
45. Willison, 312. Willison provides the original German texts in her article after
the translations.
46. Willison, 313.
47. Willison, 313–14.
48. Willison, 314.
49. Willison, 317.
50. Willison, 318.
51. Willison, 318–19.
52. Willison, 320.
53. I am indebted in this regard to mezzo-soprano Malin Fritz, tenor Christopher
Bengochea, and pianist Patricia Stroh, who performed four songs from the set in a
lecture recital at the Beethoven Center on May 1, 2008.
54. I would like to thank Corey Keating, assistant editor of The Beethoven Journal,
for the creation of the music examples. The score of the song is reproduced from the
first edition without editing. Readers who would like to obtain a copy of this score

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 xxxiv Introduction

may download it from The Beethoven Gateway, which is accessible at no charge through
the website of the Beethoven Center (www.sjsu.edu/beethoven/).
55. See J. Edward Mornin, “National Subjects in the Works of Achim von Arnim,”
German Life and Letters 24, no. 4 (1971): 321–3. Mornin concludes, “The collection
was intended to bring about a national rebirth such as is symbolized at the end of the
work: the winter’s ice on the river is broken up, and from an ice-floe which comes
drifting downstream people rescue a child in a cradle emblematical of new life.”
56. I would like to thank Adriana Rätsch-Rivera for preparing a translation of
several of the poems in the set that was distributed at the lecture recital mentioned
above. I have made minor alterations of her translations to make them more literal.
The remaining three strophes are: “(2) A fruit tree, heavy with fruit, hangs down its
branches to the earth: a fresh wind comes from the east, it cannot be shaken. It throws
asunder fruits and weak blossoms, and my dreams, which glowed so heavenly at night.
(3) I love someone, but tell not who, because silent vows and virtue command me so:
my completely hidden light of love must surely not reveal its flame. It pushes its pure
and lucid rays to heaven; the sun is now a reflection of my pain. (4) Oh Concordia,
remain in your peaceful state, never will I disturb your harmony, my only well-being
and woe is thee, to you I will ever pledge my peace. O sweet last moment, there I
will be able to speak, there will the stream of love break through my eyes and lips.”
57. Paul Ellison has recently published a study derived from his 2010 dissertation
in which he analyzes the relationship of the meanings of the Gellert set of songs to
key relationships. In the dissertation, he proves, in my estimation, that Beethoven was
keenly aware of the importance of key symbolism and used each key in either one or
more “practices” common to the key. Ellison’s theories are demonstrated in his article
“Affective Organization in Beethoven’s Gellery Lieder, Opus 48: Affirming Joanna
Cobb Biermann’s Theory on Beethoven’s Intended Order of the Songs,” Beethoven
Journal 25, no. 1 (2010): 18–31. In his dissertation, Ellison argues that Beethoven used
the key of E-flat Major in three different practices. The use of E-flat in this song falls
into Ellison’s second practice for the key.
58. See Rita Steblin, A History of Key Characteristics in the Eighteenth and Early Nine-
teenth Centuries (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1996), 245, 266, 296.
59. Willison, 323.
60. Perhaps because of the significant number of studies published on non-Antonie
candidates in German, there appears to be much less acceptance of Aoki’s and Solo-
mon’s theories there.

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 Background

This book is the result of almost two decades of investigation and re-
search about the identity of Ludwig van Beethoven’s so-called Immortal
Beloved. Solving the mystery will open up a whole new source for analysis
of Beethoven’s middle years and his musical output during those years and
afterward. French author and Nobel Prize winner Romain Rolland attributed
Beethoven’s seventh, eighth, and even sketches of his ninth symphonies to the
happiness resulting from his contact with the Immortal Beloved. Beethoven’s
seventh was his most rhythmic, his eighth was his most joyous, and his ninth,
although put on hold after his romantic disappointment of 1812 but finally
completed many years later, was his most monumental. It is generally ac-
knowledged that the sudden decrease in his musical output after 1812 was re-
lated to that romantic disappointment, and analysts have struggled to discover
the cause of it for more than a century.
Bettina Brentano matched perfectly Beethoven’s needs and aspirations
when she first met him in 1810. Beethoven was an admirer of the great Ger-
man playwright, poet, novelist, and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Bettina was a close friend of Goethe and admired him as much as if not more
than Beethoven. She believed in spirituality, loved and appreciated music,
and wrote music of her own. She was a Romantic idealist who constantly
searched for truth. Perhaps as a result of naive optimism, she also hoped and
worked through her social contacts for a solution to the political turmoil of
those Napoleonic times.
Her ideals and idols were based on her own needs for music, interaction
with genius, and literary creation. Goethe responded to two of them. Beethoven
responded to two as well, albeit a different two. When Bettina had a minor do-
mestic quarrel with Goethe’s wife that resulted in her ostracism from Goethe in

xxxv

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 xxxvi Background

1811, Beethoven was there to fill the gap, and the sorts of letters she previously
sent to Goethe were now sent to Beethoven instead.
When she first met Beethoven, she was beautiful, unattached, and filled
with a youthful energy that matched Beethoven’s own. As a result of her
meeting him, she considered engaging in a career in music and politics, thus
foreswearing the traditional life of a wife, almost the only choice then open to
privileged and educated women. Beethoven, then in his late 30s, had at that
stage of his life finally achieved success and relative financial stability. When
Bettina met him, he was searching for a woman with whom he could share
his life, hopefully with musical talent that could possibly help him in coping
with his growing deafness.
After much internal turmoil, Bettina decided instead to enter into a mar-
riage with a handsome acquaintance only a few years older than she, Achim
von Arnim, who needed a child to inherit control of an estate that would give
him financial security for life. Confessing afterward that she did not marry him
for love, Bettina married him nevertheless in 1811 but almost died in provid-
ing the child he needed. After her near death experience at the childbirth, she
briefly concluded in 1812 that marriage was a mistake and that a life in music
was what she needed and really wanted.
For artistic, emotional, and spiritual comfort, she had during her
pregnancy substituted Beethoven for Goethe as her correspondent, telling
Beethoven, as she had told Goethe in earlier letters, how much she loved
him and how she dreamed at night of lying in his arms. Unlike Goethe, poor
lovesick Beethoven, longing for sexual and emotional female companionship,
hoped that her love was of a different kind than she possibly meant, and in a
brief moment of physical and emotional exhaustion in 1812, he hesitatingly
wrote to her of his own love and dreams: “I talk to myself and to you—[writ-
ten pause] arrange that I can live with you, what a life!!!” But he never mailed
his letter because Bettina arrived just after he wrote it in the summer spa town
where he was trying to find a cure for his illnesses. There she told him of her
decision that she could not leave her child and would remain in the role of a
loyal German wife. The shock of hearing that decision devastated Beethoven.
He accepted it with dignity but almost never recovered.
The story has a pathos that even Goethe could not conjure up in his
novels and plays. It was at the same time a boon and a tragedy for music, and
ranks with one of the greatest and most poignant love stories of all time.
Right at the outset, I would like to make clear to the reader that I am a
lawyer by training. The methodology I use in this book is to present the case
that Bettina is Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved in the best light I can, as would
a lawyer attempting to prove that case in court. The case’s theory is based on
two crucial letters completely overlooked in previous scholarly analyses. The

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 Background xxxvii

first is the single surviving 1811 letter from Beethoven to Bettina written just
18 months before he wrote his letter to the Immortal Beloved. In that 1811
letter, Beethoven acknowledged having already received two letters from
Bettina and begged her to write to him soon and often. Second is the love
and desire for physical intimacy Bettina expressed for Goethe in at least one
surviving letter to him, from which I argue that Bettina wrote similar missing
letters to Beethoven.
To make my case, I set out in chapter 2 what I intend to prove, much as
does a plaintiff’s lawyer or prosecutor at the beginning of a trial. The support-
ing evidence is presented with full citations in the chapters that follow. I also
critically analyze the evidence and arguments proffered on behalf of Josephine
Brunsvik and Antonie Brentano, the other women currently contended to be
Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved, and show how they could not be. It is for the
reader to judge whether I have established my case.
Chapters 3 through 11 explore in greater detail events touched on in
chapter 2 and contain reference citations constituting the evidence I rely on in
support of my theory. Many of the sources are in English and may be found
in most reference libraries in North America. Other sources are in German
and include many out-of-print or obscure books found only in libraries and
archives in Europe.
Chapter 13 offers a short synopsis of the salient points of the narrative
and my general conclusions as well as a summary of the most important sup-
porting evidence. Interested readers will find additional source citations in the
Summer 1999 and Winter 2002 issues of the Beethoven Journal, which contain
two papers written by me that form the nucleus of this book.
As will be noted in chapter 3, Bettina published in 1835 after Goethe’s
death and when she was 50 a partly fictional book of correspondence exchanged
between her and Goethe in the early years of her life, entitled Goethe’s Corre-
spondence with a Child. It is referred to in this book as the “Goethe Correspondence
book” and is mentioned frequently. The only English translation of the Goethe
Correspondence book published in North America is Bettina von Arnim, Goethe’s
Correspondence with a Child (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1859), but it is out of
print and very rare. However an e-text of it is available online at www.hedweb
.com/bgcharlton/bettina-goethe.html. A single volume in German including
the book itself and the original letters exchanged between them that have been
found up to now is available in volume 2 of Bettine von Arnim Werke und Briefe,
4 vols. (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1992).
The reader should be aware at the outset that Bettina intended the Goethe
Correspondence book to be an epistolary book similar in form to an epistolary
novel, a form used and popularized by Goethe for one of his own novels. She
used her own letters to Goethe as the basis for her book but modified some of

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 xxxviii Background

the original letters and may have created others. The liberties she took in do-
ing that caused her critics to contend that she created or took similar liberties
with all three letters to her from Beethoven that she published. When one of
those three was found in the possession of a third party late in the 19th century
exactly as she had published it, her critics contended that she concocted in full
the remaining two because they were not found among her papers after her
death. One of the purposes of this book is to establish that she did not concoct
those other two. In making my argument, I distinguish between the letters
she exchanged with Goethe and with Beethoven that survive today and are
found in collections, archives, or libraries, with those that are not. The latter
are referred to in this book as the “missing” letters. Included in the description
of missing letters are those that were seen and verified by reliable witnesses at
some time in the past. The many critics of Bettina contend that most, if not all,
of the letters I describe as missing never existed at all and that she concocted
them, but one of the purposes of this book is to show that most, if not all, of
the missing letters did in fact exist but have been lost or destroyed.

FREQUENTLY USED PHRASES

Beethoven Description Letter: The letter written by Bettina describing her

time with Beethoven in Vienna dated May 28, 1810, that is today missing
but which was reproduced, probably in an edited form, in her Goethe Cor-
respondence book. See chapters 4 and 7.
Teplitz Letter: The letter from Beethoven to Bettina written in Teplitz in
July 1812 and handed to her as he hurriedly left town, just two and a half
weeks after he wrote his letter to the Immortal Beloved. In the Teplitz
Letter, he said a painful good-bye to Bettina and ended with the words
“God how I love you!” The letter does not survive, but its authenticity is
corroborated by the facts detailed in chapter 5.
1810 Letter Gap: The gap in the surviving letters from Bettina to Goethe
starting with her partly surviving letter to him of July 28, 1810, just where
she begins to describe what happened between her and Beethoven, up to
her surviving letter to him of October 18, 1810. The missing letters were
referred to in Goethe’s surviving letters to her of August 17 and October
25, 1810. See chapter 4.

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 • 1 •

Beethoven’s Letter to the Immortal Beloved

HISTORY OF BEETHOVEN’S LETTER

TO THE IMMORTAL BELOVED

A lthough the great German composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven
poured out his emotions countless times in his music, he did so in a signifi-
cant way only twice through the medium of written words. The first time
was in 1802, in the form of a will now known as the Heiligenstadt Testa-
ment. In it, he told of struggling to come to grips with the terrible realization
that he, a musician who lived in a world of hearing and creating sound, was
inexorably growing deaf. The second time was in 1812, when at the age of
41 and still a bachelor, he wrote in pencil a passionate yet touching 10-page
love letter to an unidentified woman. The letter was undated and presum-
ably never sent, because it was found after his death 15 years later, hidden
away in a locked and secret drawer. He did not name the woman in the
letter, which began with the words “My angel, my all, my self ” and ended
with the words “your beloved L, forever yours, forever mine, forever us.”
She has come to be known historically as his “Immortal Beloved,” because
he referred to her that way within the text of the letter. An English transla-
tion of the complete letter is set out in appendix A, and its first and last pages
are shown in illustrations 5a and 5b.
The mystery of who his love was remains unsolved to this day.
Beethoven never married, but in 1816, Fanny Giannastasio del Rio, a young
admirer, overheard him tell her father that “five years ago, he had made the
acquaintance of a person, a union with whom he would have considered the
greatest happiness of his life. It was not to be thought of, almost an impos-
sibility, a chimera—‘nevertheless it is now as on the first day’ he could not get

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 2 Chapter 1

it out of his mind.”1 Whomever Beethoven was referring to, she is generally
thought today to be the Immortal Beloved. Over the last century and a half,
at least 10 names have been put forward as guesses as to who the woman was.
The riddle was not made easier by the fact that the letter bore no year nor
place of writing, saying however in one place, “Monday evening on July 6.”
Clues within the letter allowed researchers to arrive at a consensus by the
1920s that the letter was in all likelihood written in 1812 when Beethoven was
in Teplitz, a Bohemian spa town, and was intended to be sent to a woman in
the nearby Bohemian spa town of Karlsbad.2 This consensus and the resulting
research has led The Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies in San José,
California, to narrow the list of leading candidates today to three: Antonie
Brentano, Josephine Brunsvik, and Bettina Brentano. Antonie was the only
one of the three who actually was in Karlsbad when Beethoven wrote his let-
ter, although Bettina had apparently intended to go there when Beethoven
wrote his letter, but her husband changed their destination and they came to
Teplitz instead, where Beethoven was. The problem with Antonie and Bettina
as candidates, however, was that they both appeared to be happily married.
Antonie was pregnant with her fifth child when the letter was written, and
Bettina had given birth to her first child only eight weeks before. Josephine
Brunsvik was the only one of the three whose marriage was disintegrating
when the letter was written, but she was nowhere near Karlsbad that summer
and appears not to have had any plans to go there.

THE CASE AGAINST ANTONIE

Antonie Brentano was first proposed as a candidate in the 1970s by Maynard

Solomon, an eminent American musicologist. Of the three front-runners noted
above, she was the only woman who was in Karlsbad when Beethoven wrote
his letter, and Beethoven knew her well. The problem with Antonie being
the intended recipient, however, is that the letter was in Beethoven’s posses-
sion when he died, so it is unlikely that he posted it. Her presence in Karlsbad
therefore works against her in favor of someone who intended to go there but
may have somehow got word to Beethoven that her plans had changed. Solo-
mon suggested that perhaps Beethoven did post the letter but that Antonie
gave it back. That scenario appears unlikely because a return of the letter, ef-
fectively meaning rejection, would make it improbable that Beethoven would
keep hidden away until his death such a painful reminder of the rejection.
Solomon seems to have realized this, so he alternatively suggested that the kept
letter was only a first draft, and that Beethoven recopied and posted it. This is
even more improbable given the length of the found letter and the fact it was

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 Beethoven’s Letter to the Immortal Beloved 3

signed with Beethoven’s initial. Of course if a copy was posted and received
by Antonie, it should be noted that it has never been found in her papers.3
The principal reason Antonie is ruled out as the Immortal Beloved, how-
ever, stems from Beethoven’s confession in 1816 referred to above that he had
met the love of his life five years before. Alexander Wheelock Thayer, the
great 19th-century biographer of Beethoven whose masterful work as edited
and reedited still remains the foundation of research about Beethoven’s life,
carried out research and made inquiries that established that Beethoven, who
was a frequent guest at the house of Antonie’s father, had known Antonie
even before her marriage in 1798. Proponents of the theory that Antonie was
the Immortal Beloved dispute this, but for the reasons set out in chapter 12,
their contention is mistaken. Accordingly, if Antonie knew Beethoven before
1798, she could not be the woman to whom Beethoven was referring in 1816.
A powerful further argument against Antonie as the Immortal Beloved is re-
flected in the opinion of Richard Specht, a distinguished Viennese music critic
and biographer, who wrote in 1933 that Antonie was married, and “marriage
meant for Beethoven a divine sacrament against which it would be a sacrilege
to offend.” According to Specht, Beethoven “would have torn out his tongue
rather than suffer it to utter words in the Immortal Beloved letter of such
glowing passion and regret to another’s wife.”4 Beethoven was a close friend
of both Antonie and her husband and was like an uncle to their children. That
Beethoven mused in his letter to the Immortal Beloved about living together
virtually rules out Antonie, already the mother of four children, as being the
intended recipient of the letter.

THE CASE AGAINST JOSEPHINE

Beethoven first met Josephine, the daughter of a Hungarian countess, when

the countess brought her and her sister to Vienna in 1799 to take music lessons
from Beethoven. Josephine was 20 at the time. That same year, her mother
arranged a marriage for Josephine with a man 30 years her senior. The mar-
riage was an unhappy one, and the husband died in 1804 after Josephine had
three children by him and was pregnant with her fourth. There is no question
that Beethoven fell deeply in love with Josephine sometime between 1804 and
1807, and there even exists an unsigned copy made by her of a letter from
him written in 1804 or 1805 that resembles some of the language and ideas
contained in the letter to the Immortal Beloved.5 However, the copy uses the
formal German “Sie” not the intimate “du” that Beethoven used in the letter
to the Immortal Beloved. Use of “du,” equivalent to the old “thou” in Eng-
lish, indicates in German a degree of intimacy between a man and a woman

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 4 Chapter 1

not lightly bestowed, especially by a woman. Also all surviving signed letters
from Beethoven to her use the formal “Sie.” From unanswered or disregarded
letters from Beethoven to Josephine in 1807, it appears that she rejected him
in that year,6 and three years later she married again. The second marriage
did not turn out well and was already in trouble in 1812 when Beethoven
wrote the letter to the Immortal Beloved. Josephine and her second husband
separated in 1813 or perhaps in the summer before, when the letter to the
Immortal Beloved was written. Therefore, only she of the three leading can-
didates appears to have been separated or had a disintegrating marriage when
Beethoven wrote his letter to the Immortal Beloved, and it is mainly for that
reason that Josephine’s candidacy remains alive.
The proponents of her candidacy contend that she and Beethoven con-
tinued their relationship after 1807 until her second marriage in 1810, then
revived it when her marriage to her second husband began to disintegrate.
There appears to be no evidence of that by correspondence or otherwise, so
it must remain purely speculative.
Another problem with Josephine’s candidacy is that there is no evidence
that she was in, near, or even planned to go to Karlsbad when Beethoven
wrote his letter. To the contrary, all evidence indicates that she remained in
Vienna throughout the summer of 1812. She had gone to Karlsbad the previ-
ous summer, and her visit was routinely reported in the police travel registra-
tions required in those days, but there is no record of her traveling there in
the summer of 1812.
The strongest argument against her candidacy is that Beethoven had
known her since 1799, so she could not be the woman Beethoven said in
1816 he had met five years earlier and whom he could not get out of his mind.

THE CASE AGAINST BETTINA

Beethoven first met Bettina in 1810, so she falls approximately within the five-
year period mentioned by Beethoven in 1816 as when he had first met the
“love of his life.” Her husband hoped to take her for a rest cure in Karlsbad in
the summer of 1812 around the time Beethoven wrote the letter to the Im-
mortal Beloved, but according to the husband he was talked out of it by Bet-
tina’s sister and came to Teplitz instead, where Bettina met Beethoven again.
Further, Beethoven wrote to her in 1811, about 18 months before he wrote
his letter to the Immortal Beloved, a surviving letter in which he acknowl-
edged her marriage with sadness, begged her to write to him, and used in one
part the intimate German “du,” which, so far as is known, he never used in
any letter to any woman with whom he was romantically involved except in
his letter to the Immortal Beloved.

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 Beethoven’s Letter to the Immortal Beloved 5

What has caused Bettina’s candidacy to be rejected in the past is that

she was living in Berlin when Beethoven, who lived in Vienna, wrote the
Immortal Beloved letter. Bettina appears at that time to have been happily
married, had given birth to her first child only two months before Beethoven
wrote his letter, and subsequently had six more children by her husband
while she continued to live in Berlin. Also, because she was living in Berlin
throughout 1811 and 1812, she could not have been having a physical affair
with Beethoven. Most researchers assumed that Beethoven and the Immortal
Beloved were having a physical affair because Beethoven tentatively expressed
hope in the letter that the two might live together. Max Unger, a leading Ger-
man researcher on the question of the Immortal Beloved, concluded in 1910,
after careful consideration of Bettina’s relationship with Beethoven, that the
main reason she could not be the Immortal Beloved was that she loved her
husband, whereas the letter to the Immortal Beloved suggests a recognition
by Beethoven that the woman loved him. That she could not have been the
Immortal Beloved was essentially the same conclusion reached by Richard
Specht quoted above, but for a different reason, namely, Beethoven’s idealiza-
tion of the institution of marriage.
As will be shown in the evidentiary chapters of this book, Bettina in her
later years published a letter from Beethoven written by him in Teplitz in
1812, only several weeks after he wrote his letter to the Immortal Beloved. If
that letter to Bettina was genuine, it would prove conclusively that Bettina was
the Immortal Beloved, but the original has not survived, and the authenticity
is strongly doubted today. That is because when Bettina was almost 50, she
published a book containing correspondence she claimed to have exchanged
with Goethe (the Goethe Correspondence book), but when the original letters
were made public in 1929, it was apparent that she had made a number of
changes when she reproduced the letters in her book. As a result, her reliability
and truthfulness are today under a cloud. The question of her reliability and
truthfulness will be considered more fully in subsequent chapters of this book.

NOTES

1. Thayer Forbes, 646.

2. Thayer Forbes, 534, quoting Unger in footnote 15.
3. See Solomon, Beethoven, 243–4.
4. Richard Specht, Beethoven as He Lived, trans. Alfred Kalisch (London: Macmillan,
1933), 177–80.
5. Thayer Forbes, 377–9.
6. Thayer Forbes, 425.

10-622_Walden.indb 5 12/17/10 7:33 AM

 •• 21 ••

TheChapter
Case forTitle
Bettina

OPENING SUBMISSION

This chapter sets out in outline form my case that Bettina Brentano was
Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved. Supporting evidence with appropriate cita-
tions follows in succeeding chapters. The facts on which the case is based are
set out here. Unless otherwise specifically noted, those facts are generally ac-
cepted and not disputed.
Bettina Brentano was born in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, in 1785.
Her father, a widower with three children by a previous marriage, was a
Catholic from northern Italy who moved to Frankfurt, remarried, and estab-
lished there a prosperous import and banking business. Bettina’s mother, a
German and a Protestant, was 20 years younger than her husband. She gave
birth to seven children by him, but during the marriage, she had a romantic
relationship with the famous poet, novelist, playwright, and scientist Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe, who was also from Frankfurt. Bettina’s mother died
when Bettina was eight. Her father sent her and her sisters to an Ursuline
convent where she spent three years until the convent district was occupied by
French armies, after which she moved to the home of her grandmother near
Frankfurt. Her grandmother was a prominent writer, so the house was visited
by eminent literary visitors while Bettina lived there. Bettina’s older brother
Clemens became a prominent German poet and lyric writer and was close to
and supportive of her. In her later teens, she moved to the house of her older
sister Gunda, who had married Friedrich Savigny, a professor of law. She
also met, through the introduction of Clemens, Achim von Arnim, a literary
collaborator with Clemens. Arnim was to become not only one of the great
Romantic writers of German literature in the early 19th century but also Bet-

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 The Case for Bettina 7

tina’s husband. Her literary connections included as well the Grimm brothers,
who became icons of German folk literature. She spoke Italian, French, and
German, learned Spanish, and had a working knowledge of English.
Clemens urged her to read the literature of Goethe. In doing so, she
became particularly influenced by his novel Wilhelm Meister, in which a
lively girl from Italy named Mignon, traveling in Germany with a troupe of
players, sings a poem of longing for her native Italy (“Kennst du das Land?”),
which was later set to music by Beethoven and is commonly known now as
“Mignon’s Song.” Being descended from an Italian father, Bettina identified
with Mignon and even dressed and tried to dance and act as Mignon was
described in Goethe’s novel. Equally important in her growing adulation
of Goethe was the fact that Bettina got hold of and read the letters that the
youthful Goethe had sent to her grandmother about his romance with Bet-
tina’s mother. Bettina became obsessed with Goethe and his literary output.
In 1807 she traveled (dressed as a man because of the dangers posed by the
occupying French army) to Weimar, where Goethe then lived, and intro-
duced herself. He was 35 years older than she. As a result of their meeting,
she began a lengthy correspondence with him that will be more fully de-
scribed in the evidentiary chapters of this book. In January 1810, while still
a student, she wrote a remarkable, surviving letter to him, the significance
of which will be discussed at greater length later in this chapter. She was 24
at the time and unmarried; he was then 60 and married.
Although her social contacts gave her a strong background in literature,
it was music that was her field of artistic choice. She studied voice and piano
while a student in Munich, played the guitar, and sang in choirs in Berlin
after she moved there in late 1810. In her later life, she composed songs
that are still performed and recorded. She wrote that music is the most joy-
ous wonder of human nature. In 1810, when she was 25, she began a long
journey at the beginning of May accompanied by her sister Gunda, Savigny,
and a few young fellow students, starting from a town near Munich where
she had been studying, passing through Salzburg, then to Vienna, then to
her family’s estate in Bohemia, then to the Bohemian spa town of Teplitz,
and finally around the middle of August to Berlin, where she stayed at the
new home of Gunda and Savigny. That journey was pivotal in her life. In
the early part of the trip, she formed a close romantic relationship with one
of the students with whom she was traveling.
She arrived in Vienna around May 8, where she, Gunda, and Savigny
stayed at the house of Bettina’s half-brother Franz and his wife, Antonie,
for the better part of a whole month. Toward the end of May during their
stay, Bettina looked up the famous Beethoven, who already knew Antonie,
Franz, and Antonie’s father. (Proponents of the theory that Antonie was the

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 8 Chapter 2

Immortal Beloved contend that Franz and Antonie did not know Beethoven
when Bettina met Beethoven, but as shown in chapter 12, their contention is
erroneous.) Here is a part of what Bettina wrote in her Goethe Correspondence
book about her meeting with Beethoven:

I had been told that he was unsociable and would converse with nobody.
They were afraid to take me to him; I had to hunt him up alone. . . .
He was very friendly and asked if I would hear a song that he had just
composed; then he sang, shrill and piercing, so that the plaintiveness re-
acted upon the hearer [Mignon’s Song]. “It’s beautiful, is it not,” said he,
inspired, “most beautiful! I will sing it again.” . . . He accompanied me
home and it was upon the way that he said many beautiful things upon art,
speaking so loudly and stopping in the street that it took courage to listen
to him. . . . They were much astonished to see him enter a large dinner
party at home with me. After dinner, without being asked, he sat down at
the instrument and played long and marvelously. . . . Since then he comes
to see me every day, or I go to him. For this I neglect social meetings, gal-
leries, the theater and even the tower of St. Stephen’s. Beethoven says “Ah!
What do you want to see there? I will call for you towards evening; we will
walk through the alleys of Schönbrunn.” Yesterday I went with him to a
glorious garden in full bloom, all the hot-beds open—the perfume was be-
wildering. . . . He took me to a grand rehearsal, with full orchestra—there
I sat in the wide, unlighted space, in a box quite alone.

Bettina left Vienna to travel to Prague around June 3, then went on to

a nearby estate that the Brentano family owned, where she stayed for almost
a month. While she was there, Arnim traveled down from Berlin and pro-
posed marriage, fully expecting that she would accept. He needed to marry
and have at least one legitimate child in order to gain control of his wealthy
grandmother’s estate. But the time Bettina had spent with Beethoven only a
few weeks before had left such a deep impression on her that she told Arnim
she was considering forgoing marriage to devote her life to music and politi-
cal causes. Arnim returned to Berlin in a state of shock, judging from his next
letter to her.
Bettina traveled in August from the Brentano estate in Bohemia to the
nearby spa town of Teplitz, where Goethe was spending his summer vacation
without his wife. Bettina surprised him with her visit, and papers discovered
after her death suggest he may have made sexual approaches that changed the
nature of their relationship from one of worshipful admiration of him by a
“child” to a more mature and ambivalent relationship of an aging man with an
attractive and dynamic young woman. It may be significant that Bettina reached
the age of 25 that year, the age of legal majority for women at the time.

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 The Case for Bettina 9

After leaving Goethe and Teplitz, she traveled on to Berlin in mid-

August, staying with Gunda and Savigny in their new home. Waiting for her
there was Beethoven’s first letter to her dated August 11, 1810, with which
he enclosed a copy of “Mignon’s Song” and a song entitled “New Love, New
Life,” both set to poems by Goethe. Because this letter does not survive, its
authenticity is disputed, but its genuineness will be proven in the evidentiary
chapters of this book. Its text is set out in the body of chapter 7. It is corrobo-
rated by a found dedication to Bettina in Beethoven’s handwriting on the title
page of “New Love, New Life” bearing fold marks consistent with its being
included with a letter. That title page is shown in illustration 6.
Meanwhile Arnim, who lived in Berlin, continued his entreaties that
they marry. Bettina, for her part, began her correspondence with Beethoven,
writing to him twice before February 1811.
In December 1810, Bettina finally agreed to marry Arnim, making him
promise, however, that he would not interfere with nor be jealous of her close
connection with Goethe. The marriage took place in a surprise and secret
ceremony the following March. Bettina told a friend twice over the course of
a long acquaintance that she did not marry Arnim for love but because he had
paid her the honor of bearing his child.
In mid-February 1811, not too long before her wedding, Bettina re-
ceived a second letter from Beethoven (which survives and is shown in il-
lustration 7) in which he acknowledged already receiving two letters from her
since she left Vienna in 1810 and addressed her near the end in the intimate
German “du.” Its text, translated into English, is contained in appendix B.
Bettina also received around that time, presumably accompanied by an unpub-
lished letter to her from Beethoven that has not survived, a sonnet he wrote
for her lamenting but congratulating her on her marriage. The authenticity of
this sonnet has also been disputed, but its genuineness will be proven in the
evidentiary chapters of this book. A facsimile of it is shown in illustration 12,
and its text in both German and English is set out in chapter 8.
Bettina wrote to Goethe soon after her marriage, telling him how happy
she was. She engaged in performing and composing music, and helping Arnim
in his writing. In the summer of 1811, the newly married young couple took
a belated honeymoon to the Brentano family summer home on the Rhine
near Frankfurt. On the way, they stopped in Weimar, where Goethe lived.
After a few days there, Goethe’s wife publicly quarreled with Bettina, tore off
Bettina’s glasses, and stomped on them. Goethe, at his wife’s behest, ceased all
written and personal communication with Bettina until after his wife’s death
some years afterward.
By autumn of that year, Bettina had become pregnant. The pregnancy
was not a happy one. She wrote afterward that a pregnant woman carries death

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 10 Chapter 2

in her heart and finds it difficult not to hate the man who put her in that state.
She confessed to being moody. At the childbirth in May 1812, she almost
died, crying out to the midwife to save the child even if it meant her own
death. Afterward she became bedridden, and her doctor prescribed a rest cure
for her. Arnim accordingly resolved on a trip to the mineral bath spas in Bo-
hemia. He wanted initially to go to Karlsbad to join his brother, who would
be vacationing there, but he later wrote that Gunda, who was to accompany
them, had talked him into going to Teplitz instead. On June 18, Arnim’s
brother checked into the mineral baths at Karlsbad. On the same day, Bettina
with Arnim, their infant, and Gunda finally left Berlin, their departure delayed
because of Bettina’s health. Instead of going to Karlsbad as Arnim wanted,
they were on their way to Teplitz. Both Goethe and Beethoven were there.
While Bettina was recuperating from the life-threatening birth of her
first child and Arnim was making plans for her Bohemian rest cure, initially
as noted before to be in Karlsbad, Beethoven set out from Vienna on June
29, 1812, and arrived in Teplitz at 4 a.m. on Sunday, July 5, exhausted from
an arduous journey in which his coach became mired for a time in mud. The
next morning, July 6, he started his letter to the Immortal Beloved in pencil
and continued it in intervals over the next day and a half, mentioning that he
wanted to get it posted in time for the next mail pickup for “K” (Karlsbad),
which he thought would be on the following Thursday. In fact, mail deliveries
were daily that summer, but for some reason he appears not to have sent the
letter, probably because he received a letter from Bettina that she would not be
going to Karlsbad after all. Beethoven, depressed, continued to stay in Teplitz,
writing to an acquaintance on July 14, “There is not much to tell you about T
[Teplitz], for there are few people here and no distinguished ones among the
small number. Hence I am living—alone—alone! alone! alone!”
But his depression was lifted by the unexpected arrival in town of his
hero Goethe, whom both he and Bettina virtually worshiped. Bettina had in-
troduced the two artists to one another through correspondence, and they had
exchanged letters in which they mentioned Bettina as their common point of
reference. The two artists visited one another over the next three or four days,
and on one occasion, Beethoven played the piano for Goethe. On another
occasion, the two strolled together in the town park. According to a letter to
Bettina from Beethoven that she published many years afterward but which
has not survived, the two encountered a group of royalty from Saxony as well
as the Austrian empress and probably the duke for whom Goethe worked
strolling in the opposite direction on the park path. Goethe suggested that he
and Beethoven give way, but Beethoven answered that the two of them were
the kings and princes of the earth, and he marched with hat down through the
oncoming group while Goethe stood to the side bowing. Beethoven teased

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 The Case for Bettina 11

Goethe about this, which appears to have annoyed Goethe, who later wrote
that while Beethoven was undoubtedly a great artist, he had an “untamed”
personality. Beethoven wrote that “court air suits Goethe too much.”
On July 23, the same day that Beethoven and Goethe walked together
in the park, the Arnims arrived in Teplitz, only two and a half weeks after
Beethoven wrote his letter to the Immortal Beloved. He was surprised and
ecstatic. He sent a letter the same day to his publisher in nearby Leipzig asking
that “Mignon’s Song,” which he had first played and sung to Bettina two years
before when she came to his lodgings in Vienna, be sent to him in Teplitz.
“Have an offprint made on the thinnest finest paper as quickly, as speedily, in
the quickest way, with the greatest expedition and so quickly that one cannot
express it in words, and send it to me here on the wings of thought; and be
sure to have it made on the thinnest and finest paper.” Over the course of
the next several days, Bettina met both Goethe and Beethoven. Her husband
wrote in a contemporary letter, “Goethe and Beethoven are here, but my wife
is not especially happy about it, since the former will have nothing to do with
her, and the latter can barely hear her; the poor devil is becoming more deaf
all the time and his friendly smiles make it all the more difficult to watch.”
Whatever Bettina said to Beethoven, he suddenly left town in a day or
two, neglecting to even take his travel papers with him. As he departed, he
handed to Bettina a letter in which he wrote that “even minds can love one
another,” begged her to write to him in Vienna “soon and fully,” and closed
with the words “God, how I love you.” The authenticity of this letter, which
has not survived, has been disputed, but its genuineness will be proven in the
evidentiary chapters of this book. A copy of one page from it made by Bettina
in her own handwriting is shown in illustration 8. Its full text, translated into
English, is set out in appendix C.
Beethoven did not return to Teplitz until early September, about the
time Bettina was to return to Berlin. Whether the two met there at that time
is not known. There is some evidence, however, that they continued to write
one another. As noted above, in the letter Beethoven handed to Bettina as
he precipitously left Teplitz in July, he begged her to write to him in Vienna
“soon and fully.” In 1816, as noted in chapter 1, Beethoven told the father of
young Fanny Giannastasio that his relationship with the love of his life was the
same then as it was on the first day. In 1817, Beethoven wrote a letter to Bet-
tina’s half-brother bearing a “double B” seal that closely resembled a seal then
being used by Bettina on some of her writing, indicating that he and Bettina
may have been corresponding with one another around that time and affix-
ing similar seals beside their signatures. A copy of the last page of Beethoven’s
1817 letter bearing the “double B” seal and the similar seal used by Bettina
are shown in illustrations 9 and 10 respectively. The evidence of continuing

10-622_Walden.indb 11 12/17/10 7:33 AM

 12 Chapter 2

correspondence between Beethoven and Bettina will be more fully detailed

and explored in chapter 3.
In 1843, Bettina, then in her middle years, was interviewed by Anton
Schindler, who had been Beethoven’s secretary in Beethoven’s later years and
became one of his early biographers. He noted afterward that when he asked
about her relationship with Beethoven, she “wrapped herself in a deep cloak
of silence, pretending to hear nothing I said.” What was she attempting to
hide? Around the same time, she gave away to Philipp Nathusius, a young
literary disciple, one of her letters from Beethoven. In the accompanying letter
to Nathusius, she wrote that she felt the need to atone to Beethoven’s spirit
for a promise she had made to Beethoven and then broken. The original of
the letter to her from Beethoven that she gave to Nathusius was found among
Nathusius’s papers.
In her old age, Bettina confided to a friend that Beethoven had loved
her until he died, and that his love was not just platonic. This suggests she
was communicating with Beethoven right up to the time of his death.
Further, found among Bettina’s possessions after her death was a medallion-
sized plaster relief of Beethoven’s face, very probably a gift to her from
Beethoven. It is shown in illustration 11. Among the effects of one of Bet-
tina’s daughters was an ornamented album page containing pressed flowers
and foliage from the grave of Beethoven. It is not known how the daughter
or her mother obtained it.

BETTINA’S LETTER WRITING

As noted earlier, Bettina’s first love in life was music. She was also a compul-
sive letter writer. It is difficult to count how many found letters from her there
are because of her habit of continuing letters over a number of days, some-
times with and other times without full dates. A 1929 auction catalogue of her
effects lists 44 from her to Goethe, 10 to the Grimm brothers, two to Goethe’s
wife, one to Goethe’s mother (another three have also been found), and
one to Moritz Carrière, a prominent philosophy professor. She wrote many
lengthy letters to her husband while they lived apart, a number to a young
student with whom she became romantically involved while traveling to Ber-
lin in 1810, several to a friend with whom she may have become romantically
involved after her husband died, and a large number to a male friend while
she and her husband were separated. The Goethe Archive in Düsseldorf has
the originals of approximately 50 she wrote to two of her younger literary
disciples, Philipp Nathusius and Julius Döring (she gave one of her Beethoven
letters, the only one that survives, to Nathusius). She wrote frequent letters to

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 The Case for Bettina 13

her children, and to her sisters and brothers and their spouses. These are only
a few examples. Their length and number are astonishing. The fact that Bet-
tina had already written to Beethoven twice before his February 1811 letter to
Bettina in the few months after she left him in Vienna is in itself remarkable.
She wrote those two at a time when she was traveling from Bohemia, meet-
ing Goethe in Teplitz, being courted by Arnim in Berlin, and then making
arrangements to marry him. Events in her life in that short time period were
occurring at a frantic pace, and yet she found time during that period to write
not only twice to Beethoven but five times to Goethe.
One aspect that should be noted before an analysis is made as to the cir-
cumstances leading up to Beethoven’s letter to the Immortal Beloved is the style
Bettina used in writing most of her letters to others. She would begin many of
them on one day, then continue them much as one does a diary over a number
of ensuing days, until she finally ended the letter with its continuations and post
it. Sometimes she inserted the day and month, sometimes only the month. She
frequently omitted the year. This is exactly the style used by Beethoven in his letter
to the Immortal Beloved. His letter was continued over several days, and only the
day and month were included, not the year. This was not his usual style of writ-
ing letters, which were for the most part fully dated and specific, not long and
rambling like Bettina’s stream-of-consciousness letters. I submit that in his letter
to the Immortal Beloved, he emulated Bettina’s style.
Keeping this history and methodology in mind, I now ask the reader to
consider two remarkable letters that survive and today can be looked at, one
from Beethoven to Bettina, and one from her to Goethe. Neither letter has
been considered in previous analyses as to the identity of the Immortal Be-
loved. I submit that two crucial conclusions can be drawn as a result of a close
examination of these letters that are important in establishing that Bettina was
Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved. In considering the two letters and drawing
these conclusions, I ask the reader to keep in mind two basic principles of
Anglo-American common law.
The first principle is the fundamental distinction between the proof re-
quired in a criminal as opposed to a civil case. In the former, the law requires
the case to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, the burden
can be satisfied if the trier of fact (judge or jury) is satisfied that the case has
been proven on the balance of probabilities.
The second principle is the law of “similar fact” evidence. If evidence is
admitted proving that a person has engaged in a certain unique and unusual
behavior in past instances, it can be used to assist in reaching a conclusion
that the person acted in the same or a similar fashion in the case at hand. If
the judge determines that the similar fact evidence may have some probative
value and is not unduly prejudicial, it may be admitted and used to permit a

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 14 Chapter 2

conclusion that the person acted in a similar fashion in the case at hand, based
in a civil case upon the balance of probabilities.
Consider now the two remarkable letters.

THE SURVIVING 1811 LETTER

FROM BEETHOVEN TO BETTINA

The only letter to Bettina from Beethoven that today survives is dated Feb-
ruary 10, 1811, about 18 months before he wrote his letter to the Immortal
Beloved. Its English translation is set out in appendix B, and both pages of
the original are shown in illustration 7. In the letter, Beethoven recognizes
that Bettina will soon be marrying Arnim or has already done so. In the very
last sentence, he addresses Bettina in the intimate German “du.” So far as is
now known, it is the only time Beethoven used this form in any letter to a
woman with whom he was romantically connected other than the Immortal
Beloved. He did not use that form in any of his surviving letters to Josephine
or Antonie. In this 1811 letter to Bettina, Beethoven tells her that he carried
her first letter to him around with him all summer, and that it made him su-
premely happy. I submit that those are the words of a man in love. Beethoven
also acknowledges, as noted previously, that he has already received two letters
from Bettina, and he apologizes for not writing to her “often” up to then, an
indication that he has written to her before. In the most important sentence,
Beethoven begs her to write to him, despite her marriage, “soon and often.”
As noted earlier, a few months after Bettina received this letter, she was
cut off from correspondence with Goethe by Goethe’s wife. She admired and
was attracted to genius. Beethoven was a genius in her own chosen field of
music. She was a compulsive, almost obsessive letter writer. That Beethoven
would have been a natural substitute for Goethe in her correspondence fol-
lows inevitably. Given all these circumstances, I submit that it is inconceivable
that she would not have responded to Beethoven’s plea to write to him “soon
and often.”
I therefore invite the reader to conclude, based on the contents of this
found letter and its surrounding circumstances, that Beethoven and Bettina
corresponded after this 1811 letter to her. I also submit that this conclusion is
free from any reasonable doubt and would therefore even meet the very high
burden of proof required in a criminal case, not just the lesser burden based
on the balance of probabilities required in a civil case.
Yet only one letter from Beethoven to her survives, and none from her
to him. Where are her letters to him, and more importantly, his to her? The likely
answer follows in the Argument section of this chapter.

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 The Case for Bettina 15

And more importantly, what would she likely have written to Beethoven
in their correspondence? To determine that, I ask the reader to carefully con-
sider a remarkable letter Bettina wrote to Goethe in 1810.

THE SURVIVING 1810 LETTER FROM BETTINA TO GOETHE

The 1810 letter Bettina wrote to Goethe does not directly involve
Beethoven, but the principle of similar fact evidence establishes its relevance
as to what the unfound letters from Bettina to Beethoven after 1811 may
have said. Bettina’s remarkable letter to Goethe was written in January 1810,
two and a half years before Beethoven wrote his letter to the Immortal
Beloved, and just over one year before Beethoven wrote his 1811 letter to
Bettina described above. At the time she wrote the letter to Goethe, Bettina
was studying music in a small town near Munich, was still unmarried, and
was approaching the majority age of 25. Goethe was then 60 and apparently
happily married. The text of the first portion of the letter translated into
English is set out at the beginning of chapter 6.
In her letter to Goethe, she writes of her deep love for him. “Don’t
burn my letters . . . so steadfastly and truly alive is the love that I express in
them for you, that I can only speak of it aloud [to myself] but show them to
no one.” She also writes that although she may be far away from him, in her
thoughts she sleeps every night in his arms, and will repay him for introduc-
ing the world of nature to her through his literature by embracing him with
her “warm loving arms.” She describes that she dreams of falling asleep with
her hand in his lap and awaking the next morning with him, when “you
would certainly kiss me, and call me a thousand affectionate names, and call
me your very own.”
In Beethoven’s letter to the Immortal Beloved, he writes, “As much as
you love me, I love you still more.” I submit that Bettina’s letter to Goethe
demonstrates her state of mind with regard to persons of genius, especially in
the field of artistic expression such as literature, poetry, and music. The psy-
chology of her attitude toward love (physical, emotional, and platonic) will
be explored more fully in chapter 6. Her letters to Goethe described in that
chapter, and especially this surviving one that she wrote to him in January
1810, may reasonably lead to a conclusion that Bettina wrote similar words of
love, admiration, and the possibility of physical intimacy to Beethoven. Both
Beethoven and Goethe were geniuses, one in literature, the other in her in-
tended field of music. Both were significantly older than she. Both were then
far away. In Beethoven’s letter to the Immortal Beloved, not only did he ac-
cept as a given the woman’s love for him, he even hesitatingly suggested that

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 16 Chapter 2

they might live together. I ask the reader to conclude on the basis of this letter
to Goethe that in one or more of the letters that Bettina sent to Beethoven
after 1811 and before July 1812, she professed a love for Beethoven as well as
the prospect of physical intimacy in much the same way she had for Goethe
less than two years before. Beethoven would have been even more connected
to her admiration for genius and artistic expression, because her intended out-
let for artistic expression, like Beethoven’s, was primarily music. This conclu-
sion, I submit, is more probably true than not. In other words, it meets the
test of proof on the balance of probabilities.
As to what Bettina wrote to Beethoven after his 1811 letter to her and
before his letter to the Immortal Beloved, I will be asking the reader to come
to two further conclusions, based not on the rule of similar fact evidence, but
rather on the rule of the balance of probabilities arising out of the evidence I
will be presenting. The first is that Bettina wrote to Beethoven of her depres-
sion during and after her pregnancy and her brush with death at the birth of
her child. This conclusion is based on the sentence in his letter to the Immortal
Beloved lamenting that she had apparently told him that she was suffering.
The second is that Bettina also wrote in her letters to Beethoven that she con-
sidered marriage to have been a mistake, and that what she really wanted in life
was a career in music. This conclusion is based on the unusual circumstances
surrounding her marriage described earlier in this chapter.

SUMMARY OF THE CRUCIAL EVIDENCE

Set out below is a summary of the crucial pieces of evidence and reasonable
conclusions arising therefrom on which I will base my argument.

1. The surviving dedication to Bettina in Beethoven’s handwriting on

the title page of his song “New Love, New Life,” accompanying his
first letter to her (missing) of August 1810.
2. The contents of the single surviving 1811 letter from Beethoven to
Bettina establishing that she had already written to him twice and he
to her at least once; his entreaty to her in it to write to him soon and
often; his resigned acceptance in it of the fact that she was or would
soon be married; and his addressing her in part of it in the intimate
German “du.”
3. The fact that one of the two letters Bettina sent to Beethoven after
she left Vienna in 1810 made Beethoven so happy he carried it around
with him all summer, as he told Bettina in the surviving 1811 letter to
her referred to in item 2 above.

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 The Case for Bettina 17

4. The conclusion that beyond any reasonable doubt, based on the con-
tents and surrounding circumstances as to the surviving 1811 letter
from Beethoven to Bettina described above, Beethoven and Bettina
were corresponding with one another after 1811.
5. The refusal of Bettina to Arnim’s initial marriage proposal, saying
that she was considering devoting her life to music and political
activism, and the unusual circumstances that had led Arnim to make
his marriage proposal in the first place, based on economic necessity
and convenience.
6. The sonnet that Beethoven wrote for Bettina and sent to her as a
marriage gift.
7. The fact that Arnim and Bettina originally intended in 1812, the year
in which Beethoven wrote his letter to the Immortal Beloved, to
travel to Karlsbad, where Beethoven believed the Immortal Beloved
to be, but they changed their destination to Teplitz, possibly at the
last moment.
8. The conclusion that on the balance of probabilities based on the
contents and surrounding circumstances as to the surviving 1810
letter from Bettina to Goethe, Bettina wrote similar words of love,
admiration, and the prospect of physical intimacy to Beethoven in
the correspondence they exchanged after 1811 and before his letter
to the Immortal Beloved in 1812.
9. Bettina’s acknowledged illness during and after her pregnancy
and her near death at the birth, considered in conjunction with
Beethoven’s statement in his letter to the Immortal Beloved that the
woman was “suffering”; also her illness appears to have resulted in a
postponement of her rest-cure trip to Bohemia.
10. Beethoven’s excited surviving letter to his publisher shortly after
Bettina’s arrival in Teplitz to mail to him in Teplitz the song he had
sung to Bettina when they first met two years before.
11. Beethoven’s sudden and unexpected departure from Teplitz a few
days after Bettina arrived, and the poignant letter he handed to her
as he left Teplitz only two and a half weeks after he wrote his letter
to the Immortal Beloved. In this missing letter to Bettina, he wrote
that “even minds can love one another” and ended with the words
“God, how I love you!”
12. Bettina’s refusal to discuss her relationship with Beethoven when
interviewed by Schindler in 1843.
13. Bettina’s confession in giving Nathusius in the 1840s the single letter
to her from Beethoven that survives, saying that she wanted to atone
to Beethoven’s spirit for breaking a promise she had made to him.

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 18 Chapter 2

14. Bettina’s confession to a confidant in her late years that Beethoven

had loved her until he died and that his love was not just platonic.
15. The similarity between Bettina’s letter-writing style and the writing
style (unusual for Beethoven) used by him in his letter to the Im-
mortal Beloved.
16. The “double B” seal used by Beethoven in an 1817 letter to Bettina’s
brother that is similar to Bettina’s personal “double B” seal.
17. The finding of a medallion-sized plaster relief of Beethoven among
Bettina’s possessions after her death, most likely a gift from him to her.
18. The finding of pressed leaves and foliage from Beethoven’s grave in
the effects of Bettina’s daughter.

ARGUMENT

As noted in chapter 1, both Richard Specht and Max Unger believed that Bet-
tina met the psychological, geographical, and timing requirements necessary
for her to be the Immortal Beloved. But they both rejected her for slightly dif-
ferent reasons. Unger believed that because she loved her husband, she could
not be the Immortal Beloved, since in the letter to the Immortal Beloved,
Beethoven seemed convinced from something that the woman wrote or said
to him that she loved him (Beethoven). Specht’s reason was that Beethoven’s
idealization of the institution and sanctity of marriage would prevent him from
writing the passionate tender words to another man’s wife.
What follows is my reconstruction of the salient facts in the lives of Bet-
tina, Goethe, and Beethoven, and my argument as to why the conclusions
of Specht and Unger in ultimately rejecting Bettina as the Immortal Beloved
were mistaken.
In the last half of 1811 and the first half of 1812, Bettina was beset by
problems: the emotional devastation she must have suffered because of the
rupture with Goethe; the melancholia probably induced by a typical Berlin
winter in 1811–12; the difficulties that emanated from her pregnancy and
likelihood that she became depressed; the restriction on her musical endeavors
resulting from her confinement; her near-death experience during the birth
of her first child in May 1812; and the unknown physical or psychological
symptoms that caused her to be bedridden after the birth, possibly including
postpartum depression. They all occurred in the months after she received a
letter from one of the greatest musical geniuses in history who acknowledged
having already received two letters from her and begged her to write to him

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 The Case for Bettina 19

“soon and often.” That she would confide her troubles to an adoring musi-
cal genius and that he would have responded with words of comfort may be
inferred from words in the letter to the Immortal Beloved such as “Why such
deep sorrow ?” and “You are suffering, my dearest creature.”
A further question arising out of the words used by Beethoven in his
letter to the Immortal Beloved that has intrigued all commentators (and even
led to outlandish theories) is that Beethoven acknowledged in his letter that
the woman loved him. How can this be linked to Bettina? As noted previ-
ously, and as will be more fully explored in chapter 6, Bettina had in her
letters to Goethe written words about her love for him, apparently ranging
from platonic to intensely physical. I submit, as stated above, that in writing to
Beethoven in answer to the plea in his 1811 letter to write to him “soon and
often,” Bettina used the same kind of language of love for Beethoven that she
expressed in her January 1810 letter to Goethe. That conclusion would coun-
ter Unger’s rejection of Bettina as Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved because he
believed that she loved her husband. She undoubtedly did love her husband,
as shown in chapter 6, but in a different way, so it would not have stopped
her from writing to Beethoven, as she did to Goethe, expressing also her love
for him because of what his genius had brought to her in music.
Specht rejected Bettina as the Immortal Beloved because she was a married
woman and Beethoven had reverence for the institution of marriage. However,
Beethoven had met and fallen in love with Bettina before her marriage. If she had
written to him in reply to his found 1811 letter explaining the reasons behind
the marriage, her reservations about it, and her continuing dream of devoting
her life to music and political activism, this would have salved Beethoven’s con-
science, since he was not inducing the breakup of a customary marriage.
I turn now to a probable reconstruction of the facts leading up to
what happened after Beethoven wrote his letter to the Immortal Beloved.
Beethoven expected when he arrived in Teplitz that he would hear almost
immediately from Bettina that she had safely arrived in Karlsbad, as Arnim
had previously planned. As noted earlier, their departure from Berlin had been
delayed as a result of Bettina’s illness. Knowing that Beethoven was prob-
ably already in Teplitz, she wrote to him there, telling him of the delay, so
Beethoven withheld posting his Immortal Beloved letter until he had received
a letter from her saying that she had arrived in Karlsbad. When she unexpect-
edly arrived in Teplitz instead of Karlsbad, he did not need to post his letter
but kept it until he died. Upon her arrival in Teplitz, Beethoven’s excitement
was apparent from his letter to his publisher on the same day that she arrived.
As noted previously, he asked that he be sent in Teplitz a copy of “Mignon’s
Song” right away! What did he hope for?

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 20 Chapter 2

Also as noted previously, Bettina in her middle age gave Nathusius

one of her letters from Beethoven, noting that she felt the need to atone to
Beethoven’s spirit for a promise she had made to Beethoven and then broken.
What was that promise? I submit that Bettina had written to Beethoven in
the months before she came to Teplitz not only of her love for him, but also
that her marriage was a mistake, and that a life in music was what she always
wanted. Now that she had borne Arnim the child he needed to gain control
of his wealthy grandmother’s estate, she was free to follow her own desires,
and she may have promised Beethoven to join him in Vienna to pursue a life
in music in collaboration with him as his muse and assistant.
But when Bettina arrived in Teplitz, she likely told Beethoven that she
had changed her mind and would remain in her marriage. She was emotion-
ally stronger than when she wrote him after the childbirth, and now could
not consider leaving her child and husband for a life in music with Beethoven.
Beethoven must have been shattered. He left town precipitously, forgetting to
take even his travel papers with him. As he left, he handed Bettina a tender let-
ter of resigned acceptance as noted above, telling her how much he loved her,
that “even spirits can love one another,” and exclaiming “God, how I love
you!” The inevitable conclusion, I submit, is that Bettina was Beethoven’s
Immortal Beloved. In many ways, his disappointment must have been as tragic
for him as the increasing deafness he had faced and finally come to terms with
seven years before.
But what happened to the missing letters that we know Bettina had sent
to Beethoven, and the letters from Beethoven to Bettina, all of which, except
for the one she gave to Nathusius, are today missing? It is possible that the
two destroyed them by mutual agreement, as did Brahms and Clara Schumann
with some of their correspondence years afterward, but this is only a surmise.
To Beethoven, the letters were so important that he carried one of them
around with him all summer. As for Bettina, she had the originals of the three
of them in 1839 when she had them published, because they were seen and
verified by two reliable witnesses. I will discuss the matter at greater length in
chapter 4. If she did destroy the letters for the reasons discussed in that chapter,
it is obvious that she could not destroy the letter to her from Beethoven that
she gave away to Nathusius, and she did not destroy but rather treasured the
sonnet Beethoven had composed for and gave her.

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 • 3 •

Beethoven and Bettina after 1812

BETTINA

A fter Bettina left Teplitz in September 1812, she returned to Berlin and,
over the years, had six more children with Arnim. But she began to live apart
from him in 1820. Although she resumed her friendship with Goethe after his
wife died in 1816, the relationship was not the same as before. He had become
quite elderly, and she was busy with a growing family. She nevertheless con-
tinued to revere him until his death in 1832. In 1835, when she was almost
50, she published her Goethe Correspondence book to raise money to build a
monument in his honor.
In 1839, in a literary and political journal, Bettina published three let-
ters she claimed to have received from Beethoven, one in 1810, the second
in 1811, and the third in 1812. The authenticity of these letters as well as the
letters she supposedly received from Goethe contained in the Goethe Corre-
spondence book became a subject of great controversy in Europe, as will be ex-
plained in greater detail in the evidentiary chapters of this book. In 1846, when
she was 61, she also published a book entitled Ilius Pamphilius und die Ambrosia
(the “Ilius book”), which contained correspondence she had exchanged some
years before with two young literary acolytes, Philipp Nathusius and Julius
Döring. Because the book was modeled on the form of epistolary novel popu-
larized by Goethe in one of his books, the names of the letter writers were
changed, she becoming Ambrosia and Nathusius becoming Ilius. In that book,
she published the same three letters from Beethoven that she had published in
the literary journal seven years before, as well as three letters she claimed to
have received from Goethe’s mother. In one of her letters to Nathusius, she
describes giving him one letter from Beethoven and one from Goethe’s mother

21

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 22 Chapter 3

for his autograph collection. The Beethoven letter turned up in Nathusius’s

estate and is the only one that survives today. In a surviving letter published in
the Ilius book, responding to Nathusius’s request for the Beethoven letter for
his autograph collection, she writes:

as for the letter of Beethoven, I am holding it with both hands, it is a relic

of the greatest spirit not only of our but of all times. His was a heart that,
turned towards the spirit, was finally born anew from the motherly womb
of the ether into the world of the senses. There he discovered through
his innate genius and through the spiritual joy of the senses the music of
the language of love that can satisfy the spirit. But his heart needy as a
newborn child, strained after the treasures of life, searching for playmates,
and he saw me, and the sparkling diamonds of ancient longing lit up in
his heart. For it was as if I had to be one of those sensual hearts which,
in earlier times, intoxicated with love, filled themselves with his image
or still want to do so; this is why I hold the letter so firmly.—Now that
his heart reposes in the dust, [I] beg his forgiveness for not having always
waited at the door when he went in or out, for not having cushioned
the ground under his feet with my hands, not having listened when the
spirits spoke with him and he confided to them the rhythms of the most
profound surge [of his soul]. Yes, I hold this letter so firmly, mindful of
the vows that the spirits pressed upon me, that I should not refuse any-
thing to him who demands, and there I read that he pressed the seal of
his love upon my brow, and that fills me wholly with melancholy; I feel
the waves of his genius brimming over in my bosom because I did not
atone to him for his loss according to my vow. And I am giving you this
letter because you asked me for it, because—if I am to fulfil my vow—I
must never refuse.1

What did she mean when she wrote “I did not atone to him for his loss
according to my vow?” Was she referring to the loss of his hearing, or the loss
of her? What was her vow? The possible answer to these questions will be
explored more fully in the evidentiary chapters of this book. Until her death,
Bettina remained an ardent advocate of the music of Beethoven, but so far
as is known, she never saw him again. Shortly before her death, she told an
acquaintance of the many years that Beethoven loved her until he died, and
that his love was not platonic. She died in 1859 at the age of 74. As noted in
chapter 2, found in her belongings after her death was a medallion-size plaster
relief of Beethoven’s head (see illustration 11). It is described by the Goethe
Museum in Frankfurt, where it is located today, as quite possibly a gift to her
from Beethoven. Found in the belongings of one of her daughters was an
album page, ornamented with the daughter’s painting, that holds dried and
pressed leaves and foliage from Beethoven’s grave. The album page is today

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 Beethoven and Bettina after 1812 23

located in the Goethe Museum. How the daughter got the leaves and foliage
is not known.

BEETHOVEN

As noted in chapter 2, Beethoven suddenly and unexpectedly left Teplitz two

or three days after Bettina arrived, neglecting to take even his travel papers
with him. Teplitz was a small town, and repeated encounters with Bettina
would likely have been painful for him. As he left town, he handed to her the
long poignant parting letter described in chapter 2. Here is part of what it says:

If God spares me a few more years, then I must really see you again, my
dear, dear Bettina. . . . Spirits too can love one another and I shall always
pay court to yours. . . . Adieu, Adieu, dearest . . . your last letter lay on
my heart for a whole night and refreshed me there. God, how I love you!

Beethoven went from Teplitz to Karlsbad, where he joined his friends

Franz and Antonie Brentano and one of their children, then afterward traveled
to another nearby spa town, blaming his travels on orders from his doctor,
trying to find a cure for his physical ailments. He then came back to Teplitz
in September shortly after Bettina was scheduled to leave. It is not known
whether he saw Bettina or Goethe then. Also as noted in chapter 2, he wrote
a letter in August criticizing Goethe for being too solicitous toward royalty.
Goethe wrote a letter also in August praising Beethoven’s talent and energy
but criticizing his manners and decorum.
As noted earlier in this book, the Nobel Prize winner Romain Rolland
attributed the pulsing and joyous ideas evident in Beethoven’s seventh and
eighth symphonies, and even the inspiration for early drafts of the ninth, to
Beethoven’s communication with the Immortal Beloved around 1811–1812.2
However, his musical inspiration seems to have ended near the end of 1812,
and his creative output declined considerably for the remainder of the decade,
as noted by Thayer.3 I submit to the readers of this book that during the happy
period when Beethoven was corresponding with Bettina in the last half of
1811 and the first half of 1812, he was working simultaneously on his seventh,
eighth, and ninth symphonies, inspired by her confessions of love for him,
as she had previously relayed to Goethe in her found letter to him of Janu-
ary 1810, described in chapter 2. Beethoven’s seventh and most of his eighth
were completed before he went to Teplitz in 1812,4 but after he received
the devastating news from Bettina in July, he must have stopped work on his
ninth, because he did not start it again until 1817,5 and he did not complete it

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 24 Chapter 3

until 1824, 12 years after what happened in Teplitz. What caused his creative
diminishment has never been explained, although many believe it was related
to something that happened between him and the Immortal Beloved.
It is clear that Beethoven was devastated by what Bettina had said to him
when they met in Teplitz, where she had apparently, as she explained in her
1840 letter to Nathusius quoted above, broken her vow to Beethoven. What
was that vow? The possible answer will be explored in chapter 4.

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN
BEETHOVEN AND BETTINA AFTER 1812

In the early years of my research, I believed that the correspondence between

Bettina and Beethoven ended after she broke his heart in Teplitz in 1812, when
she announced her decision to stay with her husband instead of pursuing a life
in music. There is some evidence, however, indicating that she and Beethoven
may have been corresponding afterward. In the 1812 Teplitz Letter that he
handed her as he hurriedly left Teplitz, he begged her again to write to him
“soon, soon, and quite fully.” In a letter she wrote to an acquaintance in 1832,
she reveals details that appear to have been related to her by Beethoven after
their final meeting in Teplitz in 1812.6 In 1816, as explained in chapter 1, the
young Fanny Giannastasio overheard Beethoven say that five years before “he
had made the acquaintance of a person, a union with whom he would have
considered the greatest happiness of his life.” Then Fanny quotes Beethoven
as saying “nevertheless it is now as on the first day.”7
Another clue arises out of a confidence Bettina shared in her later years
with the well-known Berlin actress Karoline Bauer, whom she told that
Beethoven loved her until he died.8 Would she know that because they were
corresponding up to the time of Beethoven’s death in 1827?
A more intriguing clue arises out of a symbol on a surviving 1817 let-
ter from Beethoven to Bettina’s half-brother Franz Brentano (the husband
of Antonie) presently in the collection of the Beethoven Center in San José,
California. The symbol is a “double B” in blue ink that appears next to
Beethoven’s signature at the end of the letter, so it was very probably stamped
on it by him (see illustration 9).9
In 1809, before Bettina had married and when her maiden name was
Bettina Brentano, she had been given a “double B” seal standing for her ini-
tials for use on her correspondence. Before and after she married, she used for
some of her writing and music the pseudonym “Beans Beor,” derived from
a Latin expression meaning “when I make [others] blessed, I become blessed
myself.” Two songs written by her in 1810 that will be referred to in chapter

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 Beethoven and Bettina after 1812 25

10 were written under that pseudonym.10 For the purpose of using that pseu-
donym, she apparently had made and used a “double B” seal similar to the one
given to her in 1809 but with “Beans Beor” inscribed around the outside of
the symbol (see illustration 10). In Beethoven’s 1817 letter to Franz, the two
“B”s in the symbol appearing next to Beethoven’s signature are not separated
as on Bettina’s seals but are intertwined, and the symbol appears to have been
pressed onto the paper from a seal that, in the opinion of a curator in the
Goethe House in Frankfurt, was probably made of rubber. If that is so, it likely
was specially and artistically manufactured. Beethoven did not use the symbol
on the single surviving 1811 letter from him to Bettina, possibly because there
was no room at the end of the page beside his signature (see illustration 7).
Whether Bettina used her own “double B” symbol on her letters
to Beethoven is not known, because none of them have survived. While
Beethoven’s use of a “double B” seal in 1817 similar to that used by Bettina
during those years may have been coincidental and have no connection to
Bettina, the similarity with her personal seals is striking. It could indicate that
Beethoven and Bettina were corresponding with one another around 1817,
with the two of them affixing similar “double B” seals on their letters to one
another. As noted above, Beethoven used it on the letter he sent to Franz in
1817. Franz was a literary giant and an acquaintance of Beethoven, and pos-
sibly in on the secret of Beethoven’s love for Bettina.

NOTES

1. Ilius, 2:623. The author thanks Dr. Hans Eichner and his wife Dr. Kari Grim-
stead for their translation of this difficult passage. The original letter of Bettina to Na-
thusius in Bettina’s handwriting containing this passage may be found in the Goethe
Archive in Düsseldorf.
2. Romain Rolland, “La lettre de Beethoven à l’Immortelle Aimée,” La Revue
Musicale 11 (1927): 201.
3. Thayer Forbes, 483–4. Thayer thought Beethoven’s “dry period” began around
1810, but as pointed out in Thayer Forbes, Thayer did not know that the ideas for
the seventh and eighth symphonies and other important works occurred in 1811–12,
and as pointed out by Forbes, the “dry period” in fact began in 1813. It is a reason-
able surmise that the dry period resulted from Beethoven’s devastation at learning his
hoped-for union with the Immortal Beloved would not come about.
4. Thayer Forbes, 483, 543.
5. Thayer Forbes, 691.
6. Sonneck, Impressions, 84–88. In her 1832 letter, Bettina tells the friend, Pückler,
details about how Goethe reacted emotionally to Beethoven’s playing for Goethe
in Teplitz in 1812, as well as the differences between the reactions of Viennese and

10-622_Walden.indb 25 12/17/10 7:33 AM

 26 Chapter 3

Berlin audiences to his playing. While it is possible that Beethoven told Bettina these
details when they met in Teplitz in 1812, their time together there was very brief, and
they undoubtedly had more important things to talk about. It seems more likely that
Beethoven related these details in their subsequent correspondence, since she could
not tell Beethoven about his playing for Goethe when they were together in Vienna
in 1810. He had not then met Goethe.
7. Thayer Forbes, 646.
8. Sie sassen und tranken am Teetisch: Anfänge und Blütezeit der Berliner Salons, 1789–
1871, ed. Rolf Strube (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1991), 191, quoting Karoline Bauer, a
well-known Berlin actress.
9. Anderson, Letter No. 758; Brandenburg, Letter No. 1083, dated February 15,
1817.
10. Ann Willison Lemke, Bettine’s Song: The Musical Voice of Bettine von Arnim, née
Brentano, doctoral dissertation (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Dissertation Services, 1998), 32.

10-622_Walden.indb 26 12/17/10 7:33 AM

 • 4 •

The Mysterious Missing Letters

THE MISSING LETTERS FROM BETTINA TO GOETHE

I n chapter 2, I raised the question as to what may have happened to the

missing letters exchanged between Bettina and Beethoven. There are also
missing letters exchanged between Bettina and Goethe, as shown below.
This chapter attempts to explain what happened to them and what they
might have said.
The year 1810 was one of the most significant of all the 74 years Bettina
spent on earth. As noted in chapter 2, within that year she turned 25, the age
of legal adulthood at the time. She met Beethoven in Vienna. A few weeks
later, her future husband, Achim von Arnim, proposed marriage. In August,
she visited Goethe for the second time, and it is quite possible that he and she
had some kind of brief sexual encounter (see below), changing the tone of
their correspondence from that of a worshipful child exchanging letters with
an older, world-famous artist to the more mature give and take of a male-
female relationship. Later that year, she received her first adoring letter, dated
August 11, 1810, from Beethoven, who begged her to write to him. The au-
thenticity of that missing letter will be established in chapter 5. In December,
she and Arnim became engaged.
As noted in chapter 2, at the beginning of that fateful year, Bettina
was studying music and languages near Munich. In May, she with her sis-
ter Gunda, Gunda’s husband Friedrich Savigny, and a few student friends
began an extended journey that would take her through Vienna, where she
met Beethoven, then to her family estate in Bohemia, where Arnim came
to meet her and propose marriage, then to Teplitz in Bohemia, where she
met Goethe again, and finally in August to Berlin, where she began to live
with Gunda and Savigny in their new home.
27

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 28 Chapter 4

Through the course of that year, she wrote nine lengthy letters to Goethe
that survive (even more if one considers their extensions and additions as sepa-
rate letters). She described in them her adventures on her journey as well as
her thoughts and philosophy about music, art, literature, and religion. Their
length and detail are astonishing. They run to more than 13,000 words.
Goethe kept these and the other letters written by Bettina to him before
and after 1810, and after his death Bettina obtained their return from his legal
administrator. As noted in chapter 1, Bettina used the originals as the basis for
a freely edited, expanded, revised, and partly fictional book in epistolary form
entitled Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child (the “Goethe Correspondence book”)
that she published in 1835 when she was 50. In considering the analysis that
follows, it is important for the reader to distinguish between the letters Bet-
tina wrote to and received from Goethe that survive, and those letters as they
appeared in the Goethe Correspondence book. As will be noted in chapter 11,
some letters appeared in the book that are today missing, and at least one letter
that survives did not appear in the book. As well, she made some deletions,
additions, and changes to the surviving letters when she included them in her
book, examples of which will be analyzed in chapter 11.
Surviving today are 13 letters to Bettina from Goethe and 44 letters from
her to him. Many of them are reproduced accurately and in their entirety in
her book. What she did, however, was rearrange them, edit some of them,
redate others, create new passages, and delete others, so as to create a flowing
sequential narrative. Because she did not date many of her own original let-
ters, or wrote continuous extensions of them as if she were keeping a diary
that she saved for mailing in a single bundle, it would have been necessary and
logical for her in her Goethe Correspondence book to reorganize many of them,
especially her own lengthy writings, in order to make a coherent readable se-
quence. Editing and reorganizing by Bettina was also necessary because of her
peripatetic wanderings during the period of her correspondence with Goethe.
Goethe traveled frequently as well.
Bettina never pretended that her book was simply an edited version of
her correspondence with Goethe, but rather viewed it as a “poetic epic” of her
own intellectual and emotional development as stimulated by the actual letters,
looked at from the perspective of her own greater maturity.1
The first thing that stands out in looking at the surviving correspondence
between Bettina and Goethe, which is presently in the Morgan Library in
New York, is the gap in the surviving letters from Bettina to Goethe during
1810 (the “1810 Letter Gap”). That gap raises intriguing questions. It begins
in the middle of a surviving letter to Goethe that she started to write while
in Bohemia on July 6, 1810, and added to on July 7, 10, and 28. The surviv-
ing portion of that letter consists of two four-page folios, and the text ends

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 The Mysterious Missing Letters 29

in midsentence on the last sheet of the second folio, just where she begins to
describe Beethoven. The subsequent folio or folios of the letter are missing.
The next surviving letter from Bettina to Goethe is dated October 18, 1810,
and was written from Berlin.
Within the 1810 Letter Gap are the missing part of the letter begun in
Bohemia on July 6 ending just where she began to describe Beethoven, other
letters that she sent or handed to Goethe when she visited him in Teplitz in
August, and a letter she sent to him dated August 27. All of them were referred
to in Goethe’s surviving letters to her of August 17 and October 25.
Bettina was meticulous in preserving letters from others and, whenever
possible, recovering letters she herself wrote. So what was the reason for this
gap in her surviving letters to and from Goethe? There are three possible
answers: (1) Goethe destroyed them, (2) they were inadvertently lost, or (3)
Bettina destroyed them.
The possibility that Goethe would have destroyed the missing letters is
remote. He had no reason to do so, except for Bettina’s single letter to him
of August 27 if it referred to the sexual incident that may have occurred in
Teplitz in mid-August, described below. Her letter to him of August 27 did
exist, because it was referred to in Goethe’s surviving letter to her of October
25. However, it fell within the 1810 Letter Gap and was not reproduced by
Bettina in her Goethe Correspondence book, at least in a form bearing that date.2
The possibility that the letters in the 1810 Letter Gap were inadvertently
lost is unlikely, given the significance of their contents, especially since others
survive that are less significant. Goethe’s surviving letter to Bettina of August 17
referred to the missing letters as the most interesting of all she had sent to him.
The possibility that Bettina destroyed them is not as far-fetched as might
first appear. As will be seen in chapter 10, Max Unger, by then an avowed
Bettina skeptic, raised just such a possibility, but for reasons that would support
his suspicion of her. Alternatively, Bettina’s motives in destroying them might
be based on two life-altering events that happened to her within the period
of the 1810 Letter Gap. The first is her meeting and the time she spent with
Beethoven in Vienna in late May and early June and what happened between
them. The second is the possibility of a brief sexual encounter with Goethe in
Teplitz a month and a half afterward, described below.
Few clues shedding light on the mystery of the 1810 Letter Gap can
be found from the way she dealt with it in the Goethe Correspondence book.
There she included the missing portion of the surviving letter begun July 6
by describing her meeting and memories of Beethoven in great detail. She
cast it, however, as a completely separate letter dated May 28, 1810 (the
day she likely first met Beethoven), and not as a continuation of the long
surviving travelogue letter that preceded it. She also included in the Goethe

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 30 Chapter 4

Correspondence book, following the separate letter describing her time with
Beethoven, the text of three other letters she ostensibly sent to Goethe dur-
ing the 1810 Letter Gap. Since none of the four survive and lie within the
1810 Letter Gap, they are portrayed as pure fiction by Bettina critics, yet
they did exist because they were referred to by Goethe in his surviving let-
ters. They are most likely edited versions of the originals, deleting whatever
Bettina may have been trying to hide from her family or the world.
In the Goethe Correspondence book, at the end of the fourth missing
letter from Bettina to Goethe that lay within the 1810 Letter Gap and im-
mediately preceding Goethe’s surviving letter to her dated August 17, she
wrote: “Here there is a gap in the correspondence.” Thus there may have
been more letters from her to Goethe than the four she edited or created
for the book. Goethe’s letter to her dated August 17 was included in the
book exactly as he wrote it except that she left out the date. The surviving
original includes Goethe’s effusive praise for the partially missing letter or
letters to him from her. In a footnote, however, she wrote “the letters and
pages [referred to by Goethe] are missing.”
As we consider what may have happened between Bettina and Goethe
when they met that summer, some light may be shed by several sketches found
in her papers after her death that describe a brief sexual encounter with Goethe
when she looked him up in Teplitz in mid-August. According to the sketches,
the encounter was at least in part instigated by her. This is what one of them
says (the other is substantially the same):

The twilight of evening was falling, this hot August day. . . . He was sitting
at the open window, while I stood before him, my arms around his neck,
my eyes piercing his to their depths, like an arrow. Perhaps he could with-
stand my gaze no longer, for, to break the silence, he asked me whether I
felt hot, and whether I would not like to be cooler? . . . I nodded assent.
He went on, “Why not open your breast to the evening breeze?” As I
did not object, although I blushed, he undid my bodice, looked at me,
and said “The glow of summer has reddened your cheeks.” He kissed my
breast and rested his head on it. “No wonder” said I “for my sun is sinking
to rest upon my bosom.” He gazed at me for a long time, and we were
both silent. He then asked, “Has anyone ever touched your breast?” “No”
I replied; “it is so strange that you should touch me in that way.” Then he
showered kisses on me, many, many, violent kisses. . . . I was frightened . . .
he should have let me go; and yet it was so strangely beautiful. In spite of
myself I smiled, yet feared that this happiness should not last. His burning
lips, his stifled breath—it was like lightning. I was in a whirl of confusion;
my curly hair hung in loose strands. . . . Then he said, softly: “You are
like a storm; your hair falls like rain, your lips dart lightening, your eyes
thunder.” “And you, like Zeus, knit your brows and Olympus trembles.”

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 The Mysterious Missing Letters 31

“When you undress at night, in the future, and the stars shine as now upon
your breasts, will you remember my kisses?” “Yes” “And will you remem-
ber that I should like to cover your bosom with as many kisses as there are
stars in heaven?” . . . The memory of it tears me apart, I long to dissolve
in tears like a cloudy sky.—Never repeat what I confide to you this lonely
night. I have never told it to anyone before.3

One Bettina expert has expressed to me a belief that the sketches are
pure fiction, nothing more than a romantic fantasy on Bettina’s part. Another
expert, the late Konstanze Baumer, expressed to me a contrary belief, namely,
that the sketches were a reasonably accurate description of what happened and
were not fiction. The latter view is supported by Goethe’s surviving letter to
Bettina dated August 17, 1810, mentioned above, written just after the sexual
incident would have taken place, if it did. In it, Goethe uncharacteristically
praises, as noted above, the long letters Bettina sent him that are within the
1810 Letter Gap, then ends with the following:

Please send your next letter to me in care of “X” [coded name] and “Y”
[coded address in Dresden, not Weimar where Goethe lived with his wife]
that follows. How ominous! Oh pain! What will it say?4

Why did Goethe fear what Bettina’s letter of reply might say? Why did
he want it to be sent to a coded addressee and address? As noted above, the
reply did exist because Goethe referred to it in a surviving letter he wrote to
Bettina in October, but he may have destroyed the reply because he did not
want his wife to see it. Alternatively, it is possible Bettina destroyed it if it re-
ferred to the sexual incident because she did not want the contents revealed to
her family or the world after her death. The draft sketches about the sexual en-
counter found in her papers suggest that Bettina may near her death have been
mulling over the wisdom or folly of revealing to the world the truth about
her ambivalent relationship with Goethe. She had taken pains in her Goethe
Correspondence book to emphasize that the relationship was mainly between
an elderly genius and a worshipful young admirer who had not yet come of
legal age. She of course did not know when she would die, and the fact that
the sketches survived does not mean that she intended the truth to come out.
It is possible that either Bettina or Goethe might have destroyed her
letters to him within the 1810 Letter Gap after she saw him in Teplitz in mid-
August because of the possible mention of a sexual incident. However, that
reason does not apply to the letters within the 1810 Letter Gap written before
August 10, the letters that Goethe called “the most interesting of all” that she
had sent him up to then. As noted above, the surviving portion of her July
letter breaks off in midsentence: “and so it’s about Beethoven I now want to

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 32 Chapter 4

speak to you . . . . now watch, the whole world rises and falls around him as
. . . ” There the surviving portion of the letter ends and the puzzling 1810
Letter Gap begins.
The missing separate letter describing Beethoven that she included in the
Goethe Correspondence book, dated May 28, begins with the same words that
immediately preceded the start of the gap in the surviving portion of the July
letter. Because the separate letter describing Beethoven is within the 1810 Let-
ter Gap, Bettina detractors call it a fabrication. The more likely explanation
is that Bettina had her original letter before her when she was preparing her
book, but left out those parts that she was trying to hide from her family or
the world, as theorized below.

THE MISSING LETTERS BETWEEN BEETHOVEN AND BETTINA

As noted in chapter 2, it is inconceivable that Bettina would not have replied

to the plea in Beethoven’s single surviving letter to her dated February 10,
1811, to write to him soon and often. Assuming she did reply and that there
were many letters exchanged between them before his letter to the Immortal
Beloved, then the three that she did publish many years later would have been
only the tip of the iceberg. Yet except for the one letter from Beethoven she
gave away to Nathusius, no other letter to her from him or from her to him
survives. As with her missing letters to Goethe, is it possible that Bettina de-
stroyed all her letters from Beethoven except the one she gave away to Nathu-
sius and therefore could not destroy? If so, what was she attempting to hide?
Whatever it was, it is likely that the reason for destruction of her missing letters
to Goethe written within the 1810 Letter Gap prior to his meeting with her
in Teplitz in August is the same as for destruction of the missing letters from
Beethoven. It was probably linked to the promise she had made to Beethoven,
then broken, relating to his “loss” that she mentioned in her emotional sur-
viving letter to Nathusius, quoted in chapter 3. As noted in chapter 2, more
than 30 years after she met Beethoven, she was visited by Anton Schindler,
Beethoven’s former assistant and first prominent biographer, who asked her
about the letters and Beethoven. Schindler later wrote:

About her relationship with Beethoven, I could not induce her to say a
single word, though she knew of my book about him and knew she was
personally mentioned in the book. Without asking directly if I might ex-
amine the famous letters, I hinted that it was extremely important for me
to see the originals. The esteemed lady would at such times wrap herself in
a deep cloak of silence, pretending to hear nothing I had said.5

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 The Mysterious Missing Letters 33

Why would Bettina destroy some of her letters to Goethe and all of her letters
from Beethoven except the one she gave to Nathusius? And why did she not
show Schindler her letters from Beethoven, at the very least the one that she
gave to Nathusius that today survives?
What Bettina may have been trying to hide by destroying those letters
must by necessity be speculative surmise. It could not have been a physical
love affair with Beethoven (as many thought Beethoven’s love affair with the
Immortal Beloved was), because Bettina was in Berlin and he was in Vienna.
One plausible surmise, hinted at in the letters between her and Goethe that she
included in her Goethe Correspondence book, is that Beethoven had praised her
musical ability and the songs she had written and suggested she might consider
devoting herself to music. For example, see the last portion of her missing let-
ter to Goethe replying to his missing letter of June 6, 1810, where she wrote:
“Beethoven has seen them, and paid me many compliments about them; as
that, if I had devoted myself to this art, I might have built high hopes upon
it, but I only touch it in flight, for my art is laughing and sighing in a breath,
and beyond this I have none.”
It is therefore possible that Beethoven may have suggested that she be-
come his apprentice in order to ultimately take up a career of her own in
music. This of itself is harmless enough and would enhance, not hurt, her
reputation, but if later letters between her and Beethoven showed that she
seriously reconsidered Beethoven’s offer after her marriage, it would indicate a
basic dissatisfaction with the marriage that she would not want her children or
family to know of. Did she promise Beethoven in those later letters that she
would join him as his assistant and muse, then break that promise?6 As noted
in chapter 3, when she gave Nathusius one of her letters from Beethoven, she
wrote about breaking a promise she had made to Beethoven. Her letters to
Beethoven may have revealed her doubts about the wisdom of the marriage,
and also may have contained negative references to her husband, from whom
she later separated. She could not let these confessions be revealed publicly,
lest her children learn of them. She always promoted her husband to her
children as a great writer. In order to hide all evidence of the possibility of
abandoning her marriage and becoming Beethoven’s assistant and muse, she
may have decided to destroy all mention of it, starting with her original letter
to Goethe describing her meeting with Beethoven in Vienna in 1810, even
before she decided to marry.
A few weeks after Beethoven might have raised this possibility, Bettina
initially refused Arnim’s marriage proposal, saying she wanted to devote her
life to music and political and social causes. She did this in mid-June, and
the surviving portion of her lengthy letter to Goethe in which she began to
describe what happened between her and Beethoven was started on July 28,

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 34 Chapter 4

a few weeks after Arnim’s marriage proposal. Faced with a choice between
a financially comfortable conventional marriage and a financially risky life in
a strange city collaborating with an eccentric musical genius, would Bettina
write to Goethe asking for his advice? In August, on her way to Berlin to join
her sister, she made, as noted in chapter 2, a detour to Teplitz, where Goethe
was vacationing. Would she have asked him in person for advice she had pre-
viously asked for in the missing portion of her July letter to him? Afterward
Goethe wrote a surviving letter to his wife that, during Bettina’s visit with
him, the young woman spoke endlessly about “old and new adventures,” but
it seemed to him that she had decided marriage to Arnim was the way she
would go.7 If she speculated about her long-term future in the missing por-
tions of her letters to Goethe during the 1810 Letter Gap, it would explain
why the last portion of her July letter, including what happened between
her and Beethoven a few weeks before, is today missing. The description of
Beethoven himself, however, would have in all likelihood been repeated by
her albeit in an expurgated form in her Goethe Correspondence book.
If this surmise is correct, it would also explain why she would want to
destroy all her Beethoven correspondence except the letter of February 1811
(which she could not destroy because she had given it away to Nathusius),
because in that correspondence the possibility of her joining Beethoven after
her marriage was again raised and discussed.
But what about Bettina’s letters to Beethoven? As noted in chapter 2, in
his surviving letter to her of February 1811, he acknowledged receiving two
from her within the few months after she left Vienna in June 1810. They were
apparently so important to him that he carried one of them around with him
all summer. The most likely surmise is that out of a sense of chivalry, knowing
that her reputation as a married woman with seven children could be seri-
ously compromised if her letters to him were discovered, Beethoven destroyed
them. But he kept his letter to her as his Immortal Beloved hidden away as a
memento of his deep, unrequited love for her.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Based on the facts and probabilities discussed in this chapter and in chapter 3,
I invite the reader to arrive at the following conclusions, as I have:
1. The missing letters from Bettina to Goethe during the 1810 Letter
Gap, and some from him to her within that gap, were not destroyed
by Goethe nor lost, but were destroyed by Bettina.
2. All of the missing letters from Beethoven to Bettina except the one
she gave away to Nathusius were destroyed by Bettina.

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 The Mysterious Missing Letters 35

3. All of the missing letters from Bettina to Beethoven were destroyed

by Beethoven at her request.
4. A likely reason these letters were destroyed by Bettina or at her re-
quest is that they mentioned her ambivalence about her marriage to
Arnim before she decided to marry him, as well as a brief intention to
leave him to pursue a career in music after the birth of her first child.
She would not want the world and especially her children and grand-
children to know of her doubts about the marriage. She wanted to
appear loyal to and loving of Arnim in the eyes of her children.
5. Beethoven’s letter to his Immortal Beloved was not destroyed by Bettina
because she never received it, and it was not destroyed by Beethoven
because it did not reveal the identity of its intended recipient.
6. The only reason Bettina allowed three letters she received from
Beethoven to be published was that they were the only ones that did
not mention her ambivalence about her marriage.
7. Bettina’s letters to and from Goethe during the 1810 Letter Gap were
faithfully reproduced by her in the Goethe Correspondence book but in
an edited (censored) form, deleting any reference to a possible career
in music as an alternative to marriage.

NOTES

1. Helps and Howard, Bettina, 171–2; Thayer Forbes, 492–3; and Heinz Härtl,
ed., Bettina von Arnim, Werke, Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kind, Vol. 1 (Berlin and
Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1986), 666–70.
2. See Goethe Correspondence book (German), 689.
3. Rolland, Goethe and Beethoven, 171–2.
4. Goethe Correspondence book (German), 688.
5. Schindler, Beethoven, 158.
6. This possibility was raised by Ann Willison Lemke in her doctoral dissertation
Bettine’s Song: The Musical Voice of Bettine von Arnim, née Brentano (Ann Arbor, Mich.:
UMI Dissertation Services, 1998), 35. Bettina certainly aspired to become Goethe’s
muse. See Jan Swafford, “A Virtuoso Muse,” Guardian, August 23, 2003.
7. Fritz Böttger, Bettina von Arnim: Ihr Leben, ihre Begegnungen, ihre Zeit (Mu-
nich: Scherz, 1990), 108; Heinz Härtl, Bettina von Arnim 1785–1859: Eine Chronik
(Wiepersdorf, Germany: Stiftung Kulturfonds Künstlerheim Bettina von Arnim, n.d.),
17; Ingeborg Drewitz, Bettine von Arnim (Munich: Goldmann Verlag, 1989), 79.

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 •• 51 ••

The Teplitz Letter

Chapter
and the
TitleIlius Manuscript

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BEETHOVEN’S

1812 TEPLITZ LETTER TO BETTINA

Of the three letters to Bettina from Beethoven that she caused to be pub-
lished in 1839, the first two chronologically were written by Beethoven in
Vienna and mailed to Bettina in Berlin, one in 1810 and the second in 1811.
The third (the “Teplitz Letter”) was written by Beethoven in Teplitz in July
1812, and, as outlined in chapter 2, was handed to Bettina by him a few days
after she arrived there just as he unexpectedly was leaving town.1 The original
of the Teplitz Letter is missing today, but if it were found and established as
authentic, I believe it would prove that Bettina is the Immortal Beloved. In
the published version, as explained in chapter 2, Beethoven writes a touching
farewell, saying that even “spirits can love one another,” and ending with the
words “God, how I love you!” Appendix C contains an English translation of
the letter in its entirety. It was written less than three weeks after the letter to
the Immortal Beloved, the latter being intended to be sent to Karlsbad, where
Bettina and her husband Achim von Arnim had planned to go. However, as
noted in chapter 2, Bettina’s sister talked him into going to Teplitz instead,
where Beethoven was.2 Beethoven never mailed his letter to his Immortal
Beloved. The reason may be that she had just arrived in Teplitz.
Because the Teplitz Letter was not found in Bettina’s possessions after her
death, and because of the liberties that Bettina took with the letters between
her and Goethe in her Goethe Correspondence book, most scholars today believe
that it was concocted by her (see chapter 9). I have attempted to show in chap-
ters 4 and 5 of this book that they are wrong, and that the reason it has not
been found is that Bettina destroyed it, for the reasons set out in chapter 4. As

36

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 The Teplitz Letter and the Ilius Manuscript 37

mentioned in chapter 2, the second of the three Beethoven letters, written in

February 1811, survives and is today accepted as authentic. The purpose of this
chapter is to establish beyond all reasonable doubt that the first and third let-
ters that Bettina caused to be published in 1839 (including the Teplitz Letter)
were authentic and not concocted by her. The significance of establishing that
the Teplitz Letter is authentic is that it proves, beyond any reasonable doubt,
Bettina was Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved.

THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE TEPLITZ LETTER

First of all, it should be noted that Bettina never claimed to be the Immortal
Beloved, and she may not have even known about the Immortal Beloved let-
ter because it was never mailed. A link between the issue of the authenticity
of the Teplitz Letter and the issue of the identity of the Immortal Beloved has
not been made because until relatively recently, most researchers thought that
the letter to the Immortal Beloved was written some years prior to 1812, before
Beethoven met Bettina.
The Teplitz Letter was in fact published three times by Bettina, twice in
literary and political journals in 1839 and 1841 when she was in her 50s, and
then again six years afterward in her Ilius book, which was, like her Goethe
Correspondence book, modeled on the form of epistolary novel made popular
by Goethe. She was urged to make the first two publications in literary and
political journals by Moritz Carrière, a prominent Berlin professor, for political
reasons, because of Beethoven’s attack on royalty and on Goethe’s fawning
attitude toward it described in the Teplitz Letter. Goethe and his increasingly
conservative political views were still controversial in Germany in Carrière’s
circles. Professor Carrière publicly stated afterward that he had seen the
original and it corresponded to what was published.3 Because of the growing
controversy about the authenticity of the three Beethoven letters, including
the Teplitz Letter, as published by Bettina in the literary and political journals,
Alexander Thayer, the leading Beethoven biographer in the second half of the
19th century, obtained through the American consul in Nürnberg a certifica-
tion by Julius Merz, the distinguished publisher of the literary and political
journal in which the three letters were first published, that he had copied the
text from the originals of the letters and then given them back to Bettina.4
As noted above, the third time Bettina published the Teplitz Letter was
in 1846 in her Ilius book. That book contained, as noted in chapter 3, cor-
respondence she exchanged around 1840 with two young literary acolytes,
Philipp Nathusius and Julius Döring. She was then in her 50s and they were

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 38 Chapter 5

in their 20s. In that correspondence, the acolyte named Ilius in the book
(Nathusius) writes asking Bettina for a single letter each from Beethoven and
Goethe’s mother for his autograph collection. In Bettina’s letter of response,
she describes giving Ilius the two letters he asked for, but she includes the
text of all three Beethoven letters she had published several years before.
Presumably for textual balance, she also includes the text of three letters to
her from Goethe’s mother. It is clear from Bettina’s letter to Ilius, however,
that she gave him only one letter from each of the two groups of three. The
only changes that she made in the Ilius book to the Beethoven letters that
she had previously published in the literary and political journals was that
in the Ilius book, her own name was replaced, wherever Beethoven wrote
it, with a generic name, so that “Dear Bettine,” for example, became “Dear
Friend.” As noted in chapter 3, this was because she changed the actual
names of living persons in the Ilius book to fictional or generic names as if
it were an epistolary novel.
The single letter from Beethoven that she gave to Nathusius was found
in his family property after his death in 1872. It was identical to what had
been published in the literary and political journals, and except for the name
change, it was also virtually identical to the letter as it appeared in the Ilius
book. In addition to the single Beethoven letter found in Nathusius’s estate,
all three letters from Goethe’s mother that Bettina published in the Ilius
book survive, and except for the name changes and minor corrections of
grammar and spelling, they too are identical to those letters as they appeared
in the Ilius book.
In summary, of the three letters from Goethe’s mother and three from
Beethoven published in the Ilius book, four today are extant, but the other
two, both from Beethoven, including the Teplitz Letter, are not. The four ex-
tant letters correspond almost exactly to the text of those letters as published in
the Ilius book, except for the name changes and a few grammatical and spelling
corrections made by Bettina in the letters from Goethe’s mother.

THE ILIUS MANUSCRIPT

Papers in Bettina’s estate that were auctioned off in 1929 included the original
manuscript of the Ilius book that she sent to and got back from the printer, as
well as small portions of the original printer’s proof. The rest of the printer’s
proof was presumably returned to the printer with editorial corrections made
by her that included the name changes and corrections of grammar and spell-

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 The Teplitz Letter and the Ilius Manuscript 39

ing. The manuscript found in her estate includes all three letters from Goethe’s
mother and all three from Beethoven carefully copied out in Bettina’s own
hand. It is significant that the copies of these letters in the manuscript do not show the
name changes and minor corrections of grammar and spelling that were subsequently
made when the Ilius book was published. Those name changes and grammar and
spelling corrections must have been made by Bettina to the first proof she
received from the printer.
A word-for-word comparison of the text of the four letters that today sur-
vive (one from Beethoven and three from Goethe’s mother) with those letters as
copied out by Bettina in the Ilius manuscript shows that the copies are identical
to the four found originals. Bettina therefore had the originals before her when
she copied them for the Ilius manuscript. That manuscript is located today in
the Goethe Archive in Düsseldorf.5 A copy of one page of the Teplitz Letter as
copied out by Bettina for the Ilius manuscript is shown in illustration 8.
The fact that four of the six letters in the Ilius manuscript are identical to
the extant originals leads to the irresistible conclusion that the other two in the
manuscript—the two missing letters from Beethoven, including the Teplitz
Letter—are also identical to the originals.6
Given Carrière’s public verification of the authenticity of the Teplitz Let-
ter as published, the certification of the authenticity of the Teplitz Letter for
Thayer by its publisher Merz, and the fact that four of the six letters copied out
in the Ilius manuscript survive and are identical to the surviving autographs,
there can be no reasonable doubt that the Teplitz Letter as copied out by
Bettina for the Ilius manuscript is identical to the original. That being so, it is
equally certain that the Teplitz Letter is genuine and that Bettina is therefore
the Immortal Beloved.
As to the other missing letter from Beethoven written in 1810 and pub-
lished by Bettina in 1839 and in the Ilius book, its authenticity is established
beyond any reasonable doubt based on the same evidence that establishes the
authenticity of the Teplitz Letter, but with one additional piece of corrobo-
rating evidence. As noted in chapter 2, in the missing 1810 letter, Beethoven
wrote that he was including with it a song he composed to a poem by Goethe
entitled New Love, New Life. As noted in chapter 2, the first page of that song
is today extant and has an inscription in Beethoven’s handwriting on the re-
verse side saying “For Bettina von Brentano—set to music by Beethoven.”
The page of the song with the inscription is today in the Beethoven Haus in
Bonn, and it bears fold marks consistent with being folded up in a sealed letter
of the kind used in 1810. A copy of the page is shown in illustration 6. The
remaining pages of the song, which were found in Bettina’s belongings and
were sold in 1929, are today in the Morgan Library in New York.

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 40 Chapter 5

THE SURVIVING 1811 LETTER FROM BEETHOVEN

As noted earlier in this chapter, Bettina first published in 1839 in a literary

and political journal the surviving 1811 letter to her from Beethoven, as well
as two others dated in 1810 and 1812. She probably did this for the political
reasons mentioned above as she was urged to do by Carrière. A few years
afterward, as noted in chapter 3, Bettina wrote in a surviving letter to Nathu-
sius that she was giving him one letter from Beethoven, presumably the extant
1811 letter, because it turned up many years afterward in the possession of the
Nathusius family, and a facsimile of it was reproduced in the 1884 edition of
Marx’s biography of Beethoven, as more fully described in chapter 9.
From there, the trail of the whereabouts of the 1811 letter grows cold.
Two world wars intervened, then the letter turned up in a 1990 Sotheby’s
auction in London, where it was sold for about $170,000 to anonymous Japa-
nese buyers. In New York in 1998, I was able to interview the previous owner
of the letter, Mrs. Felix Salzer, who had provided it to Sotheby’s. It had been
in the possession of her late husband, Dr. Felix Salzer. A few weeks after our
meeting, she wrote me a letter, saying, “I have decided that one should re-
ally know how this particular Beethoven letter got into the possession of my
late husband.” As she explained, the letter came into his possession through
Dr. Salzer’s mother, who was the sister of the eminent Viennese philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein.

When we had to go to Vienna after the death of my husband’s mother . . .

we had to go through some of her belongings and found in an armoire of
household laundry the Beethoven manuscript wrapped in a newspaper. As
a matter of fact it was a newspaper printed in Vienna of the time of Hitler’s
regime. I do not know the date of those newspaper pages. . . . the pack-
age was hidden behind some sheets etc. on a shelf. . . . By coincidence we
found it. . . . No doubt the mother of my husband was afraid that the letter
could be discovered by a search of the Nazis and thought probably that this
was a good hiding place, and indeed it was.

I attempted a number of years ago to contact the anonymous Japanese buyers

of the letter through Sotheby’s but received no reply.

NOTES

1. Edward Walden, “The Authenticity of the 1812 Beethoven Letter to Bettina

von Arnim,” Beethoven Journal 14, no. 2 (1999): 11.

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 The Teplitz Letter and the Ilius Manuscript 41

2. Reinhold Steig and Herman Grimm, eds., Achim von Arnim und die ihm nahe
standen, 3 vols. (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1970), 1:302–3.
3. Thayer English, 2:185.
4. Thayer English, 2:185.
5. The author extends grateful thanks to Prof. Dr. Volkmar Hansen (direktor), Fr.
Heike Spies (kustodin), and the rest of their staff at the Goethe Museum, Düsseldorf,
for the assistance they provided in research there. He also thanks Dr. Norbert Trobitz
for his invaluable assistance in leafing through and helping to decipher the many pages
of the lengthy Ilius manuscript.
6. As will be described in greater detail in chapter 11, Dr. Renate Moering of
Frankfurt/Main wrote a paper entitled “Bettine von Arnims Literarische Umsetzung
Ihres Beethoven-Erlebnisses,” published by the Beethoven Haus in Bonn in Der ‘männ-
liche’ und der ‘weibliche’ Beethoven (2004), 251–77. There she claims that the follow-
ing two facts prove Bettina concocted the other two Beethoven letters: (1) the one
Beethoven letter to Bettina that has been found was written on a different kind of
paper in the Ilius manuscript than the other two Beethoven letters in that manuscript,
and (2) the other two Beethoven letters in the manuscript contained many cross-
outs. The short answer to these contentions is as follows: (1) One of the letters from
Goethe’s mother and one of the Beethoven letters (the one she gave to Nathusius) are
both copied out on the same kind of paper with an 1839 watermark and were presum-
ably copied by Bettina before she gave them to Nathusius. The other four letters are
all on a different kind of paper, and must have been copied out afterward. All three
letters from Goethe’s mother have been found, and the different type of paper they
were written on does not establish they were concocted. (2) The copies in the Ilius
manuscript of all three letters from Goethe’s mother contain cross-outs, as does the
copy of the found Beethoven letter, yet all four of these have been found. In fact, the
main cross-out in the Ilius manuscript copy of the extant Beethoven letter duplicates
Beethoven’s own cross-out in the original.

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 •• 61 ••

Bettina’s
Chapter
Concept
Title
of Love

BETTINA’S 1810 LETTER TO GOETHE

Bettina wrote to Goethe in January 1810, when she was 24 and unmarried
and he was 60 and apparently happily married. A portion of that extant letter
reads as follows:

Dearest, kindly Goethe! [you are] the sunshine of my life that even in mid-
winter glistens from the snow-covered roofs and reflects into my room. I keep
for myself my neighbor’s roof, that every morning glistens in the sun as a
symbol of my memory of you [and] that every morning refreshes me.
Without you would I have become as morose as if I had been born
blind, and had no concept of light from heaven; You!! A clear moon-bathed
fountain from which one can catch the stars for drinking with the hollow of
the hand.—We are all entwined as if enslaved children with bowed heads,
but the artist like you is a free person in Nature, and carries Nature’s picture
in his heart, and proffers it to us to kiss and to worship.—The time will
come when I will repay you, beloved Goethe; by repayment, I mean that I
will embrace you with my warm loving arms.
That I [must] express in writing [what I want to say] is as strange as
if one lip was speaking to the other, [saying] “listen, I have something to
say to you”; and wanted to lead it [the other lip] into a serious conversation.
Consequently nothing would come out of my letters other than the conscious-
ness of my love, my innermost closeness to you. . . .
And yet it is a fact that I am far away from you, but I assure you that
every evening I sleep in your arms.

42

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 Bettina’s Concept of Love 43

Don’t burn my letters, don’t tear them up, it could otherwise do you
harm—so steadfastly and truly alive is the love that I express in them for you,
that I can only speak of it aloud [to myself] but show them to no one—keep it
hidden, like a secret beauty; my love fits you beautifully! excitingly! heavenly!
Through the night a marvelous living thing frequently awakes and flour-
ishes, like a Turkish coffee bean, which depends on a crescent moon, but with
the first ray of sunshine withers away into its roots; I would be now with you
just as in the evening; the daylight would have been cleansed away, it would be
quiet in the house, I would sit at your feet, would have laid my hand on your
lap, look at you, sensuously warm, as if one is alone with a friend, and hears
nothing from the outside world, only the barking of dogs from faraway alleys—
then would you certainly kiss me, and call me a thousand affectionate names,
and call me your very own. This is only a thought that wells up through the
night, and fades like the Turkish coffee bean with the early morning light.1

BETTINA AS BEETHOVEN’S IMMORTAL BELOVED

Near the end of his letter to the Immortal Beloved, Beethoven wrote: “Much
as you love me—I love you more. . . . Your love makes me at once the
happiest and the unhappiest of men.” About these words, the eminent 19th-
century biographer of Beethoven, Alexander Thayer, wrote: “the tone of the
last part of the letter particularly is that of one who is making up his mind and
is attempting to convince one fully in love with him of the necessity of [a]
decision.” I ask the reader to conclude, as I contend in chapter 2, that Bettina
wrote letters to Beethoven similar to the one to Goethe after she received
Beethoven’s surviving 1811 letter to her, leading him to reply as he did in his
letter to the Immortal Beloved.
As was noted in chapter 1, Max Unger, one of the leading experts on the
question of the Immortal Beloved in the first half of the 20th century, wrote in
a 1910 paper that Bettina met all the geographical, time, and psychological re-
quirements that would prove she was the Immortal Beloved. He ultimately con-
cluded, however, that because Bettina apparently loved her husband, she could
not be the woman. He turned then to others, and finally threw up his hands in
despair.2 Unger overlooked, however, diary notations made by Bettina’s long-
time acquaintance Karl Varnhagen von Ense, who lived in Berlin at the same
time as Bettina in her later years, saying that she repeated to him twice over the
course of 25 years that she did not marry Achim von Arnim for love but because
he had paid her the honor of asking her to be the mother of his child.3

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 44 Chapter 6

If Bettina did not marry Arnim for love, did she nevertheless love him?
More importantly, did she love Beethoven or at least tell him she loved him?
If she did not, she cannot be the Immortal Beloved.
Bettina’s confession to Varnhagen reflects her ambivalence toward love
and also to marriage. As noted in chapter 2, when Arnim first asked her to
marry him, she told him she was considering foregoing marriage and devoting
herself to “music and the causes of the time.”4 She expressed to Varnhagen’s
wife, Rahel, a disdain for the very institution of marriage, recorded by Rahel
in her 1810 diary. Bettina’s father had married twice and fathered 10 living
children as well as eight that did not survive. Her mother was unhappy in her
marriage and had an affair while married with the youthful Goethe. Bettina
must have wondered, in those male-dominant times, if she had been put on
earth only to create and be a mother to children. She loved literature, society,
and above all music.
In a letter to Arnim before she married him, she wrote:
Do you know why you like being with me better than with other girls?
Is it because I can’t love you in the same way others do, and because you
don’t understand that, and because you are not meant to love me like other
people, but like myself. I love music, it is more to me than life, it can keep
me occupied; I love nature too, the summer out of doors, when only God’s
hand has been active, not man’s, and I love Goethe.5

Bettina, who like Beethoven appears to have been very self-centered,

was puzzled by what love was. As she wrote to Arnim before her marriage:
You ask me . . . what is true love: I don’t clearly know the answer. We
are happier when we love because we feel a life in ourselves, and more
unhappy because the effort disturbs us. It always seems to me that our
longings, hopes and desires for happiness are like a river torrent beating
up against a dam. It is the heavenly quality of love which makes the heart
struggle; that it is deviated from the dam from its course is owing to the
earthliness and weakness of mankind. True love would flow so strongly
that it would surmount the dam and calmly resume its majestic course,
with clearly defined banks so that it is no longer the plaything of fate. I
often do not know, in my great desire for love, which way to turn; I feel
that I no longer have a dam to surmount, but that my shallow course runs
through a wilderness, and no pleasant banks are reflected on the surface of
the stream. . . . I think if one really is in love one loves the whole world,
and the world becomes a mirror for the images of the loved one, like a
stream reflects its banks.

It therefore becomes appropriate to consider how and if she loved the three
most important men in her life: Arnim, Goethe, and Beethoven. Portraits of

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 Bettina’s Concept of Love 45

the handsome Arnim and the aging Goethe are shown in illustrations 4 and
3, respectively.

BETTINA’S LOVE FOR ARNIM

Despite what Bettina told Varnhagen, there nevertheless seems to be some

justification for Unger’s statement that she loved her husband. Consider, for
example, the following extracts from her letters to Arnim.

I am still very fond of you, I might say I get fonder every day, but I have
lost my troubled longing to see you. I think this is because I have the nature
of a swallow. It is spring and I should like to travel as far as the sun lights
my path, not bothering about the friends I leave behind. Can you care for
girls who are like swallows?

These words were written before her marriage. Six years into her marriage,
she wrote:

There was a time when the endings of your letters were like arms clasping
me to your heart, this time you merely write “farewell.” Farewell then
Arnim, but I am annoyed with you, you are not a bit affectionate, you hug
me about once in a blue moon, and you don’t kiss me as I should like to
be kissed.

Twelve years into her marriage, she wrote:

You are a poet and if you were not my husband I should want to make
love to you, and every poem or story you wrote would draw me closer
to you: as true as I live I would not [if I were in your place] bother about
your shriveled old wife, all she need get is her daily bread and a few words
and marital kisses.

These quotes suggest that the love Bettina and Arnim shared was intensely
physical.

BETTINA’S LOVE FOR GOETHE

As noted in previous chapters, Bettina’s relationship with Goethe was com-

plex. He had courted her married mother, and Bettina had read his letters
to her grandmother rhapsodizing about her mother. Bettina also became

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 46 Chapter 6

immersed in Goethe’s poetry, novels, and plays before she met him. As soon
as the opportunity arose, she traveled dressed as a man, as noted in chapter
2, to faraway Weimar in 1807 to meet him. He was then already in his
late 50s, but she had not achieved the age of majority, which was then 25.
When she visited him again in Teplitz in 1810, they may have had a brief
sexual encounter of some kind (see chapter 4). The letters they exchanged
afterward show that she continued to idolize and revere him. Because of the
love affair her mother had with the youthful Goethe, Bettina even fantasized
that she might be his daughter.
Her letters to Goethe spoke frequently of her love for him. She wrote
lines such as “It would pain me if I could not joyfully follow you, if my love
could not find that path which is always near to you, even as my heart is and
was to yours,” and “who loves you like me sings of you in my deepest heart,”
and “how is it that I flourish and blossom in this wilderness? From where
comes to me the dew, the sap, the warmth? . . . it is because . . . of my love
for you.” Goethe wrote to her in the same vein, “Love me until we see one
another again,” he said in his extant letter to her of October 25, 1810.6
One of the most extraordinary letters that Bettina wrote to Goethe was
dated January 8, 1810. A portion of it is set out at the beginning of this chap-
ter. It is so intimate that she excluded it from her Goethe Correspondence book.
It is not entirely clear whether the love for Goethe she spoke of in her letters
was love of the spirit, love of the intellect, love of the heart, physical love, or
some combination of all. If the love she meant was physical, it may have led
to the possible sexual encounter with Goethe when she paid him a surprise
visit in Teplitz in August 1810 (see chapter 4).
Before Bettina married Arnim, she made him promise, as noted in
chapter 2, that she could maintain her relationship with Goethe despite the
marriage and that he would never be jealous of Goethe. At that stage in her
life, she appears not to have made any distinction between the different kinds
of love.
Her apparent love for Goethe continued even after he ostracized her at
the behest of his wife in 1811. After Goethe’s death, Bettina published her
Goethe Correspondence book to raise money to create a sculpted monument in
his likeness.

BETTINA’S LOVE FOR BEETHOVEN

There are several clues as to Bettina’s initial impressions and memories of

Beethoven. Two may be gleaned from what she wrote shortly after she had
met him in Vienna in 1810. To a friend, she wrote in a surviving letter that

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 Bettina’s Concept of Love 47

she had become “excessively [unendlich] fond of this man.”7 To Goethe she
wrote in a missing letter:

Each day brought new joy, and each delight was a source of interesting
communications. Above all this, Beethoven was prominent; the great
super-spiritual one, who introduced us into an invisible world, and our
impulse to the powers of life, so that one felt the confined “self ” widened
to a universe of spirits. Pity that he is not here in this solitude.8

These words from her Goethe Correspondence book show that Bettina at
that early stage of her life (she was just 25) linked the concept of idealized
spiritual love with Beethoven. Yet in what she wrote in a surviving letter to
her friend Prince Hermann Pückler-Muskau 22 years later, there are hints of
recollections of a physical connection between her and Beethoven.9 In that
letter, she mentioned that Beethoven let her stroke his hair while he was
making musical notations to the score of one of the songs he sang to her,
and that he kissed her hand when they were about to leave his apartment.
She also said that when he played and sang to her at their first meeting, his
voice became harsh because of the urge of passion. Bettina’s memory of their
first meeting clearly shows that she was aware of the distinction between
spiritual love and physical love.
In any case, Beethoven was on her mind after she left Vienna in 1810.
As noted in chapter 2, in Beethoven’s 1811 letter to her that is today extant,
he mentions that she had already sent him two letters. It is apparent that she
did not come easily to her decision to marry. After the marriage, her preg-
nancy became a physical and psychological burden, and she almost died at the
birth of her first child.10 She idolized genius and could no longer express her
innermost thoughts and emotions in letters to Goethe because of his ostra-
cism of her in 1811. Her greatest artistic love was music. It would have been
natural for her to rethink her initial decision to marry. That she would have
substituted Beethoven for Goethe as a sounding board to express her emo-
tional turmoil is, I submit, quite likely. After the near-fatal childbirth, she may
well have asked herself whether she should remain in a traditional marriage
and continue to bear her husband children, as her mother did before she died,
or forgo the pleasures and agonies of that kind of life for a life in the field of
music with an eccentric musical genius.
Assuming she wrote to Beethoven often between 1811 and 1812 us-
ing the same kind of language about loving him as she did with Goethe, it
would, as I argued in chapter 2, have stimulated Beethoven to believe her love
for him could possibly become physical as well as spiritual. The ambivalent
thoughts, hopes, and expressions expressed in his letter to the Immortal Be-
loved looked at in this light suddenly become clear. On the one hand, his love

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 48 Chapter 6

seems spiritual in nature. As he wrote in his letter to the Immortal Beloved,

“Is not our love truly a celestial mansion, yet as solid as the fortress of Heaven?
. . . Yes, I am resolved to wander far away until I can fly to your arms and say
that I have found my true home with you, and can send my soul, surrounded
by you, into the realm of spirits.” On the other hand, he wrote the following,
hesitatingly, almost as if it were only a hope and wish: “I talk to myself and to
you—arrange that I can live with you, what a life!!!!”11
In the late years of her life, Bettina appears to have had no doubt about
the kind of love for her Beethoven had in mind. She told Varnhagen that
Beethoven “was in love with her, not just platonically” (“nicht bloss pla-
tonisch in sie verliebt gewesen”).12
It is too speculative to attempt to fathom the kind of love Bettina would
have had in mind when she wrote to Beethoven about loving him at this dif-
ficult time in her life. Which kind or kinds of love would best fulfill what her
mind, her heart, her emotions, and her body wanted and needed then? How-
ever, as submitted in chapter 2, she apparently decided that she would stay as a
wife with her husband and child, and that she likely told this to Beethoven as
soon as they met in Teplitz. In Beethoven’s Teplitz Letter to Bettina, written
only two and a half weeks after his letter to the Immortal Beloved and pre-
sumably after Bettina told him that she would stay with Arnim, he wrote: “A
musician is like a poet, and by a pair of eyes he can feel himself suddenly trans-
ported into a lovelier world where mighty spirits join with him to give him
daunting challenges. . . . Even minds can love one another, and I shall always
court yours.” (This letter, translated into English, is reproduced in appendix C.)
This was the bravest face Beethoven could put on Bettina’s decision. He
left Teplitz suddenly the next day, forgetting to take even his travel papers
with him. His heart was broken.

NOTES

1. Goethe Correspondence book (German), 671–3.

2. Unger, “Auf Spüren,” 52–74.
3. Wilhelm Schellberg and Friedrich Fuchs, eds., Die Andacht zum Menschenbild
(Bern: Herbert Lang, 1970), 164.
4. Rolland, Goethe and Beethoven, 17.
5. All the quotes in this chapter from Bettina’s letters to Arnim may be found in
Helps and Howard, Bettina, 57–73.
6. The quotes from Bettina’s letters to Goethe in this paragraph, all taken from the
Goethe Correspondence book, are illustrative only. The quote from an extant letter of
Goethe to Bettina is found in the Goethe Correspondence book (German), 2:689.
7. Sonneck, Impressions, 77.

10-622_Walden.indb 48 12/17/10 7:33 AM

 Bettina’s Concept of Love 49

8. Goethe Correspondence book, 294.

9. Sonneck, Impressions, 84.
10. Wolfgang Bunzel and Ulrike Landfester, eds., Bettine von Arnims Briefwechsel mit
ihren Söhnen (Göttigen: Wallstein, 1999), 1:85.
11. This is from Virginia Beahrs’s translation (see appendix A). In footnote 15 to
her translation, Beahrs says that the sentence “suggests further wishful thinking on
Beethoven’s part in telling the Beloved and himself, still in imagination, to find a way
to live together.”
12. Alfred Kalischer, Beethoven und Berlin (Berlin: Schuster and Loeffler, 1908), 92.

10-622_Walden.indb 49 12/17/10 7:33 AM

 1. Bettina Brentano in her youth. Courtesy
Freundeskreis Schloss Wiepersdorf,
Museum Schloss Wiepersdorf

2. Ludwig van Beethoven, oil

painting by Isidor Neugass, 1806.
Beethoven Haus, Bonn, Germany

10-622_PSpread.indd A 12/20/10 11:22 AM

 3. Portrait of Goethe by Franz
Kügelgen, 1810/1811. Photographer
© Ursula Edelmann—ARTOTHEK

4. Portrait of Achim von Arnim,

Bettina’s husband, by Peter
Ströhling, 1804. Photographer ©
Ursula Edelmann—ARTOTHEK

10-622_PSpread.indd B 12/20/10 11:22 AM

 5a. Page 1 of Beethoven’s Letter to the Immortal Beloved. Bildarchiv Preussischer Kultur-
besitz / Art Resource, New York

10-622_PSpread.indd C 12/20/10 11:22 AM

 5b. Page 10 of Beethoven’s Letter to the Immortal Beloved. Bildarchiv Preussischer Kul-
turbesitz / Art Resource, New York

10-622_PSpread.indd D 12/20/10 11:22 AM

 6. First page of copyist’s score of Beethoven’s song “Neue Liebe, Neues Leben” (“New
Love, New Life”). Along the right-hand side of the page, in Beethoven’s handwrit-
ing: “For Bettine von Brentano.” At the bottom of the right-hand side of the page, in
Beethoven’s handwriting: “Set to Music by Beethoven.” Beethoven Haus, Bonn, Col-
lection H. C. Bodmer

10-622_PSpread.indd E 12/20/10 11:22 AM

 7a. Illustration of first page of Beethoven’s surviving 1811 letter to Bettina, as shown in Sotheby’s
1990 Auction Catalogue for the Salzer Collection. Courtesy Sotheby’s London

10-622_PSpread.indd F 12/20/10 11:22 AM

 7b. Illustration of second page of Beethoven’s surviving 1811 letter to Bettina, as shown in So-
theby’s 1990 Auction Catalogue for the Salzer Collection. Courtesy Sotheby’s London

10-622_PSpread.indd G 12/20/10 11:22 AM

 8. First page of Beethoven’s 1812 Teplitz Letter to Bettina, as handwritten by Bettina for her Ilius
manuscript. Courtesy Goethe Museum, Anton und Katharina Kippenberg Stiftung, Düsseldorf

10-622_PSpread.indd H 12/20/10 11:22 AM

 9. Last page of surviving 1817 letter from Beethoven to Bettina’s half
brother, showing “double B” seal stamped next to Beethoven’s signa-
ture. From the collection of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven
Studies, San José State University

10. Illustration of “double B” seal

affixed by Bettina to an 1815 letter
from her. Freies Deutches Hochstift
/ Frankfurter Goethe Museum

11. Illustration of plaster relief

medallion of Beethoven found among
Bettina’s possessions after her death.
The Frankfurter Goethe Museum
speculates that it was a gift to Bettina
from Beethoven. Freies Deutches
Hochstift / Frankfurter Goethe
Museum

10-622_PSpread.indd I 12/20/10 11:22 AM

 12. Illustration of facsimile of Beethoven’s 1811 sonnet
written for Bettina, as contained in Waldmüller’s 1861
publication.

10-622_PSpread.indd J 12/20/10 11:22 AM

 •• 71 ••

The Beethoven–Bettina
Chapter Title Romance

BETTINA’S DESCRIPTIONS OF HER

TIME IN VIENNA WITH BEETHOVEN

A s described in chapter 2, Bettina made a long journey in 1810 with her

sister Gunda and Gunda’s husband, Friedrich Savigny, during which she trav-
eled from a town near Munich eventually on to Berlin, where Savigny would
take up a new post as a professor. On their way, they spent three and a half
weeks in Vienna, where they stayed with Bettina’s half brother Franz Bren-
tano and his wife Antonie. While there Bettina, who had recently turned 25,
looked up the famous 39-year-old musician Beethoven and, as shown later
in this chapter, spent about a week exchanging visits with him. (How often
she and Beethoven spent time together is disputed by Bettina skeptics but will
be verified later in this chapter.) Bettina then traveled on to stay for almost a
month at her family’s estate in Bohemia.
She described all her adventures on the trip in astonishingly long and
detailed letters to Goethe, all of which survive except those falling within the
1810 Letter Gap described in chapter 4. As noted in that chapter, her lengthy
surviving letter to Goethe up to the midpoint of her stay in Vienna breaks off
literally in midsentence, just where she begins to describe meeting Beethoven,
but it was completed or filled in by her as a separate but today missing let-
ter in her Goethe Correspondence book published many years afterward (the
“Beethoven Description letter”).1 Portions of the Beethoven Description let-
ter telling what she and Beethoven did together are set out verbatim in chapter
2 and below.
Because the Beethoven Description letter was not found in Bettina’s pos-
sessions after her death and is today missing, it has been attacked by some com-

50

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 The Beethoven–Bettina Romance 51

mentators as being a complete fabrication, or at the very least partly fictional.

Their judgment is based on the untrue generalization sometimes made that
most of the letters in the Goethe Correspondence book were falsified by Bettina.
As demonstrated in chapter 11, that generalization is wrong, but it shows how
perceptions about Bettina were influenced by the biased views of a generation
of scholars who in the early years of the 20th century prevailed over a compet-
ing camp that supported the truthfulness of Bettina, as described in chapters
9 and 10. The anti-Bettina camp, which prevailed and today thrives, believes
that Bettina had very little contact with Beethoven, and that she exaggerated
or falsified much of it to make herself appear more important to the world
than she really was. One of the purposes of this chapter is to demonstrate that
this camp is wrong, and to show what really happened between Bettina and
Beethoven during and after her stay in Vienna in 1810.
As described in chapter 4, the surviving letter from Bettina to Goethe
that breaks off just where her description of Beethoven begins was the last of
three extensions of a found letter begun at her family estate in Bohemia on
July 6, 1810, written when she finally had time to rest from traveling and had
settled down for a short while. In the surviving first part of that letter and
its extensions, she described her trip from the very beginning starting near
Munich. The surviving part of that extended letter just where she begins to
describe Beethoven is dated July 28, 1810, and contains a description of her
travels into Vienna and what she did there before meeting Beethoven. In the
Goethe Correspondence book, she continues the Beethoven Description letter
exactly where the surviving original breaks off, using exactly the same transi-
tion words as in the surviving portion of her letter where it breaks off, and
ascribing to it a date of May 28, 1810, which as will be shown below is likely
the date she first met Beethoven. As argued in chapter 4, there is no reason
to believe that the Beethoven Description letter was a total or partial fabrica-
tion. It was after all her letter and we know that it did exist. One could only
state with certainty that it was a fabrication if the original survived and dif-
fered materially from the Goethe Correspondence book version, or if there was
no reasonable proof that it existed. The letter should therefore be relied on as
an authentic description of what happened between her and Beethoven unless
proven otherwise, not the opposite.
In the Beethoven Description letter, she wrote the following:

(a) “they” were afraid to take her to him; she had to hunt him up on
her own.
(b) she brought Beethoven back to a midday dinner party being held
that day at the house of her half brother Franz and his wife Antonie.
(c) Beethoven took her to a rehearsal of a full orchestral concert.

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 52 Chapter 7

(d) Beethoven came to see her every day until she left Vienna, or she
went to him, causing her to miss social meetings, galleries, the the-
ater, and even St. Stephen’s cathedral.
(e) she and Beethoven took an evening stroll together through the
Schönbrunn gardens on the outskirts of Vienna, located far from
where she was staying.

Bettina repeated some or all of these details in three separate surviving let-
ters to other friends. Two were contemporaneous; the third was written 22
years later.2
As described above and in chapters 9 and 10, Beethoven specialists be-
came divided during the last half of the 19th century into two camps. One
camp largely disbelieved Bettina and everything she wrote about Beethoven,
possibly because of her politics, possibly because of her gender. The other
camp, which included the American biographer Alexander Thayer, who
to this day remains the preeminent and most quoted Beethoven specialist,
believed in Bettina’s reliability and truthfulness. In the first edition of his
biography of Beethoven published in German in the 1870s, he analyzed in
defense of Bettina two of the accounts written by her describing her time
with Beethoven that had then published (one being the missing Beethoven
Description letter, the other the surviving letter to her friend Prince Hermann
Pückler-Muskau written in 1832). Wrote Thayer, “the two accounts differ,
but they do not contradict, they only supplement each other. The present
writer had the honor of an interview with Mme von Arnim in 1849–50,
and heard the story from her lips; in 1854–6, it was his good fortune to meet
her often in two charming family circles—her own and that of the brothers
Grimm. Thus at an interval of five years he had the opportunity of comparing
her statements, of questioning her freely and convincing himself, up to this
point, of her simple honesty and truth.”3
Now that two more surviving letters from Bettina describing her time
with Beethoven have been published, modern critics skeptical about Bet-
tina try to point out inconsistencies between the four of them in order to
establish that Bettina falsified or exaggerated what happened between her and
Beethoven. For example, one modern researcher contends that Bettina spent
only a few hours with Beethoven while she was in Vienna.4 Another contends
that she was in contact with him for only three days in total: the day she met
him and the last two days she was in Vienna. This conclusion was based on
the fact that in one of the two surviving contemporaneous letters, she wrote
that Beethoven stayed in her company until 10 p.m. on the day she met him,
and then she added that he “even” (“noch”) came to see her on the last two
evenings before her departure from Vienna. But her addition to that sentence

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 The Beethoven–Bettina Romance 53

is only to emphasize that she had become so close to the famous Beethoven that
he even called on her the last two days she was in Vienna. It does not purport
to say how many days and times they met between the first day she met him
and those last two days before she left Vienna.
Another researcher extended the reasoning of the second to claim that
Bettina exaggerated the days she spent with Beethoven from three days to two
weeks.5 The basis for this contention was that at the end of the Beethoven
Description letter, Bettina added a postscript informing Goethe that she hoped
for a letter from him at her address in Vienna where she would be staying
another two weeks. Bettina’s reason for this was not exaggeration, but simply
an editing mistake. The missing Beethoven portion of the surviving letter was
started on July 28, about two weeks before she left her family estate in Bohe-
mia. When she edited the missing portion of her letter many years afterward
for her Goethe Correspondence book, indicating it was written by her on May
28 when she was still in Vienna, she had to adapt the postscript in the original
letter to correspond to the place where she was on the date she had ascribed
to it: Vienna, not Bohemia where she then was. In any case, the reasoning
that Bettina deliberately tried to extend the time spent with Beethoven into a
fictional two weeks is flawed, because the Beethoven Description letter finished
the description of what happened between them. She did not pretend that she
continued to see Beethoven for two weeks afterward.
How many days did she and Beethoven see one another before she left
Vienna? This question may be answered with reasonable certainty by consid-
ering the following:

1. Bettina arrived in Vienna around May 8;6 she left there on June
3,7 and traveled to Prague, writing a surviving letter from there on
June 8.8
2. In a surviving letter she wrote in 1852, she recalled that she met
Beethoven in May 1810, and that he visited her often in her small
room in the Brentano household that was perfumed by a large bou-
quet of May flowers.9
3. Beethoven in his 1812 Teplitz Letter to Bettina (see chapter 5) wrote
about the “ideas that occurred to me after we were together at the
small observatory during that delicious May shower.”
4. The last surviving extension of Bettina’s long letter to Goethe begun
July 6 at her family estate in Bohemia was dated July 28; as noted
above, its abrupt break-off marks the beginning of the 1810 Letter
Gap described in chapter 4. The Beethoven Description letter was
dated May 28 by her, when she was still in Vienna; it probably coin-
cided with the date she first met him.

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 54 Chapter 7

5. Thayer was convinced that the full orchestral concert that she says
Beethoven took her to was one of the concerts given at the Augarten,
where Beethoven conducted his own symphonies.10
6. Bettina mentions in the Beethoven Description letter that in addition
to him coming often to where she was staying, she also went to call
on Beethoven (how many times she did not say).
7. Bettina mentioned in the Beethoven Description letter and Beethoven
mentioned in the Teplitz Letter that they had gone together to look at
the Schönbrunn gardens, which in those days would have taken the
better part of a day from where Bettina was staying.

These circumstances suggest that Bettina looked up Beethoven around May

28 or 29, that he accompanied her to the party given by Franz and Antonie
Brentano that day, that she and Beethoven took the Schönbrunn stroll and he
took her to a music rehearsal during the following two or three days, and that
he came to call on her on June 1 and June 2, the last two nights she spent in
Vienna before she set out for Prague.
Assuming this is so, the attacks on the Beethoven Description letter de-
scribing the time she spent with Beethoven in Vienna as being exaggerated
are unjustified and erroneous.

BETTINA’S FIRST MEETING WITH BEETHOVEN

Another question that arises out of the circumstances surrounding Bettina meet-
ing Beethoven in Vienna in 1810 is who, if anyone, accompanied her when she
looked him up for the first time. The American musicologist Maynard Solomon,
in his efforts to establish that Antonie was the Immortal Beloved as described
in chapter 12, claimed that Antonie accompanied Bettina on Bettina’s initial
visit to Beethoven. In doing so, Solomon relied on an 1867 publication by the
19th-century Beethoven biographer Ludwig Nohl, who wrote that Antonie
recounted that information to him personally. That Bettina might not have been
alone when she looked up Beethoven is indicated by the words of her contem-
poraneous surviving letter to her young student friend Alois Bihler in which she
stated that “we” waited for a good half hour for Beethoven to appear because
he was shaving at the time.11 As will be noted below, Bettina sometimes referred
to herself in the first person plural (the so-called royal we), not the first person
singular, so she may well have been alone when she looked up Beethoven. A
second possibility was that “we” referred to Beethoven’s man-servant, who
chatted with Bettina while Beethoven shaved.12 A third possibility is that Bet-
tina was accompanied by her sister Gunda, with whom Bettina was traveling
through Europe at the time. This view was expressed by Nohl in a publication

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 The Beethoven–Bettina Romance 55

made nine years after the 1867 publication on which Solomon relied (also see
chapter 12 for additional details).13

VIENNESE MEMORIES

The time Beethoven and Bettina spent with one another in Vienna made
a profound impression on each of them. In her Beethoven Description let-
ter, Bettina wrote, as noted in chapter 2, “since then [the time she first met
Beethoven] he comes to me every day or I go to him. For this I neglect
social meetings, galleries, the theater, and even the tower of St. Stephen’s.
Beethoven says ‘Ah! What do you want to see there? I will call for you to-
wards evening; we will walk through the alleys of Schönbrunn.’ . . . I went
with him to a glorious garden in full bloom, all the hot beds open—the
perfume was bewildering.”14 In her surviving contemporary letter to Bihler
dated about four weeks after she left Vienna, Bettina wrote, “I have become
excessively [unendlich] fond of this man. In all that relates to his art he is so
dominating and truthful that no artist can pretend to approach him.”15 In her
surviving letter to Pückler-Muskau written some 20 years later, she described
taking Beethoven home from his lodgings to the midday dinner party being
held by her half brother Franz Brentano and his wife Antonie:

Everyone was surprised to see me enter a company of more than 40 per-

sons, sitting at the table, hand in hand with the unsociable Beethoven. He
took a seat without any demur, saying little. Twice he drew his notebook
from his pocket and jotted down a few figures. After dinner the whole
company mounted to the roof tower of the house to enjoy the view of the
surroundings. When all had descended again and he and I were alone, he
drew out his note-book, glanced over it, wrote and crossed out and said:
“My song is completed.” He next leaned from the window and sang it lust-
ily out upon the air. Then he said “Eh? It sounds, does it not? It belongs to
you if you want it. I wrote it for you. You incited me to do so, for I read
it in your glance.”16

See chapter 10 for an analysis of Bettina’s recollections about Beethoven’s

Goethe songs and their connection with her.
Thayer, who as noted above interviewed Bettina several times and be-
lieved in her credibility, wrote from the notes he took in his conversations
with her the following:

There was a large [midday] dinner party that day at Franz Brentano’s in
the Birkenstock house and Bettina told Beethoven he must change his old

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 56 Chapter 7

coat for a better coat, and accompany her thither. “Oh,” he said jokingly,
“I have several good coats,” and took her to the wardrobe to see them.
Changing his coat he went down with her to the street, but stopped there
and said he must return for a moment. He came down again laughing
with the old coat on. She remonstrated; he went up again, dressed himself
properly and went with her.17

These incidents, in addition to showing the rapport that had already developed
between Beethoven and Bettina in the few hours after they first met, may
have even more significance. As more fully discussed in chapter 12, Beethoven
wrote his letter to the Immortal Beloved in pencil, saying that the pencil had
come from her. In Bettina’s recounting set out above of Beethoven at the
dinner party to which she took him, he several times made notes during the
party, which obviously could not have been with pen and ink, and therefore
he must have had a pencil with him. But in changing coats before going to
the party, he may have left his own pencil at home and used one given or lent
to him by Bettina.
During the time they spent together, it is quite probable that Beethoven
mentioned the possibility of dedicating to Bettina his Mass in C. He had writ-
ten it several years before on the invitation of Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy in
honor of the prince’s wife. The Mass was first performed in the prince’s town
of Eisenstadt, where Beethoven was assigned servant’s quarters in the prince’s
castle, not the private room he would have occupied had he been considered
a social equal. To make matters worse, the Mass’s reception by the prince was
not enthusiastic, and Beethoven may even have gotten the impression that
the prince and his entourage were mocking him. The result was that Ester-
hazy received neither the manuscript of the Mass nor a dedication of it. That
Beethoven may have discussed with Bettina the possibility of his dedicating
the still undedicated Mass to her is suggested by his letter to his publisher in
the autumn of the following year, after he had learned of Bettina’s marriage. In
the letter, he wrote, “as to the Mass, the dedication might be altered. The lady
is now married, so the name would have to be changed accordingly. Hence
the dedication can be omitted for the moment. Just let me know when you
are publishing it; and then no doubt I shall find a saint for this work.”18
That Beethoven may have described to Bettina how poorly the Esterhazy
family treated him several years before and why he did not dedicate the Mass
to them is indicated in his letter to the Immortal Beloved. There, after describ-
ing how his coach broke down on the way into Teplitz, he mentioned that the
same thing had happened to Esterhazy’s son, even though he took a different
route and had more horses drawing his coach. Beethoven wrote in his letter
that the son’s similar misfortune gave him some pleasure. These words suggest
that Bettina as the intended recipient of Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved letter

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 The Beethoven–Bettina Romance 57

would have known who Esterhazy was from Beethoven’s own lips when they
discussed the possibility of him dedicating to her his Mass.
Several weeks after Bettina left Vienna and Beethoven, she wrote in one
of her missing letters to Goethe reproduced in the Goethe Correspondence book
that while she was recuperating in her family’s estate in Bohemia from the
arduous weeks of travel, “each day brought new joy, and each delight was a
source of interesting communications. Above all this Beethoven was promi-
nent: the great super-spiritual, who introduced us into an invisible world, and
our impulse to the powers of life, so that one felt the confined ‘self ’ widened
to an universe of spirits. Pity that he is not here in this solitude.”19 It should
be noted that Bettina used the first-person plural here, not the first-person
singular, in referring to herself.
When Bettina was writing those words in Bohemia, Beethoven was at
the same time in Vienna thinking about and writing to Bettina. Knowing she
was traveling and would not arrive in Berlin until the beginning of Septem-
ber, he nevertheless sent to her in care of her Berlin destination (the house of
her brother-in-law Savigny) a letter dated August 11, 1810. The authenticity
of this letter has been attacked because it does not survive, but as shown in
chapter 5, its existence is independently corroborated by a number of factors.
Here is what he wrote:

Dearest Bettine!
Never was there a more beautiful spring than this year; I say this,
and feel it too, because it was then that I first got to know you. You have
yourself seen that in society, I am like a fish on the sand, which writhes and
writhes, but cannot escape until some benevolent Galatea casts it back into
the powerful ocean. I was in fact quite stranded, dearest Bettine, when I was
surprised by you in a moment in which depression had totally overcome me,
but truly it vanished when I saw you. I was immediately aware that you
came from a different world than this absurd one, where one with the best
intentions cannot open one’s ears. I am a wretched man and yet complain
about others!! You will quite forgive me for this from the goodness of your
heart that shows in your eyes and understanding that lies in your ears; at
least your ears know how to flatter when they listen. My ears are sadly a
dividing-wall, through which I cannot easily have friendly communication
with others. Otherwise, perhaps I might have been more self-assured with
you. As it was, I could understand only the accepting look in your eyes,
that made an impression upon me that I shall never forget. Dear Bettine,
dearest girl! Who understands art—with whom can one converse about that
great goddess? How dear to me are those few days when we were chatting
together, or even more, corresponding! I have kept all the little bits of paper

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 58 Chapter 7

that bear your spirited, dear, dearest answers. Thus I have to thank my bad
ears that the best parts of those fleeting conversations are written down. Since
you have gone, I have had melancholy hours, dark hours for which nothing
can be done. After you were gone, I paced the Schönbrunner Way, but no
angel met me there, no angel seized me the same way as you did, my angel.
Excuse me, dearest Bettine, for this departure from the usual key, but I must
have intervals like this to unburden my heart.
You have written to Goethe about me, haven’t you? I wish that I
could hide my head in a bag so that I would not hear and would not see
what goes on in the world, because you, dearest angel, won’t [likely] be with
me in it. But will I not receive a letter from you? This hope nourishes me,
in fact it nourishes half the world, and hope has been next to me all my life,
otherwise what would have become of me? I am sending to you with this
letter a copy in my own hand of Kennst du das Land as a memento of the
moment when I first met you. I am also sending to you the other song which
I composed after your departure, dear, dearest heart!

Heart, my heart, what must come of it,

What distresses you so much
What a strange new life
I don’t recognize you any more.

Yes, dearest Bettine, do answer this letter. Write to me what must

come of it, since my heart has become such a rebel. Write to your most faith-
ful friend Beethoven.

There are three things about this letter that should be especially noted.
First, the title page of one of the songs Beethoven said he was sending with
the letter, starting with the words “Heart, my heart,” from which he quoted
a few lines in his letter, has been found bearing Beethoven’s signed dedica-
tion to Bettina (see illustration 6), and the balance of the song from which the
title page was ripped was found in Bettina’s papers. Second, in the Beethoven
Description letter, she mentioned that Beethoven took her to the Schönbrun-
ner Way, which Beethoven says in this letter he afterward went back to and
paced along thinking of her. Third, most remarkably, Beethoven called Bet-
tina “angel,” not once but four times in this letter. His letter to the Immortal
Beloved began with the words “My angel.”
It should also be noted that in this first letter from Beethoven to Bettina
of August 1810, he mentioned that he had kept the replies she had written
for him when they were conversing, which must have been written in pencil.
Since Beethoven did not use an interlocutor to write down conversations

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 The Beethoven–Bettina Romance 59

with others until 1817,20 this description has been used as proof that Bettina
concocted the August 1810 letter. However, it would have been natural, in
intimate conversations between them in 1810, for Beethoven to have spoken
in a normal tone of voice and for Bettina to have jotted down replies to avoid
shouting or speaking in a loud voice, especially words that she would have
normally whispered in the context of the conversation. This could have been
another occasion in which Beethoven came into possession of the pencil with
which he wrote his letter to Bettina, his Immortal Beloved.
When Bettina finally arrived in Berlin in August after her stay at a fam-
ily estate in Bohemia and her adventure with Goethe in Teplitz a few weeks
before, the adoring but uncharacteristically hesitant letter from Beethoven
reproduced above would have been awaiting her. Now she was faced with the
most critical decision of her life. Would she decide to remain unmarried and
pursue a career in music and politics, as she had first told her future husband
Achim von Arnim she was considering when he proposed to her in June, or
would she accept Arnim’s marriage proposal and bear him the child he needed
to inherit control of his wealthy grandmother’s estate?
In February 1811, Beethoven wrote a second letter to Bettina, the one
that survives and that was auctioned off in New York in 1990. As noted in
chapter 2, in this letter he spoke of the two letters he had already received from
her and apologized for not writing to her “often.” He used the word “often,”
not “before,” thus acknowledging that he had written to her previously at least
once. He wrote in this 1811 letter, as noted in chapter 2, that he had carried
her first letter to him around with him all summer, and that it made him feel
supremely happy. This is similar to his mentioning in his first letter to her,
quoted above, that he kept as mementos the scraps of paper that she wrote
on during the times they were together in Vienna. Obviously he was very
much in love with her. For the same sentimental reason, he probably kept as
a memento the pencil he had received from her in 1810, taken it with him
to Teplitz in 1812 expecting to see her there or in Karlsbad that summer, and
used it to write to her, his Immortal Beloved.
In this 1811 letter, Beethoven mentions the text of a cantata that had
been sent to him by Bettina’s brother to be set to music by Beethoven.
Beethoven sends his regrets through Bettina to her brother, saying that the
brother’s text was not sufficiently important in Vienna. Mentioning the affec-
tion that the brother had somehow conveyed to Beethoven (possibly in one
of her letters), Beethoven wrote: “as for affection, the sister has such a large
part of it that not much is left for the brother.”
At the close of the 1811 letter, he writes, “and now goodbye, dear, dear B.
I kiss you [here three words were written but then crossed out] on the forehead
and thus press on it as with my seal all my thoughts for you.” In this sentence,

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 60 Chapter 7

he addressed Bettina in the intimate German “du” (thou) form, which he never
used, so far as is known, in any letter to a woman with whom he was romanti-
cally involved except in his letter to the Immortal Beloved. Also the words “so
with pain” were written in after “I kiss you” in this sentence, but then crossed
out by him, presumably reflecting his statement earlier in the letter that he had
learned that she was about to marry.21 And even though he said in this surviving
letter that he knew she was about to be or had already been married, he begged
her to write to him “soon and often.” (The text of this surviving letter, translated
into English, is contained in appendix B.)
As for Bettina, the few months between her arrival in Berlin in Septem-
ber and the moment when she received this letter must have been one of the
most intense periods in her life. During that time, she had moved in with her
sister Gunda and Savigny, finally accepted Arnim’s proposal, and married him
the following March. Yet she found time to write to Beethoven twice!
When Beethoven traveled to Teplitz in the summer of 1811, Bettina
must have still been on his mind. While there, he met a 25-year-old officer
in the Austrian army, Karl Varnhagen von Ense, who came there to spend
time with his future wife, Rahel Levin. Rahel physically resembled and was a
close friend of Bettina. Varnhagen described Beethoven in a letter to a friend,
saying, “on some of his lonely rambles in the castle park he [Beethoven] had
seen Rahel, and her facial expression, which reminded him of someone whom
he esteemed, gave him pleasure.”22
As established in chapter 2, during that summer, autumn, and early win-
ter of 1811, Beethoven and Bettina were writing one another, because in the
surviving 1811 letter to her sent in February, he had, as noted above, begged
her to write to him “soon and often.” She would have written to him for
advice and comfort, especially after Goethe acquiesced in his wife’s ostracism
of Bettina as a result of Bettina’s quarrel with Goethe’s wife in Weimar in
August, and after Bettina became depressed during and after the pregnancy
that resulted in the birth of her first child in May 1812.
We fast-forward now to Beethoven and Bettina corresponding with
one another during the early months of 1812, with her writing to him in late
springtime about her near-death experience during the birth of her child and
possibly reflecting that having given Arnim the child he needed, she now be-
lieved the marriage was a mistake, and that she should instead pursue a career
in music and politics as she originally intended. As postulated in chapter 2,
they would likely have told one another of their respective plans for the up-
coming summer, she intending to travel to Karlsbad to recover from her de-
pression (possibly postpartum), he intending to travel to nearby Teplitz to try
to address his own deteriorating health. It is also quite likely that they discussed
the possibility of meeting one another, either by him coming to Karlsbad after

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 The Beethoven–Bettina Romance 61

she had written to him that she had arrived there, or she coming to Teplitz if
she could convince her husband and sister to travel through Teplitz on their
way back to Berlin.
Beethoven arrived in Teplitz in early July, writing his letter to her, his
Immortal Beloved, calling her “My Angel, my All, my very Self,” expecting
that she would be arriving in Karlsbad around the same time. But then he
may have received in Teplitz a letter from her posted from Berlin saying that
her journey had been postponed because of her continuing illness. In any
case, he apparently did not mail his own letter. When she finally came to
Teplitz, not Karlsbad, two weeks later, he was initially overjoyed, but then
devastated when she told him of her decision to stay with her husband and
child. He left Teplitz precipitously. Nevertheless, his memories of the time
they spent together in Vienna two years earlier were mentioned by him in
the Teplitz Letter that he handed to her as he hurriedly left town. In it, he
wrote, “all kinds of ideas came into my mind when I got to know you in
that little observatory during the splendid May rain that excited me as much
as you. Then the most beautiful themes came from your eyes into my heart,
themes that will enchant the world when Beethoven will no longer be there
to conduct them.”
In Bettina’s handwritten copy of the Teplitz Letter contained in the Ilius
manuscript, described in chapter 5, the word “observatory” was followed by
the words “in the Birkenstock house,” but these words were then crossed out
by Bettina. The Birkenstock house was where Bettina took Beethoven to the
midday dinner party the day she met him. As noted in chapter 9, Beethoven’s
cross-outs were duplicated exactly by Bettina in the Ilius manuscript when she
copied out the surviving 1811 letter from him. Even in 1812, Beethoven was
still thinking about the magical times he had shared with Bettina in Vienna
more than two years before. He was shattered, but still in love with her.

NOTES

1. Sonneck, Impressions, 79–82. Some portions of the complete text of the letter
have been omitted in Sonneck. For the complete text, see the Goethe Correspondence
book, 283–8.
2. Sonneck, Impressions, 76, 84; Steinsdorff, Freyberg, 68.
3. Thayer English, 2:181.
4. Kopitz, “Antonie Brentano in Wien,” 124.
5. Ann Willison Lemke, Bettine’s Song: The Musical Voice of Bettine von Arnim, née
Brentano, doctoral dissertation (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Dissertation Services, 1998),
161–2.

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 62 Chapter 7

6. Heinz Härtl, in Bettina von Arnim, eine Chronik (Wiepersdorf, Germany: Schloss
Wiepersdorf Stiftung Kulturfonds, 1980), 16, states that the date was around May 10.
Kopitz, in “Antonie Brentano in Wien,” 123, states that it was actually May 8.
7. Kopitz, “Antonie Brentano in Wien,” 123.
8. Steinsdorff, Briefwechsel, 68.
9. Unger, “Auf Spüren,” 68.
10. Thayer English, 2:282.
11. Sonneck, Impressions, 77.
12. Sonneck, Impressions, 84.
13. Ludwig Nohl, Beethoven Depicted by His Contemporaries, trans. Emily Hill (Lon-
don: Reeves Fleet Street, 1880), 86. The dedication of this book by Nohl was dated
October 1876.
14. Sonneck, Impressions, 81.
15. Sonneck, Impressions, 77–8.
16. Sonneck, Impressions, 85–6.
17. Thayer Forbes, 493.
18. Anderson, Letter No. 325. Beethoven ultimately dedicated the Mass to Prince
Kinsky, as confirmed in a letter to his publisher of August 9, 1812 (Anderson, Letter
No. 380). It is very possible that he was still considering dedicating it to Bettina until
she told him of her decision to stay with Arnim in Teplitz a few weeks earlier.
19. Goethe Correspondence book, 294.
20. Anderson, 3:1356.
21. Harry Goldschmidt, Um die Unsterbliche Geliebte: ein Beethoven-Buch (Leipzig:
Rogner and Bernhard, 1977), 274.
22. Thayer Forbes, 513.

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 • 8 •

Beethoven the Poet

THE HISTORY OF A SONNET

I n the 1850s, the famous Hungarian violinist and composer Josef Joachim
fell in love with Bettina’s youngest daughter, Gisela. She ultimately rejected
him and married another suitor, but Joachim remained close to Gisela and her
mother. In his younger days, he had become an advocate of the “new” style of
music of Franz Liszt, but Bettina steered him toward the music of Beethoven,
and there exists today a famous painting of Joachim’s string quartet playing for
the elderly Bettina, perhaps the music of Beethoven.
In 1858, Bettina, then in her 70s, traveled to Teplitz, where she spent
three months trying to restore her health. The town must have brought poi-
gnant and possibly painful memories for her of pivotal points in her life that
happened almost a half century before, including her fateful meeting with
Goethe there in 1810 when she had just reached the age of majority, and her
meeting with Beethoven there in 1812 when she shattered him by telling him
she had decided to stay with her husband. Now, almost 50 years later, she met
socially in the same small spa town a poet and novelist named Edouard Duboc,
whom she apparently told some details about her relations with Goethe and
Beethoven. One of those details was that Beethoven had written for her a son-
net lamenting her marriage but wishing her well in it. Duboc was intrigued
and asked to see a copy. Bettina had since given it to Joachim, but she bor-
rowed it back for Duboc to see, and he had a facsimile made (a bad one, as
will be discussed below). He included the facsimile in a book that he published
a few years afterward under his pen name, Robert Waldmüller.1
It is ironic that this surfacing of an important clue to the relations of
Beethoven and Bettina occurred as a result of an apparently chance meeting of

63

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 64 Chapter 8

Bettina with a traveling writer in the same small spa town where some of the
most important occurrences in her life took place almost a half century earlier.
Bettina, who is accused by her detractors of exaggerating her importance in
the lives of Goethe and Beethoven, had never publicized or published the
sonnet. It surfaced by chance late in her life and is too badly written to have
emanated from her.
Bettina’s detractors took it as support of their views that Bettina manu-
factured evidence to exaggerate her influence on Beethoven. They attacked
the sonnet as they had her Beethoven letters. One detractor visited Joachim
to look at the original and asserted that, in his opinion, it was definitely not
in Beethoven’s handwriting.2 Another debunked it as false because it was not
in the copy of Duboc’s book that he looked at in a library. However, it must
have been sliced out of that particular copy by someone, because it is in the
published book.3 As will be noted in chapter 10, Max Unger in 1910 was ini-
tially certain of its authenticity, based on his look at the published facsimile,4
but many years later he called it a figment of Bettina’s romantic imagination.5
In 1930, Joachim’s family (he had died in 1907) offered the sonnet for
sale through a Leipzig book dealer. A Beethoven expert who was engaged to
authenticate the poem decided that it was a very refined and skillful forgery, so
the poem was given back to Joachim’s family. Its whereabouts are not publicly
known today.6
A close examination of the facsimile (see illustration 12) reveals that the
handwriting seems almost identical to Beethoven’s. The writing of Bettina’s
name is identical to the way Beethoven wrote it in his found letter to her (see
illustration 7), and most of the original letters forming the words of the poem
are also identical to the distinctive way Beethoven wrote them (compare the
handwriting in illustrations 12 and 7). There are some discrepancies, however.
The first is that the handwriting lacks the usual scrawled flourish of Beethoven’s
extant letters. This could be because Beethoven, not being himself a poet, obvi-
ously labored over the poem. In several lines, words are crossed out and replaced
with others to improve the rhythm and rhyming technically required in a sonnet
form, showing he must have taken some care with it.
A second discrepancy is that the letter “D” has a directional curl, which
is the reverse of the way Beethoven formed it. This could be due to the dif-
ficulties engravers encountered because they had to engrave on the printing
block a mirror image of the original handwriting.
There are certain facts that reasonably establish the sonnet was not a forg-
ery. First, Bettina’s handwriting is so neat and controlled (see illustration 8) and
Beethoven’s so idiosyncratic and distinctive (see illustration 7), Bettina could
never have come close to reproducing his, as some critics have hinted or ex-
pressly stated. Also, if she had forged it, she would not have labored over the

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 Beethoven the Poet 65

cross-outs and substituted words, as Beethoven obviously did. Most importantly,

Bettina gave it to Joachim, a close and respected friend of hers and a famous
interpreter of Beethoven’s music. She did not try to publicize it or sell it.
Other critics have acknowledged the poem to be in Beethoven’s handwrit-
ing, but because Schindler said that Beethoven was no poet, they suggested it
was composed by a poet friend of Beethoven’s.7 This is improbable, both be-
cause of the cross-outs and substitutions, which a professional poet would have
removed before giving the text to Beethoven, and because the poem obviously
is not the product of a professional poet, rather that of a wounded suitor.
Assuming the sonnet to be genuine, that alone does not prove Bettina is
the Immortal Beloved. It nevertheless proves that Bettina and Beethoven kept
in touch after her marriage, because in his found letter to her of 1811, he is
not certain whether she is or is not yet married, so the poem must have been
composed and mailed to her afterward. It also proves the deep love Beethoven
retained for Bettina after she married and his anguish at her marriage decision.
Finally, Beethoven addresses Bettina in the “du” form in the poem, which he
never used for any woman with whom he was romantically involved except
for Bettina in one portion of his found letter to her, and in his letter to the
Immortal Beloved.

THE SONNET

Here is the text and English translation of Beethoven’s sonnet to Bettina, as

written by him but without the cross-outs in the original:

“An Bettine”
In tiefer Demuth will ich gratulieren
Tief neigund von dem Haupt den Hut mir heben
Wenn die Gedanken auch in weiter Ferner schweben
Muss ich sie doch gebahnte Wege führen
Will ich auch nicht das Schicksal gross anstieren
So wird es nimmer dennoch mich erheben
Verwirkt ist längst mein schaales Erdenleben,
Der Treue Kralle werd ich stets im Busen spüren.
Doch was wein ich und binn elende
Froh bist du und froh sey dein Leben
Ich dulde bis mir Zukunft herbres sende
Doch einen Trost sollt mir zum lohne geben,
Der Götter Huld dass ich dich glücklich sehe,
Und ferne ist mein herbes tiefes wehe.

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 66 Chapter 8

English translation of Beethoven’s sonnet to Bettina (with thanks to Dr. Hans

Eichner):

“To Bettina”
I will congratulate you with deep humility,
[and] bowing deeply I will raise my hat;
Even though my thoughts may hover far away,
I must lead them along smooth paths.
Although I do not wish boldly to stare at fate,
It will none the less never lift me up;
My trivial life has long ago gone to waste;
I will always feel the pain of faithfulness in my heart.
But though I am in tears and miserable,
You are glad, and may your life be glad;
I will endure until the future will bring me [even] worse suffering.
But one consolation should I be given as a reward,
By the grace of the gods, that I may see you happy
And that my bitter profound suffering will cease.

NOTES

1. Robert Waldmüller, Wanderstudien: Italien, Griechenland, und daheim, 2 vols. in 1,

(Leipzig: Verlag von Theodor Thomas, 1861), 2:233.
2. Theodor Frimmel, Beethoven Handbuch, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel,
1926), 1:63.
3. Donald MacArdle and Ludwig Misch, eds., New Beethoven Letters (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1957), 90.
4. Unger, “Auf Spüren,” 61–62.
5. Max Unger, “The Immortal Beloved,” Musical Quarterly 13 (1928): 259.
6. Walter Weisbecker, “Stefan Zweig entdeckte den gefälschten Brief,” Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung, January 26, 1984, 27.
7. Ann Willison Lemke, “Bettine’s Song,” doctoral dissertation (Ann Arbor, Mich.:
UMI Dissertation Services, 1998), 38. Lemke later changed her opinion and wrote
a paper published in German claiming that the sonnet was entirely Beethoven’s; see
Lemke, ”Bettines Beethoven: Wahrheit und Dichtung,” in Masstab Beethoven? Kom-
ponistinnen im Schatten des Geniekults, ed. Bettina Brand and Martina Helmig (Munich:
Richard Boorberg Verlag, 2001), 145–58.

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 • 9 •

The Tarnishing of Bettina’s Reputation

MAX UNGER

M ax Unger (1883–1959) was a well-known German musicologist who

during his long career studied, wrote about, conducted, and taught music
throughout Europe. Although he was born and educated in Germany, he
moved to Switzerland in 1930, then to fascist Italy in 1940, from where he
contributed articles about music to Nazi propaganda magazines, including
one about Beethoven entitled “Beethovens vaterländische Musik.” He pub-
lished many other papers about Beethoven, some even before he obtained his
doctoral degree from the University of Leipzig in 1911, including numerous
articles about the mystery of the Immortal Beloved. One of his professors in
Leipzig was Hugo Riemann, who had succeeded Hermann Deiters as editor
and translator of Thayer’s biography of Beethoven. Both Riemann and Deit-
ers publicly differed and distanced themselves from Thayer’s admiration of and
belief in the trustworthiness of Bettina.
The transformation of Unger’s views about Bettina, starting from his
early writings up to his old age, illustrates how Bettina came to acquire a
reputation among a number of scholars as being at best a concocter of fiction
about Beethoven in the guise of made-up letters from and about him, and at
worst, a forger of handwritten communications from him to her. The nega-
tive views about Bettina of Riemann, Deiters, and Unger, possibly arrived at
because of her political views or gender, and perhaps correct or not, came to
be cited more and more frequently as her supporters died off. And if negative
opinions are cited frequently enough, they can come to be considered facts,
not just opinions. Unger’s final views about Bettina were a significant cause of
her tarnished reputation in musical and literary circles.

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 68 Chapter 9

A CONTROVERSIAL WOMAN

During her lifetime, Bettina became a well-known and controversial figure

in Germany for many reasons. In politics, she corresponded with the King of
Prussia and in some circles was considered a supporter of royal authority. Oth-
ers considered her a radical because of her sympathy and support for the revo-
lutions of 1848. She incurred the displeasure of many German anti-Semites
because of her support for the legal and social rights of Jews. She claimed a
close relationship with Goethe and Beethoven and was married to Achim von
Arnim, one of the leading lights of 19th-century German Romantic literature,
whose poetry was used by Gustav Mahler for Des Knaben Wunderhorm. She
was a close friend to the brothers Grimm, who published and popularized
German folk- and fairy tales, such as those about Hansel and Gretel, Cinder-
ella, and Snow White. She was prominent in German musical circles and was
acquainted with the famous musicians Robert and Clara Schumann, Ignaz
Moscheles, Josef Joachim, Franz Liszt, and Johannes Brahms. Both Brahms and
Schumann dedicated music to her. As a result of controversy about her politi-
cal and social beliefs, possible envy of her fame, and possibly because she was a
woman, she incurred more than her share of enemies during and after her life.
As noted in chapter 3, Bettina published in an epistolary form her Goethe
Correspondence book in 1835. In 1839, she published in a literary and politi-
cal journal three letters she claimed to have received from Beethoven, one in
1810, one in 1811, and one in 1812. Since both Goethe and Beethoven were
then dead and the art of printed facsimiles was not yet fully developed, con-
troversy arose as to whether the Goethe and Beethoven letters were genuine,
especially because of the intimacies and confidences both expressed toward her
in those letters. Further increasing the suspicions of the doubters, both Goethe
and Beethoven had addressed her in the intimate German “du” form in parts
of their letters to her as published, and she used the same form in her letters
to Goethe. She never published any of her own letters to Beethoven, but
Beethoven, as noted in chapter 2, indicated in the single surviving letter from
him to her that she had in fact written to him before her marriage.
As a result of the controversy that swirled around her, the literary and
musical establishment divided into two camps in the last half of the 19th
century, one camp believing that her published Goethe and Beethoven let-
ters were genuine, the other that they were concocted. After Bettina’s death,
members of her family, many of whom had been embarrassed by the Goethe
letters because of the intimacies contained in them, withheld the originals
from public scrutiny. That resulted in even more suspicion and controversy.
Supporters of the authenticity of the Beethoven letters included the
American scholar Alexander Thayer, even today the most prestigious and oft-

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 The Tarnishing of Bettina’s Reputation 69

cited of all the Beethoven biographers. As noted in chapter 12, Thayer actually
met Bettina and spoke highly of her. Other supporters were Alfred Kalischer,
Ludwig Nohl, and Romain Rolland (all prominent Beethoven experts), the
pianist and composer Ignaz Moscheles (who knew both Beethoven and Bet-
tina), and Moritz Carrière, a prominent German writer and philosophy pro-
fessor, who stated to Nohl that he had actually seen the originals of the three
Beethoven letters, urged their publication for political reasons (as described in
chapter 5), and confirmed their authenticity as published.1
Spearheading the rival camp was Anton Schindler, the assistant of Beethoven
during the composer’s last years. Schindler did not come to know Beethoven
until 1814, two years after the last meeting of Beethoven and Bettina in 1812.
As noted in chapter 2, Schindler visited Bettina in 1843 hoping to have a look
at the three Beethoven letters she had published, but she refused even to talk
to him about them. Bettina’s refusal to discuss with or show him Beethoven’s
letters confirmed Schindler’s view that Bettina had concocted them.
In 1859, Adolph B. Marx, the principal rival of Thayer as Beethoven’s
definitive biographer during the last half of the 19th century, published
the first edition of his Beethoven biography. Marx quoted and supported
Schindler’s opinion about the Bettina letters from Beethoven. He even gave a
detailed analysis as to why the language and style of the three letters could not
have emanated from Beethoven and so must have been the product of Bet-
tina’s hyper-romantic imagination. In doing so, he quoted specific words and
passages from the 1811 Beethoven letter to Bettina that he claimed Beethoven
would never have used, calling them “girl-like” and “un-Beethovian.”2
In 1860, Thayer published in the Atlantic Monthly a stinging review of
Marx’s Beethoven biography (Thayer’s own had not yet been published).3
Thayer stated with respect to the three Beethoven letters Bettina had published
that he believed in the authenticity of all of them, and he cited examples where
Beethoven had used in other letters language comparable to the language in
the 1811 letter that Marx had attacked as “un-Beethovian” and “girlish.”
Then around 1880, to the astonishment of the anti-Bettina camp, the
1811 letter from Beethoven was found in Nathusius’s estate and was exactly
the same as published by Bettina. The 1811 letter was included in facsimile
form in a revised 1884 edition of Marx’s biography of Beethoven. Marx had
since died, so the editor of the new edition, Gustav Behncke, understandably
omitted Marx’s analysis as to why the language of the 1811 letter could not
have emanated from Beethoven. Without missing a beat, however, he inserted
an elaboration of Marx’s original analysis as to why the other two letters must
have been concocted by Bettina.4
The first part of Thayer’s own biography of Beethoven appeared in
three volumes between 1866 and 1879, translated into German for him by

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 70 Chapter 9

Hermann Deiters. The dispute as to the authenticity of the three letters to

Bettina became apparent in that publication because, while Thayer defended
their authenticity, Deiters added a separate footnote disagreeing with the argu-
ments that appeared in Thayer’s English text. Deiters subsequently published
in 1882 his own paper attacking the authenticity of all three letters. When
a later edition of Thayer appeared after discovery of the 1811 letter, Thayer
pointed out the mistakes made by Deiters in his 1882 paper but conceded the
possible validity of one of Deiters’s arguments for believing parts of the third
to have been concocted.5

THE CONTROVERSY CONTINUES

By the time Unger entered the fray in 1909, the original antagonists, includ-
ing Thayer, Nohl, Merz, Kalischer, and Carrière on the one hand, and Marx,
Schindler, and Deiters on the other, were all dead, but Bettina’s papers re-
mained sealed by her family, and the debate raged on. Believers like the No-
bel Prize winner Romain Rolland continued to vouch for their authenticity.
On the other hand, Hugo Riemann, who succeeded Deiters as translator and
editor of Thayer’s biography of Beethoven, preserved Thayer’s arguments in
favor of the authenticity of the letters in his portion of the text of the German
edition, but he added a footnote asserting his own belief that they were actu-
ally written by Bettina. And in 1921, Henry Krehbiel, the editor and transla-
tor from the German of the first English edition of Thayer, hedged his bets
by saying that if the other two letters later turned up, they would have been
“tricked” out of Beethoven by Bettina.6 That unscholarly opinion illustrates
the mind-set against Bettina by some who had become part of the debate.
In 1909, Unger, then a young, up-and-coming Beethoven specialist
who was studying for his PhD as a student of Riemann, entered the fray
with the publication of a paper attempting to establish the identity of the
Immortal Beloved.7 In it, he rejected two candidates proposed by other
writers, and in doing so endorsed a new theory that the letter to the Im-
mortal Beloved must have been written in the year 1812, when Beethoven
was in Teplitz, not earlier years when Monday fell on July 6. This view is
today generally accepted. Unger then suggested that Bettina might be the
Immortal Beloved, based on the similarity of the three Beethoven letters
published by her as well as the sonnet from Beethoven that she had given
to the famous musician Joachim. He set out the full text of the sonnet and
went on to suggest that if the third of the three letters to Bettina ostensibly
written in Teplitz that summer by Beethoven only a few weeks after his let-

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 The Tarnishing of Bettina’s Reputation 71

ter to the Immortal Beloved could be found (the “Teplitz Letter”), it would
prove that Bettina was the mystery woman.
This paper must have caused a stir in the academic community, because
in successive papers, Unger began to back off. In 1910, he wrote a paper stat-
ing that Bettina could not have been the Immortal Beloved because she had
recently married and apparently loved her husband.8 In making that argument,
he overlooked, as noted in chapter 2, a statement in the diary of Karl Varn-
hagen von Ense, a friend of Bettina’s who also knew Beethoven, that Bettina
had told Varnhagen twice over the space of many years that she did not marry
Arnim for love, but rather because he had paid her the honor of asking her
to bear his child, a child he needed to inherit control of his grandmother’s
estate.9 Unger also showed in his 1910 paper that he had been influenced by
the Bettina skeptics, including Riemann, about the Beethoven letters, because
Unger stated that the Teplitz Letter to Bettina was concocted by her for
reasons previously asserted by Riemann and others in the anti-Thayer camp.
Unger wrote, however, that he still tended to believe in the authenticity of
the 1810 letter from Beethoven to Bettina, and he also stated that there could
be “no doubt” that the sonnet (included in chapter 8) was authentic. He ap-
peared obviously puzzled by the fact that Beethoven used the “du” form in
parts of the single surviving letter to Bettina published by Marx, as well as by
the warmth and passion of the text of that letter.
In 1911, Unger published another paper in which he formally acknowl-
edged having withdrawn his 1909 assertion that Bettina could be the Immortal
Beloved, yet he admitted that the 1812 Teplitz Letter to Bettina had the same
passion and style as the letter to the Immortal Beloved. Somewhat murkily,
he wrote that “even if this letter, as has been perhaps correctly surmised, was
authored in all its parts by Bettina herself, it can here be drawn upon as an
entirely valid documentation, as its contents, as far as feelings and mood are
concerned, probably correspond, at least in its main aspect, to reality.”10
Meanwhile Theodore Frimmel, a prominent Beethoven scholar having
seniority over Unger, visited in 1909 the famous musician Josef Joachim, to
whom Bettina had given Beethoven’s sonnet, as described in chapter 8. He
looked at it, or possibly the facsimile of it published by Duboc, and opined that
it was “definitely not in Beethoven’s handwriting.”11 Frimmel’s opinion must
have greatly unnerved Unger, who had now been attacked by his academic
superiors on two of his major published assertions. Accordingly, in a paper
published in English in 1927,12 he reversed the opinion he had expressed in
1910 that the sonnet was authentic. Now he attacked it as a figment of Bet-
tina’s imagination, thereby indirectly accusing her of forgery because of the
facsimile’s resemblance to Beethoven’s distinctive handwriting. He also cat-
egorically asserted that the 1810 and 1812 letters were concocted by Bettina,

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 72 Chapter 9

with only the 1811 letter being genuine, thus reversing his 1910 opinion about
the probable authenticity of the 1810 letter.
In 1929, the Arnim family finally permitted Bettina’s papers to be in-
spected and later auctioned off. There were no Beethoven letters among
them. But there were at least 13 letters from Goethe, and many more from
her to him, so now they could be compared with what she had published in
her Goethe Correspondence book. Bettina and Goethe did indeed address one
another in the “du” form in those letters, and many portions of them were
reproduced verbatim in Bettina’s book. Nevertheless, as Bettina herself wrote
before publication,13 her book was not intended to be simply an edited version
of the actual letters, but rather, as more fully explained in chapter 4, a “poetic
epic” exploring her own intellectual and artistic development as stimulated by
her correspondence with Goethe. Also as noted in chapter 4, she had rewrit-
ten, reorganized, and in many cases redated the originals to achieve a literary
and sequential flow.
When Bettina’s papers were made public in 1929, Unger was shocked
that the Goethe correspondence had been altered at all by Bettina. He ap-
parently had assumed the book was simply an edited version of the originals.
Unger also must have taken satisfaction from the fact that there were no
Beethoven letters among Bettina’s papers. That supported his revised conten-
tion that the 1810 and 1812 letters were concocted by Bettina. But given
that the originals of the 1810 and 1812 letters had been seen and verified by
respected and reputable witnesses, as detailed in chapter 5, the fact that none
were found in her estate provides greater support for the theory I postulated in
chapter 4 that the Beethoven letters were destroyed by Bettina. It is also pos-
sible that the Beethoven letters were destroyed by members of Bettina’s fam-
ily, for the same reasons as their reluctance to make public the Goethe letters.
In any case, Unger published a paper in 1936 in which he launched an almost
vitriolic attack on Bettina.14 His predisposition against her and the mistakes or
oversights in his paper are so apparent that they will be separately analyzed
in chapter 10. But Unger’s 1936 paper makes it clear that his disenchantment
with Bettina was final and complete.

THE ERROR OF OSCAR FAMBACH

After publication of Unger’s 1936 paper, his views became generally accepted
in the field of Beethoven scholarship. In an entirely different field of schol-
arship, that concerning the literary, social, and scientific legacy of Goethe,
the Teplitz Letter from Beethoven to Bettina published by her was attacked

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 The Tarnishing of Bettina’s Reputation 73

from a new direction by Oscar Fambach, a prominent scholar and admirer of

Goethe. Fambach, who was a professor at a prestigious German university, was
appalled that Goethe was portrayed in the Teplitz Letter as a fawning admirer
of royalty.
In a paper published in 1971, Fambach purported to “prove” that the
1812 Teplitz Letter was a concoction by Bettina.15 His main reason arose from
a statement made by Beethoven in the letter that the “Court” would leave the
town of Teplitz “tomorrow.” Fambach pointed out that the Austrian empress
and her court, who were walking in the park with members of the royal fam-
ily of Saxony when, according to the Teplitz Letter, they were encountered
by Goethe and Beethoven, did not leave town “tomorrow” but rather several
weeks later. Fambach claimed that the wrong date of the intended departure
proved that Bettina had concocted the letter. But his analysis was based on a
fundamental error. He overlooked that the “Court” referred to by Beethoven
was not that of the Austrian empress but of the royal family of Saxony, which
did in fact leave Teplitz “tomorrow,” as Beethoven said they would.16 Fam-
bach had used the wrong royal group as the basis for his argument. Presumably
because of witnesses who had seen and verified the authenticity of the Teplitz
Letter that Fambach attacked, Fambach in his paper expressly claimed that the
Teplitz Letter was a forgery (discussed more fully below).

ATTACKS AND ANSWERS

As a consequence of the ascendency of the anti-Bettina camp through the

writings of scholars like Unger and Fambach, a whole new generation of Bet-
tina scholars has arrived on the scene today trained by their academic superiors
to disbelieve, or at the very least regard with suspicion, almost everything that
Bettina wrote or did. The stalwarts of the pro-Bettina camp, such as Thayer,
Nohl, Carrière, Moscheles, Rolland, and Kalischer, are long gone, and few
specialists today defend Bettina as did those careful and reputable scholars.
The new generation of scholars often cite or repeat accumulated negative
views about Bettina made by their skeptical predecessors as if they are facts,
not merely opinions deserving scrutiny. What follows are discussions of and
answers to the most frequently cited modern attacks made against Bettina and
her trustworthiness, including attacks made on the authenticity of the Teplitz
Letter. The authenticity of the Teplitz Letter, however, was established by
the evidence presented in chapter 5. And as conceded by Unger himself in
his 1909 paper, if the original were to be found or established to be authentic,
that alone would prove conclusively that Bettina was the Immortal Beloved.

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 74 Chapter 9

Attack 1
Bettina doubters argue that the August 15 date of the Teplitz Letter that ap-
peared in Ilius is manifestly wrong, since Beethoven was far away from Teplitz
on that date, while Bettina was in Teplitz.17
Answer: Beethoven noted the place of writing and exact date of virtually
all of his letters at the head of the first page of the letter, as is customary today.
Yet the date and place of the writing of the Teplitz Letter as first published by
Bettina in 1839 reads “Teplitz, August 1812” (no day). Those words appear
at the end of the letter, on the left side of the page across from Beethoven’s
printed signature. This indicates that the notation did not emanate from
Beethoven but was most likely a marginal note made by Bettina when she
delivered the original to her Nürnberg editor for publication, remembering
as best she could almost 30 years afterward the place, year, and approximate
month when she received it. When she copied out the letter from the original
for her Ilius manuscript some years later (which as shown in chapter 5 is almost
certainly an exact replica of the Teplitz Letter), she plugged in “Teplitz, 15th
August, 1812,” underneath, not across from, her replication of Beethoven’s
signature. These facts confirm that the place and date of writing was not writ-
ten on the face of the letter by Beethoven and that in all likelihood it was
handed undated to Bettina shortly before he precipitously left Teplitz, when
he forgot even to take his travel papers with him. He would not have en-
dorsed its place of writing and date had he handed it to her. Edouard Duboc,
who, as noted in chapter 8, met Bettina in Teplitz shortly before her death
and learned from her about Beethoven’s sonnet to her, published the Teplitz
Letter in his book and confirmed that it was undated.18 Presumably he learned
this from Bettina.

Attack 2
Bettina’s critics point out that the paper used to write out the single surviving
letter from Beethoven to Bettina in her Ilius manuscript, referred to in chapter
5, is different from the paper used to write out the copies of the two letters
which do not survive. As well, the copies of the two letters in the Ilius manu-
script that do not survive contain cross-outs, which critics see as an indication
that Bettina was drafting the letters herself.19
Answer: The three letters from Goethe’s mother also in the Ilius manu-
script are written on different sorts of paper, but all three survive. Bettina
made cross-outs in copying out the three letters from Goethe’s mother in
her Ilius manuscript, yet all three survive and were not concocted by her.
The cross-outs in the surviving 1811 Beethoven letter correspond exactly to
Beethoven’s own cross-outs in the original. The surviving 1811 letter from

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 The Tarnishing of Bettina’s Reputation 75

Beethoven to Bettina was likely copied out by Bettina before she gave it to
Nathusius (as described in chapter 3), while the other two were likely copied
out some years afterward as she was collating the Ilius manuscript, hence the
difference in the paper.

Attack 3
As noted above, Beethoven wrote in the Teplitz Letter that he had walked
in the park with Goethe “yesterday” when they met coming the other way
the Austrian empress in company with the royal family of Saxony, in all
probability Goethe’s duke and several other members of the nobility. He
also wrote that the “Court” would leave town “tomorrow.” Goethe’s diary
shows that he walked in the park with Beethoven on July 23. This means
that the Teplitz Letter, if genuine, would have been written on July 24,
and that the court would leave on July 25. Oscar Fambach pointed out that
the Austrian empress and her court did not leave town until the middle of
August, and he concluded that the Teplitz Letter must therefore have been
concocted by Bettina.20
Answer: As noted above, Fambach chose the wrong “Court.” The
members of the royal family of Saxony left town for Dresden on July 25, the
day after Beethoven wrote his letter, accompanied for part of the journey
by the empress.

Attack 4
Bettina wrote to her friend Pückler-Muskau more than 20 years afterward
that Beethoven had come running to “us” making fun of Goethe’s obsequious
bows to the party of nobility they met in the park. Why would Beethoven
describe to Bettina the same event in the Teplitz Letter if he had already told
her about it in person? This is the question raised by Deiters that troubled
Thayer the most.21
Answer: Beethoven wrote the Teplitz Letter on July 24, the day after he
walked with Goethe in the park. He left town precipitously on the next day or
two. It is quite possible that he had already written the Teplitz Letter when he
approached Bettina and her family group, which would have included Bettina
and her husband and sister and perhaps other friends in the course of a social
gathering. The town was crowded with nobles and hangers-on. He may have
described the incident to a relatively large group at the same time as he slipped
the already written Teplitz Letter to Bettina, having determined to leave town
as soon as he could arrange a coach seat. Bettina wrote to Pückler-Muskau that
Beethoven repeated the story “several” times. She may have had in mind the

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 76 Chapter 9

retelling of the story in the Teplitz Letter, which she had not yet made public
at the time she wrote her letter to Pückler-Muskau.

Attack 5
Beethoven wrote in the Teplitz Letter that “Duke Rudolph” had doffed his
hat to Beethoven when his group met Beethoven and Goethe in the park on
July 23. Bettina’s critics have taken this as a reference to Archduke Rudolph,
the brother of the Austrian emperor, and point out that Archduke Rudolph
was not in Teplitz on July 23.22
Answer: Beethoven’s letter did not say “Archduke Rudolph” but rather
“Duke Rudolph.” There is a significant difference between an archduke and a
duke, and Beethoven knew that. He always in his letters referred to Archduke
Rudolph as the “Archduke.” His letter probably was referring to the duke for
whom Goethe worked, whose name was Karl August, but in scribbling his
letter, Beethoven mistakenly wrote the wrong name. Bettina did not refer to
the archduke as “Rudolph” in her own letters but by the name “Rainier,”
another of his names. If she had concocted the letter, she would likely have
named Rudolph “Duke Rainier.” The mistake was Beethoven’s.

Attack 6
Critics argue that the independent witnesses Merz and Carrière, who saw and
publicly attested to the autographs of the three letters from Beethoven to Bet-
tina, did not know what Beethoven’s handwriting looked like and in fact only
saw copies written out by Bettina.23
Answer: Merz and Carrière were educated and respected literary experts.
Both were familiar with Bettina’s neat and distinctive handwriting. As Thayer
pointed out, a number of publications had by 1839 included specimens
of Beethoven’s eccentrically distinctive handwriting.24 Bettina’s Nürnberg
publisher Merz would have been aware of this in 1838 when he certified to
Thayer many years afterward that he had in his possession the originals of the
letters, and Carrière reiterated to Marx’s editor more than 30 years afterward
his confirmation of seeing the originals.

Attack 7
A letter to Bettina from Goethe’s mother that Bettina included in her Goethe
Correspondence book was dated after the death of Goethe’s mother. From this
is argued not only that the letter was concocted by Bettina, but also that many
other letters from others to her that she published many years later (including

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 The Tarnishing of Bettina’s Reputation 77

ones from Beethoven and Goethe) but which do not today survive were also
likely concocted by her.
Answer: As demonstrated at the beginning of chapter 11, Bettina and
those with whom she was intimate and corresponding on a continuing and
regular basis often did not date their correspondence, just as Beethoven did not
date his letter to the Immortal Beloved nor his Teplitz Letter to Bettina. When
Bettina published some of her correspondence many years afterward, she as-
cribed dates as she best remembered them. As more particularly described in
chapter 11, the letter from Goethe’s mother ostensibly dated after her death
was in clear response to undated letters from Bettina describing a voyage
down the Rhine she took in midsummer of that year, 1807. In attributing a
date to it many years later, Bettina simply inserted the wrong month. As also
shown in chapter 11, Bettina attributed a wrong date to one of the letters to
her from Goethe’s mother, thus causing an editor of a book of collected letters
of Goethe’s mother initially to claim that Bettina concocted the letter, then
reversing his opinion when he was shown the autograph of the letter, blaming
Bettina, however, for inserting the wrong year of its writing.

Attack 8
Bettina’s doubters claim she spent only a few hours in the company of
Beethoven,25 and exaggerated the nature of her contact with him in what
they claim is her fictitious letter to Goethe describing the time she spent with
Beethoven in Vienna in 1810.26
Answer: As discussed more fully in chapter 7, Bettina most likely looked
up Beethoven around May 28 or 29, and he accompanied her to a party given
by Franz and Antonie Brentano that day. During the following days, she and
Beethoven strolled in the Schönbrunn gardens and he took her to a music
rehearsal. Beethoven came to see her every day until she left Vienna, or she
went to him, causing her to miss social meetings, galleries, the theater, and
even the cathedral.

Attack 9
In her Ilius book, Bettina reproduced three letters she claimed to have received
from Beethoven, but only one today survives. According to her critics, this
proves the other two were concocted by her.27
Answer: In the Ilius book, Bettina reproduced three letters she claimed to
have received from Goethe’s mother and three she claimed to have received
from Beethoven. But the text of her covering letter to Nathusius when she
sent him reproductions of the six letters makes it clear that she gave him only
one original letter from each group of three. The one letter from Beethoven

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 78 Chapter 9

that she gave to Nathusius was found in his belongings after his death, and
the other letter from Goethe’s mother has also been found. They are both
identical to what she reproduced in Ilius except that, as noted in chapter 5, she
depersonalized her own name, for example changing her name in the heading
from “Dear Bettine” to “Dear Friend.” However, as noted in chapter 5, the
letter from Beethoven copied out by Bettina as it appears in the preliminary
Ilius manuscript today located in Düsseldorf, described in chapter 5, in which
she had not yet depersonalized her name, is identical to the extant original. All
three letters from Goethe’s mother reproduced in Ilius have been found and
are identical to what appears in the preliminary Ilius manuscript except for
grammatical and spelling corrections.

CONCLUSION

As a result of the confluence of negative judgments about Bettina by

Beethoven scholars like Unger and Goethe scholars like Fambach, Bettina’s
reputation as a concocter and possibly a forger of letters became entrenched
in the literary establishment. The views of Thayer, Carrière, Kalischer, Nohl,
Rolland, Moscheles, and others in the pro-Bettina camp have been rejected
as wrong. But it is the anti-Bettina critics who have based their judgments on
mistaken facts and premises, and in some cases bias, who are wrong.

NOTES

1. Ludwig Nohl, Briefe Beethovens (Stuttgart: Verlag Cotta’schen, 1865), 71. Ac-
cording to Nohl, in an 1868 English translation of this work, “I never myself had
any doubts of their [the three Beethoven letters to Bettina] being genuine (with the
exception of perhaps some words in the middle of the third letter), nor can any one
now distrust them. . . . But for the sake of those for whom the weight of innate con-
viction is not sufficient proof, I may here mention that in December 1864, Professor
Moritz Carrière, in Munich, . . . expressly assured me that these three letters were
genuine, and that he had seen them in Berlin at Bettina v. Arnim’s in 1839, and read
them most attentively and with the deepest interest. From their important contents,
he urged their immediate publication; and when this shortly after ensued, no change
whatever struck him as having been made in the original text; on the contrary, he still
perfectly remembered that the much disputed phraseology (and especially the incident
with Goethe) was precisely the same as in the originals.” Nohl, Beethoven’s Letters,
trans. Lady Wallace (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries, 1970), 84–85.

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 The Tarnishing of Bettina’s Reputation 79

2. Adolph B. Marx, Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag Otto
Janke, 1859), 2:132.
3. Theodore Albrecht, “Thayer contra Marx,” Beethoven Journal 14, no. 2 (1999):
57–58, referring to Marx, Beethoven, 2:132.
4. Marx, Beethoven, 4th ed., ed. Gustav Behncke (Berlin: Verlag Janke, 1884),
2:304–16.
5. Thayer German, 3:254–5, 328; Thayer English 2:227.
6. Krehbiel noted that Deiters, the original editor of Thayer German, had pub-
lished in 1882 a paper claiming that all three letters to Bettina from Beethoven were
concocted by Bettina. That obviously presented a problem for Riemann, who in 1907
succeeded Deiters as editor of Thayer German, because the 1811 letter had surfaced
after the first volumes of Thayer German were published and just around the time
Deiters’s paper appeared. Krehbiel pointed out that Riemann had made a compromise
suggestion to the effect that because the facts described in the 1812 Teplitz Letter ap-
peared to be accurate, they had been put into letter form by Bettina based on what
Beethoven told her. Krehbiel hedged his own bets in case the letters later turned up
by suggesting that if they did, they would have been “tricked” out of Beethoven by
Bettina. This shows the mind-set against Bettina by all three of the original editors of
Thayer’s work (see Thayer English, 2:190).
7. Max Unger, “Zum Problem von Beethoven’s Unsterblicher Geliebten,” Musi-
kalisches Wochenblatt 26 (1909): 356.
8. Unger, “Auf Spüren,” 71–74.
9. Wilhelm Schellberg and Friedrich Fuchs, eds., Die Andacht zum Menschenbild
(Bern: Herbert Lang, 1970), 164.
10. Max Unger, “Giulietta Guicciardi: Die Unsterbliche Geliebte Beethovens?”
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 35/36 (1911): 504–5.
11. Theodor Frimmel, Beethoven Handbuch (Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1926), 63.
12. Max Unger, “The Immortal Beloved,” Musical Quarterly 13 (1928): 259.
13. Heinz Härtl, ed., Bettina von Arnim Werke: Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kind, 4
vols. (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1986), 1:666–70.
14. Unger, “Neue Liebe, Neues Leben,” 1049–75.
15. Oscar Fambach, “Eine Brieffälschung der Bettina von Arnim als Nachklang des
Beethoven-Jahres,” Deutches Vierteljahresschrift 45 (1971): 773–8.
16. Edward Walden, “The Authenticity of the 1812 Beethoven Letter to Bettina
von Arnim,” Beethoven Journal 14, no. 1 (1999): 9–15, translated, amplified, and edited
by Peter Anton von Arnim, in the “Internationales Jahrbuch der Bettina von Arnim
Gesellschaft,” Saint Albin Verlag 15 (2003): 47–66.
17. Fambach, “Brieffälschung.”
18. Waldmüller, Wanderstudien, 2:228.
19. Renate Moering, “Bettine von Arnims Literarische Umsetzung Ihres Beethoven-
Erlebnisses,” Der “männliche” und der “weibliche” Beethoven (Bonn: Beethoven Haus,
2004), 251–77.
20. Fambach, “Brieffälschung.”

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 80 Chapter 9

21. Thayer English, 2:227, but see p. 183 for a more hesitant opinion.
22. Anderson, 3:1357. It should be noted that in the 1839 publication of the letter,
as well as in Ilius and in Bettina’s handwritten copy of the letter in the Ilius manuscript
(see chapter 5), Rudolph is identified by the title “Herzog” (duke), not “Erzherzog”
(archduke).
23. Thayer English, 2:183–5, answering the arguments of both Marx and Thayer’s
own translator, Deiters, with whom he was at odds on the point.
24. Thayer English, 2:183–5.
25. Kopitz, “Antonie Brentano in Wien,” 124.
26. Ann Willison Lemke, Bettine’s Song: The Musical Voice of Bettine von Arnim, née
Brentano, doctoral dissertation (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Dissertation Services, 1998),
161–2.
27. Unger, “The Immortal Beloved,” Musical Quarterly 13 (1928): 259.

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 • 10 •

Beethoven’s Goethe Songs

UNGER’S ABOUT-FACE

A s described in chapter 9, Beethoven specialists during the last half of the

19th century were divided into two camps on the question of Bettina’s trust-
worthiness in her writings about Beethoven. One camp believed in the truth-
fulness and reliability of her published descriptions of him and the authentic-
ity of the three letters from him that she published. Members of that camp
included Alexander Thayer, Ludwig Nohl, Ignaz Moscheles, Alfred Kalischer,
and Romain Rolland. The other camp believed she was at best a concocter
of letters and at worst a liar and forger. Members of that camp included Her-
mann Deiters, who was Thayer’s German translator, and Adolph Marx, who
was Thayer’s great rival as a Beethoven biographer. When Max Unger came
on the scene as a young student in Leipzig in 1909 working toward his PhD,
the most prominent pro-Bettina scholars except Rolland were all dead, but the
anti-Bettina camp, headed now by Hugo Riemann, who succeeded Deiters
as Thayer’s editor and translator, was gaining strength. Riemann was one of
Unger’s professors at the University of Leipzig.
Unger started out in the pro-Bettina camp and even published a paper
in 1909 theorizing that she could be the Immortal Beloved.1 In August 1911,
however, the year he received his PhD, he published a paper stating that he
had withdrawn that theory.2 This was possibly because of pressure from Rie-
mann. During the next two decades, Unger gradually retreated from other
pro-Bettina positions he had taken in his early publications, culminating with
an anti-Bettina paper published in 1936 in the field of music. Although the
French writer and scholar Romain Rolland continued to publish in Bettina’s
favor before his death in 1944, he seems to have been perceived as poaching

81

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 82 Chapter 10

on German turf. In a 1929 review by Unger of a biography of Beethoven

written by Rolland, Unger appears condescending.3 Doubts about Bettina
seemed reinforced when no Beethoven letters turned up in the auction of her
paper in 1929. That as well as the scholarly papers critical of Bettina resulted
in the complete ascendancy of the anti-Bettina camp, as reflected in Oscar
Fambach’s 1971 paper in the field of Goethe literature described in chapter
9.4 Skeptical and even derogatory views of her are today entrenched in the
literary establishment.
Unger’s 1936 paper was published in a musical journal and dealt with the
history and background of one of Goethe’s poems set to music by Beethoven
entitled New Love, New Life, discussing in detail the history of its composition
and analyzing Beethoven’s musical sketches.5 That in turn required Unger to
deal with a statement attributed to Bettina that Beethoven wrote the song for
her. Right from the beginning of the paper, it is evident that Unger’s sec-
ondary purpose was to destroy the pro-Bettina contentions of Thayer, Nohl,
Kalischer, and others in the pro-Bettina camp who were all now dead. Unger
specifically stated that he wanted to correct the “foolishness” of the traditions
created by those pro-Bettina writers and scholars of the previous generation.
Unger’s paper is replete with mistakes, oversights, and flawed conclu-
sions that he used to support his theory that Bettina concocted two of the
three Beethoven letters she published, that the missing letters between her and
Goethe that she published in her Goethe Correspondence book were complete
fabrications, and that she created false evidence to exaggerate the role she
played in Beethoven’s life.

BETTINA’S CONNECTION WITH GOETHE AND BEETHOVEN

As noted in chapters 2 and 4, Bettina for many reasons had a strong artistic and
emotional connection with Goethe, who was 35 years older than she. As previ-
ously described, when she was only 20, she traveled to Weimar where Goethe
lived and introduced herself to him. That meeting led to a long series of letters
exchanged between them, many but not all of which are extant today.
Beethoven also was a great admirer of Goethe, especially because of the
political opposition to tyranny Goethe expressed in his play about the Flemish
resistance hero Egmont. When Bettina met Beethoven in 1810, he was then
working on setting the Egmont story to music. He was also working on or had
recently finished setting to music three Goethe poems: Mignon’s Song (Op. 75,
No. 1), which Beethoven played and sang for Bettina twice when they first
met; New Love, New Life (Op. 75, No. 2), a copy of which Beethoven sent to

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 Beethoven’s Goethe Songs 83

Bettina in his first letter to her and which bears his handwritten inscription to
her; The Bliss of Melancholy (Op. 83, No. 1), which Beethoven had not quite
finished when he also sang it for Bettina when they first met.
The fact that both Beethoven and Bettina shared a great admiration for
Goethe and that Bettina actually knew Goethe when she first met Beethoven
obviously attracted Beethoven to her. Many years later, Bettina, then in her
middle years, published four letters ostensibly written in 1810 dealing with
Beethoven’s settings of the Goethe poems. One of the letters is from Goethe
to her, one is from Beethoven to her, and the other two are from her to
Goethe. In them, her interaction with Beethoven and Goethe and her own
connection to music were described in some detail. The three letters between
her and Goethe were published in 1835 in her Goethe Correspondence book but
fell within the 1810 Letter Gap described in chapter 4, and hence today are
missing. As theorized in that chapter, they were likely destroyed by Bettina,
but edited versions were copied or re-created by Bettina and included in her
Goethe Correspondence book. The 1810 letter to her from Beethoven is also to-
day missing. As described in chapter 3, it was first published by her in 1839 in
a literary and political journal edited by an independent and respected editor,
as more fully described in chapter 5.
A few years before Unger wrote his 1936 paper, several books were pub-
lished analyzing the differences between the actual correspondence between
Goethe and Bettina that had been auctioned off in 1929 and the same letters
as they appeared in her Goethe Correspondence book. Unger called the differ-
ences “stupefying” and characterized all the missing correspondence between
Goethe and Bettina during the 1810 Letter Gap that she reproduced in her
Goethe Correspondence book as pure fabrications by the young “phantastin.” In
doing so, he was referring not only to letters during the 1810 Letter Gap from
Goethe to Bettina, but also letters from Bettina to Goethe, even though, as
noted in chapter 4, Goethe’s surviving letters to her during and after the 1810
Letter Gap mentioned a number of letters to him from Bettina during the
1810 Letter Gap period. It is one thing to call a letter a fabrication if the origi-
nal is found and bears no resemblance to the published version, or if there is
no proof that the original ever existed. It is another thing to call the published
version of a letter that has not been found a fabrication when it is proven to
have actually existed. That is especially so if the writer of the published version
is the acknowledged writer of the missing one. As to the missing letters from
Goethe to Bettina during the 1810 Letter Gap, they are quite short, noncon-
troversial, and have the ring of truth (see chapter 11).
Turning specifically to the four missing letters dealing with Beethoven’s
Goethe songs, it becomes apparent that in claiming that they were complete
fabrications, Unger overlooked or ignored strong evidence corroborating their

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 84 Chapter 10

existence and their contents. Below are summaries of what the four letters said,
followed by evidence corroborating their existence and content. In consider-
ing the three missing letters between Goethe and Bettina, it should be kept in
mind that, as will be described in chapter 11, Bettina often did not date her
own letters, and in some cases in her Goethe Correspondence book, she attributed
erroneous dates to them, either because after the passage of more than 20 years
she could not remember the exact date when she wrote them, or because she
broke up her own long undated letters into segments and attributed dates to
them to provide easier reading and a sequential narrative.
Missing Letter No. 1: Bettina to Goethe May 28, 1810—the
Beethoven Description letter more fully described in chapter 7. Bettina’s date
is wrong. The surviving portion of this letter was started in early July 1810, but
the missing portion as published in her Goethe Correspondence book, just where
she begins to describe meeting Beethoven, was broken out from the surviving
portion and likely dated by her to correspond to the date she remembered as
being when she first met Beethoven. Bettina says in the missing portion of this
letter that when she first met Beethoven, he played and sang Mignon’s Song for
her, and seeing her pleasure, played and sang for her The Bliss of Melancholy
that he had not completely finished and was still working on.
Corroboration of Missing Letter No. 1: A surviving letter from Bettina to
her friend Hermann Pückler-Muskau written in 1832 repeats essentially what
she had written to Goethe in Missing Letter No. 1, that is, that Beethoven
had first sung Mignon’s Song for her. She also wrote to Pückler that because
“her eyes and cheeks were aglow” when she heard Beethoven sing it, he was
stimulated to sing his almost completed The Bliss of Melancholy for her as well.
In a cheerful surviving letter from Beethoven to his publisher dated June 6
1810, just several days after Bettina left Vienna, Beethoven wrote: “among
the songs I have offered you there are several settings of poems by Goethe,
including [Mignon’s Song] which makes a great impression on listeners—you
could publish these at once.”6 Beethoven’s mention of the impression that the
song made on listeners can reasonably be linked to Bettina, for whom he had
played and sung the song only several days before.
Missing Letter No. 2: Goethe to Bettina June 6, 1810. Bettina’s date
is probably wrong; this missing letter was likely written in early August in
response to her missing Letter No. 1. Goethe says he would like to meet
Beethoven, possibly in the Bohemian spa town Karlsbad where he usually
spent his summers. He also says he would like to see Beethoven’s song settings
of two of his poems. These were apparently mentioned and described by Bet-
tina in portions of her Letter No. 1 that are not only missing, but even edited
out of her Goethe Correspondence book, possibly because she did not want her
children to learn that in the first year of her marriage she had seriously con-

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 Beethoven’s Goethe Songs 85

sidered leaving her husband in favor of a career in music in collaboration with

Beethoven. In a surviving contemporaneous letter to her young friend Alois
Bihler (see chapter 12), Bettina mentioned that Beethoven had given her set-
tings of songs made to Goethe poems, but she did not mention this fact in
her missing Letter No. 1 to Goethe, so it must have been edited out by her.
Missing Letter No. 3: Bettina to Goethe, undated but probably written
in mid-August. Bettina says in response to missing Letter No. 2 from Goethe
to her that Beethoven assured her he would try to meet Goethe in Karlsbad
next summer. Bettina also says she is enclosing, as requested by Goethe,
Beethoven’s song settings of two poems by Goethe that she does not name.
Finally she says that Beethoven praised her musical abilities and told her if she
applied herself to music she could have a promising future in it. As proof she
said she was enclosing for Goethe two songs she herself had written.
Corroboration of Missing Letters Nos. 2 and 3: Bettina wrote to her friend
Alois Bihler in a surviving 1810 letter that “during these last days I spent in
Vienna, he came to see me every evening, gave me songs by Goethe which he
had set, and begged me to write him at least once a month.”7 An original 1810
autograph copy of The Bliss of Melancholy was found in Goethe’s after-effects and
is now in the Goethe museum in Weimar.8 In 1811, Beethoven and Goethe
exchanged surviving letters. In Beethoven’s letter to Goethe, he wrote: “Bet-
tine Brentano has assured me that you would receive me kindly, or, I should
say, as a friend.”9 In his reply, Goethe wrote: “the good Bettina Brentano surely
deserves the interest that you have shown in her. She speaks of you with rapture
and the liveliest affection, and counts the hours that she spent with you among
the happiest of her life.”10 Goethe in fact went to Karlsbad in 1812 but after-
ward traveled to the nearby town of Teplitz to join his employer, where he and
Beethoven finally met. In 1810 and 1812, Bettina published two songs she had
written, under the pseudonym “Beans Beor” (see chapter 3).11 When Achim
von Arnim first proposed to Bettina several weeks after she had left Vienna and
Beethoven, she said in response that she was considering devoting her life “to
music and the causes of the time” instead of marriage.12
Missing Letter No. 4: Beethoven to Bettina August 11, 1810.
Beethoven says that he is enclosing a copy of New Love, New Life and an au-
tograph copy of Mignon’s Song. Beethoven also asks that Bettina recommend
him and his music to Goethe.
Corroboration of Missing Letter No. 4: The first page of a copy of New
Love, New Life with Beethoven’s handwritten dedication to Bettina has been
found and is today in the Beethoven Haus in Bonn. The balance of the
copy of that song was found in Bettina’s private papers after her death and is
presently in the Morgan Library in New York. As to Mignon’s Song, because
the original autograph has not been found (which is somewhat unusual for

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 86 Chapter 10

musical publications by Beethoven, most of which have been found), Helga

Lühning of the Beethoven Haus speculates that it might have been the one
sent by Beethoven to Bettina with this Letter No. 4.13 Also see the exchange
of the surviving letters between Beethoven and Goethe corroborating Miss-
ing Letters Nos. 2 and 3 above.
Bettina’s final words on the subject of the Beethoven-Goethe songs that
we know of were recounted in the diary of her acquaintance Varnhagen von
Ense in 1856, when Bettina was in her 70s and had less than three years to live.
Bettina had been a close friend of Varnhagen’s deceased wife Rahel, and Bet-
tina and Varnhagen kept in touch socially because they both lived in Berlin.
Varnhagen noted in his diary that Bettina told him that Beethoven had wanted
to marry her and had written New Love, New Life for her. This fact will be
discussed in greater detail later in this chapter.

UNGER’S MOST EGREGIOUS ERROR

The most egregious erroneous attack on Bettina made by Unger in his 1936
paper may be seen in his attempted explanation of the inscription to Bettina
in Beethoven’s handwriting on a copy of the front page of New Love, New
Life. As noted in the paragraph corroborating Missing Letter No. 4 above,
the inscription by Beethoven to Bettina on the title page of the song provides
powerful corroboration of the authenticity of Beethoven’s Missing Letter No.
4 to Bettina, in which he said he was sending to her a copy of that song. Unger
speculates that Bettina, like an autograph hound, obtained the inscription in
blank from Beethoven when she met him in Vienna, then had an unknown
copyist write out the song when she arrived in Berlin and attached the inscrip-
tion to the copy she had caused to be created. The facts about the inscription
to Bettina on the first page of the song as well as the balance of the other pages
of the song are these:

1. The inscription page with Beethoven’s dedication to Bettina in his

own handwriting has the first nine bars of the New Love, New Life song
on the reverse side written out by Beethoven’s copyist; that page is
now in the Beethoven Haus in Bonn, and is shown in illustration 6.
2. The inscription page has fold marks consistent with it being enclosed
in a sealed letter, presumably the missing August 1810 letter from
Beethoven to Bettina.
3. The balance of the copy of the song from which the inscription page
was ripped is in the Morgan Library in New York and was obtained
by the library’s benefactors from the 1929 auction of Bettina’s papers.

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 Beethoven’s Goethe Songs 87

4. The rip on the inscription page matches exactly the balance of that
page that is joined to the rest of the copy of the song in New York.
5. The handwriting of the balance of the song in New York matches
exactly the handwriting of the first nine bars of the song on the in-
scription page in Bonn, which is that of Beethoven’s copyist.14

Unger’s theory about how Bettina came into possession of the dedication
is therefore totally wrong. Further, he was an expert in Beethoven manu-
scripts, and one wonders why he failed to recognize the handwriting of
Beethoven’s copyist.
The balance of this chapter deals with a few, but only a few, of the other
conclusions of Unger in his 1936 paper that demonstrate an apparent lack of
objectivity as well as a mind-set against Bettina in his analysis of the role she
played in Beethoven’s life.

BEETHOVEN’S STATEMENT ABOUT THE

WRITING OF NEW LOVE, NEW LIFE

As noted above, Beethoven sent Bettina a copy of the song New Love, New Life
with an inscription to her in his Missing Letter No. 4. He also said in that let-
ter that he had composed it after she had left Vienna. Unger wrote in his 1936
paper that this was clearly wrong, a mistake that he contended corroborated
his claim that Beethoven’s 1810 letter to Bettina was concocted by her. Unger
traced the history of the song, pointing out that an initial version of it had
been written by Beethoven in 1798/1799, and that a second version had been
published by him in 1809. This is true, but in February 1810, Beethoven sent
to his publisher a semi-final draft of a third and final version of the song for
possible publication.15 He sent the completed version to his publisher on July
2, 1810, about a month after Bettina left Vienna, and a month before he sent
his Missing Letter No. 4 to her with the inscription page described above.16
From Bettina’s perspective, receiving a copy of the song with the first
page endorsed “For Bettina von Brentano—set to music by Beethoven”
would justify her believing Beethoven had written it for her, as she told Varn-
hagen many years later. Bettina was not a scholar who would have had the
opportunity to pore over Beethoven’s papers as did Unger almost a century
later. And Beethoven did not lie to Bettina when he wrote to her that he had
composed it after she left Vienna, because he finished the song and sent it off
to his publisher in the month following her departure. As he said in his letter,
“I am sending you also the other song [New Love, New Life] which I com-
posed after I said goodbye to you, dear, dearest heart!” Only an unromantic

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 88 Chapter 10

academic would expect Beethoven to craft the sentence in his love letter to say
“I enclose with this letter a song, which is in fact the third and final version of
something I have been working on for many years and which I finally finished
off and sent to my publisher after I said goodbye to you.”

BEETHOVEN’S COMPOSITION OF MIGNON’S SONG

Unger accused Bettina of falsely claiming that Beethoven wrote Mignon’s

Song for her. She did not make any such claim to Varnhagen. In her missing
Beethoven Description letter to Goethe (Missing Letter No. 1 above) and in
the surviving letter that she wrote many years afterward to Pückler-Muskau,
she said only that he had played and sung the song for her almost as soon as
she met him and that he told her he had just composed it.17 This would be a
natural thing for Beethoven to say, given Bettina’s identification with Mignon.
Bettina knew enough about music to realize that one cannot create a song for
someone “on the spot.” She specifically wrote that Beethoven was still work-
ing on the other song, The Bliss of Melancholy, that he also played and sang for
her after he sang Mignon’s Song, because he took out his notebook and made
notations in it for changes. With the literal mind of a scholar, Unger obviously
did not understand the flirtatious ways of a 39-year-old man in the company
of an adoring 25-year-old woman who identified with the subject of the song.

BEETHOVEN’S 1810 MARRIAGE PLANS

On May 2, 1810, a few weeks before Beethoven met Bettina, he wrote to

a friend living near Bonn asking him to try to obtain a copy of his baptismal
certificate from there, because he was not really certain how old he was (he
was then in fact 39). In 1845, some years after Beethoven’s death, his friend
published in an academic journal that he had since learned the real purpose of
the request was that Beethoven needed the certificate for a possible marriage.
The question then arose among Beethoven scholars as to whom Beethoven
had wanted to marry. One of Bettina’s most prestigious supporters in the late
years of the 19th century was Alfred Kalischer, whose publication of the letters
of Beethoven continued to be the definitive version of them during much of
the 20th century. In 1886, he published a paper theorizing that Bettina must
have been the object of Beethoven’s 1810 marriage intentions, based on the
1856 entry in Varnhagen’s diary in which he mentions Bettina telling him
Beethoven’s love for her was not platonic and that he had wanted to marry

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 Beethoven’s Goethe Songs 89

her.18 Kalischer reasoned that because of Bettina’s closeness to Goethe, her

musical sensibilities, her psychological makeup, and the timing of the request
for the certificate (May 1810, the month in which Beethoven and Bettina
met), Bettina’s claim to Varnhagen was correct and that Beethoven indeed
had planned in 1810 to marry Bettina, whom he met in late May of that year.
In 1911, Hugo Riemann, one of Unger’s professors at the University of
Leipzig, edited and completed a revised German edition of Thayer’s biography
of Beethoven, in which Riemann contended that the object of Beethoven’s
1810 marriage plans was in fact Therese Malfatti, an 18-year-old Viennese
woman. It appears that Beethoven did hope to marry Therese in the spring of
1810 but her parents vetoed the possible union. This was just before he met
Bettina. That the object of Beethoven’s marriage plans was Malfatti is gener-
ally accepted today, and it is certain that the woman was not Bettina, because
the letter requesting the baptism certificate was sent several weeks before
Beethoven first met Bettina.
In Unger’s 1936 paper, he claimed that it was he, Unger, not his pro-
fessor, Riemann, who should get credit for establishing that Malfatti was the
object of Beethoven’s marriage plans.19 Then, in the context of Malfatti being
the object of Beethoven’s marriage plans in May 1810, Unger took the oppor-
tunity to attack both Bettina and her supporter Kalischer in reference to the
claim she made to Varnhagen that Beethoven had wanted to marry her. Unger
contended that Bettina had probably read the 1845 academic journal in which
the reason for Beethoven’s request for his baptismal certificate was revealed,
then made up a false story that it was she whom Beethoven wanted to marry
at that time, in order to make herself appear important in Beethoven’s life.
Once again, Unger’s accusation is erroneous. Bettina’s claim to Varn-
hagen was only that Beethoven had wanted to marry her. She did not claim
that he proposed to her or that she had refused him. Beethoven himself con-
fided in 1816 to an acquaintance that his love for the hoped-for mate of his life
had never reached a confession, that is, a proposal of marriage.20 Bettina would
have been justified in making her statement to Varnhagen on the basis alone of
the words in Beethoven’s found 1811 letter to her, in which Beethoven said
he had learned that she was about to be married but was distressed that she had
not given him the opportunity of seeing her and letting him talk to her first.
Assuming, however, that Bettina was the Immortal Beloved and that she
and Beethoven exchanged many intimate letters between 1811 and 1812 lead-
ing up to his 1812 letter to the Immortal Beloved as established in chapters 2
and 4, it is clear from the latter letter that he would have wanted the woman to
be his life partner, but that she could not be “his” in the circumstances. Had he
written this in the exchange of letters leading up to the letter to the Immortal
Beloved, this would have given Bettina even stronger justification for telling

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 90 Chapter 10

Varnhagen what she did. That Bettina could have anticipated an academic
quarrel between Unger and Kalischer as to the background of Beethoven’s
1810 request for his baptismal certificate, a quarrel that occurred more than
50 years after her death, and that she claimed in anticipation of that quarrel
to be the object of those plans, is patently absurd. It illustrates the perception
Unger had of Bettina and her character, a perception that distorted his judg-
ment about everything he wrote about her.

BETTINA’S DESCRIPTION OF BEETHOVEN

A further example illustrating Unger’s mind-set against Bettina can be seen

in his attempts to debunk Bettina’s description in her missing Beethoven
Description letter to Goethe (Missing Letter No. 1 above) and her surviving
contemporaneous letter to Bihler that Beethoven did not know his own age
and was unkempt.21 Unger well knew from his research about Beethoven’s
1810 marriage plans that in the letter Beethoven wrote asking for his baptismal
certificate a few weeks before he met Bettina, he admitted not being certain
of his own age. Unger speculates Beethoven knew his age when he was with
Bettina in late May and early June, because he had written for his baptismal
certificate on May 2, several weeks before he met Bettina. The baptismal cer-
tificate was in fact issued in Bonn on June 2 of that year and would not have
been received by Beethoven until after Bettina left Vienna.22
As for Bettina’s description of Beethoven as being unkempt, Unger did
not mention that around the time Beethoven wrote for his baptismal certifi-
cate, he asked a friend to buy a mirror for him, because he was concerned
about how he appeared to others.23 Unger would or should have known about
this through his research about Beethoven’s marriage plans.

CONCLUSION

The above examples represent only a few of the conclusions and speculations
of Unger in his 1936 paper that clearly show his anti-Bettina mind-set. What
we have here is a remarkable phenomenon. Unger as a doctoral candidate in
1909–1911 published papers stating the following:

1. Bettina met all the psychological, geographical, and time requirements

necessary to be realistically considered the Immortal Beloved.
2. The missing 1812 Teplitz Letter to Bettina from Beethoven appeared
to be factually correct, had the ring of truth to it, and resembled in
style and language the letter to the Immortal Beloved.

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 Beethoven’s Goethe Songs 91

3. The missing 1810 letter to Bettina from Beethoven (Missing Letter

No. 4 above) was quite likely genuine.
4. The sonnet from Beethoven to Bettina that had been published in
facsimile form was without any doubt genuine.

As described in chapter 9, Unger in 1911, the year he received his PhD, pub-
licly retracted the first of these contentions. Over the next several decades, he
reversed himself on two of the other three, and with his 1936 paper he not
only abandoned all of them but vigorously attacked those positions without
mentioning that they were his in the first place. His attacks on Bettina’s char-
acter were almost vitriolic. Was his reversal because he was older and wiser
in 1936? Or was it because under pressure from his professors and peers he
was forced as a PhD candidate to retract several of his principal contentions
and thereafter to retreat from the others? Would it not be another blot on his
reputation if later in his career he reversed himself once again?

NOTES

1. Max Unger, “Zum Problem von Beethovens ‘Unsterblicher Geliebten,’” Musi-

kalisches Wochenblatt 26 (1909): 356–8.
2. Max Unger, “Giulietta Guicciardi: Die ‘Unsterbliche Geliebte’ Beethovens?”
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 35/36 (August 1911): 505.
3. Max Unger, “Romain Rolland als Beethoven-Forscher,” Deutsche Musiker-
Zeitung 60 (May 1929): 440.
4. For an analysis of the oversights or mistakes made by Fambach in his 1971 paper,
see Edward Walden, “The Authenticity of the 1812 Beethoven Letter to Bettina von
Arnim,” Beethoven Journal 14, no. 1 (1999): 9–15. For an edited version of the same paper
translated into German, see “Die Briefe Beethovens an Bettina von Arnim,” Internationales
Jahrbuch der Bettina von Arnim Gesellschaft 15 (Berlin: Saint Albin Verlag, 2003): 47–66.
5. Unger, “Neue Liebe, Neues Leben,” 1049–75.
6. Anderson, Letter No. 261.
7. Sonneck, Impressions, 78.
8. Georg Kinsky and Hans Halm, Das Werk Beethovens (Munich: Henle Verlag,
1955), 224. Kinsky says that the copy did not come from Bettina and speculates that
it came from someone else, but cites no source for either opinion. Kinsky was firmly
in the anti-Bettina camp. Unger also claims the copy came from someone other than
Bettina but cites no source. The Goethe Archive in Weimar advised me by letter in
2003 that they do not know how the song came into Goethe’s hands.
9. Anderson, Letter No. 303.
10. Albrecht, Letters, Letter No. 155.
11. William Meredith, “New Rare Beethoviana (and Brentaniana) at the Ira F. Bril-
liant Center for Beethoven Studies 2004–2006,” Beethoven Journal 21, no. 1 (2006): 39.

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 92 Chapter 10

12. Helps and Howard, Bettina, 71–72.

13. Helga Lühning, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Drei Lieder nach Gedichten von Goethe
(Bonn: Verlag Beethoven Haus, 1999), 44–46.
14. The author thanks Dr. Michael Ladenburger of the Beethoven Haus in Bonn
and J. Rigby Turner of the Morgan Library in New York for the information neces-
sary for this summary.
15. Anderson, Letter No. 245.
16. Anderson, Letter No. 262.
17. For the letter to Pückler-Muskau, see Sonneck, Impressions, 84. For the com-
plete text of the letter to Goethe, see Goethe Correspondence book, 283.
18. The sources for all these facts about Beethoven’s marriage plans and Kalischer’s
surmise may be found in Unger, “Neue Liebe, Neues Leben.”
19. Max Unger, “Beethoven and Therese von Malfatti,” Musical Quarterly 11
(1925): 63–72.
20. Thayer Forbes, 646.
21. For letters to Bihler and a portion of Bettina’s letter to Goethe, see Sonneck,
Impressions, 76 and 79. For the complete text of her letter to Goethe, see Goethe Cor-
respondence book, 283.
22. Donald MacArdle and Ludwig Misch, trans., New Beethoven Letters (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1957), Letter No. 72.
23. Anderson, Letter Nos. 259 and 260.

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 • 11 •

A Modern Analysis

FACTS OR ROMANTIC MYTHS

S ome contemporary reviewers were harsh in their comments about the pub-
lished letters Bettina claimed to have received from Goethe, Goethe’s mother,
and Beethoven. George Henry Lewes, whose Life of Goethe was published in
1864, for example, noted a number of problems with Bettina’s Goethe Cor-
respondence book. As Bruce Charlton explains in his preface to a Web edition
of Bettina’s book, Lewes faulted Bettina for, among other things, claiming
that she inspired poems by Goethe that were in fact addressed to others, and
concocting letters by paraphrasing lines from some of Goethe’s poems. Given
these and other problems, Lewes concluded: “The correspondence has been
so tampered with as to have become, from first to last, a romance.”1
Later assessments could also be dismissive. Charlton points to the 1976
Oxford Companion to German Literature judgment that the Goethe Correspon-
dence book “is a free and imaginative rehandling of a correspondence,”
and he remarks that “her cutting, compressing and invention and (sin of
sins!) destruction of original manuscripts means that she is not popular with
scholars.”2 “Other contemporary commentators have been equally skeptical
about the words attributed to Beethoven by Bettina in the missing 1810
and 1812 letters from him, as well as about the quotes attributed to him by
Bettina in the Beethoven Description Letter. Those commentators believe
that Beethoven did not say things like that, that the words were Bettina’s,
not Beethoven’s.3
But what are the facts?

93

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 94 Chapter 11

LETTERS FROM GOETHE’S MOTHER

In her Goethe Correspondence book, Bettina included nine letters she claimed
to have received from Goethe’s mother, and approximately 10 letters she
claimed to have sent to Goethe’s mother. It is difficult to make an exact count
of Bettina’s letters because of her habit of including separate extensions or
continuations of an original letter which sometimes bore a date and sometimes
not—similar, as noted in chapter 2, to the way Beethoven wrote his letter to
the Immortal Beloved.
None of the letters from Goethe’s mother in the Goethe Correspondence
book survive today, and many commentators believe they are complete fabri-
cations, citing as proof that the last two from Goethe’s mother were dated after
her death on September 13, 1808. However, the explanation for the wrong
dates is simple. Bettina took a Rhine journey in August and early Septem-
ber 1808, finally returning to her home in Frankfurt in the second week of
September, where she visited Goethe’s mother on September 12, then set off
on September 13 on a long journey to Munich. On the same day she left for
Munich, Goethe’s mother died.
An examination of the contents of the two suspect letters from Goethe’s
mother dated in the Goethe Correspondence book after her death, and Bettina’s
two undated replies to them, shows that they were written while Bettina was
on and returning from her summer Rhine journey, when Goethe’s mother
was still alive. The first from Goethe’s mother warns Bettina not to continue
her Rhine journey too long, and Bettina’s letter in response includes a lengthy
travelogue description of Cologne, which she visited in mid-August. The
next and final letter from Goethe’s mother responds to Bettina’s description
of her visit to Cologne. This letter and Bettina’s reply to it clearly show that
both were written in early September while Goethe’s mother was still alive
and just before Bettina returned to Frankfurt to begin her trip to Munich.
When Bettina copied out the letters almost 30 years later, and assuming the
originals from Goethe’s mother were undated (which they sometimes were),
it is apparent that Bettina, working from memory, simply inserted the wrong
dates. Their months of writing should have been August and September, re-
spectively, not September and October. This would make their dates coincide
exactly with the external events described in them.
In fact, four letters to Bettina from Goethe’s mother not included in the
Goethe Correspondence book (three of which were included in her Ilius book, de-
scribed in chapter 5) have been found, and they are entirely consistent in content
and style with the missing letters reproduced in the Goethe Correspondence book.
Two of the four were not dated by Goethe’s mother. A comment by the editor
of a book of collected letters of Goethe’s mother in which the four are included

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 A Modern Analysis 95

illustrates the mind-set against Bettina in academic circles, as well as Bettina’s

penchant for mixing up the dates of her often undated letters almost 30 years
after they were written. The editor had left out from the original edition of his
book one of the three published in Ilius, but was contacted afterward by a col-
lector living in a small town north of Berlin who had possession of the original
and who showed it to the editor, causing him to write this:

When I published the first comprehensive collection of the letters of

Goethe’s mother in 1904, of the three letters from her that Bettina . . .
published in her Ilius book of 1848, I included only the first two, whose
autographs I knew, but decided against including the third, which although
appearing to have a grain of truth, seemed to me to resemble the style of
Bettina’s way of writing. . . . Now I have seen the lost version of the third
. . . and although my reason [for excluding it] was correct, the blame lays
on Bettina [who had dated it August 28, 1807]. In reality, the date should
have been 28 August 1808 because [Bettina] wrote on it “the last letter in
[Goethe’s mother’s] own hand before her death.”4

LETTERS FROM GOETHE

Thirteen letters and two sonnets from Goethe to Bettina are reproduced
verbatim in Walter Schmitz and Sibylle von Steinsdorff’s edition of Bettina’s
works and correspondence published in 1992, which allows a word-by-word
comparison of the letters as published in Bettina’s Goethe Correspondence book
with the found originals.5 Table 11.1 provides a brief comparison of the origi-
nal found letters from Goethe to Bettina for two sample years, 1809 and 1810,
and the same letters as Bettina reproduced them in her Goethe Correspondence
book. Of the 16 letters from Goethe in her book for those years, nine have
been found and are reproduced in the 1992 Schmitz and Steinsdorff publica-
tion referred to above, while the remaining seven are missing. The fact that
some are today missing does not mean they are inventions, as witness the
discovery of one of the letters from Goethe’s mother mentioned earlier in
this chapter, originally believed by the editor of a publication of a collection
of those letters to be an invention until it was shown to him by a private col-
lector. Also, as shown in chapter 4, it is quite possible that Bettina destroyed
two of her missing letters from Goethe that fell within the 1810 Letter Gap.
Finally, any original letters from Goethe not destroyed by Bettina would over
the course of more than 190 years have been in the possession of five genera-
tions of descendants of Bettina scattered across Germany, and may have been
destroyed or lost as a result of wars, occupations by foreign armies, domicile
changes, fires, possible thefts, and bombings.

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 96 Chapter 11

Table 11.1. Sample Surviving Letters from Goethe to Bettina Compared to Versions in
the Goethe Correspondence Book
Date of Letter in Goethe Date of Surviving
Correspondence Book Goethe Letter Status
February 22, 1809 February 22, 1809 substantially unchanged
May 17, 1809 missing likely reply to 2 surviving letters
from Bettina
July 7, 1809 missing specific reply to 2 lengthy surviving
letters from Bettina
September 11, 1809 September 11, 1809 substantially unchanged
September 15, 1809 September 15, 1809 substantially unchanged
October 7, 1809 missing short acknowledgment of receipt of
letters from Bettina
November 3, 1809 November 3, 1809 substantially unchanged, paragraph
added
February 5, 1810 February 5, 1810 changes in wording but not
substance, sentences added
March 1, 1810 missing very short, acknowledges receipt of
Bettina’s diary
March 19, 1810 missing very short, expresses sympathy for
Bettina’s disappointment over
outcome of Tyrol uprising
May 10, 1810 May 10, 1810 substantially unchanged
June 6, 1810 missing within 1810 Letter Gap, has ring
of truth
Undated, 1810 missing within 1810 Letter Gap, has ring
of truth
Undated, 1810 August 17, 1810 unchanged
October 25, 1810 October 25, 1810 unchanged
November 12, 1810 November 12, 1810 unchanged

The purpose of the table 11.1 comparison is to demonstrate that the

letters from Goethe reproduced in the Goethe Correspondence book during
the two sample but crucial years of 1809 and 1810 conform substantially to
originals of those that have been found, and where there are differences, to
show that the changes or additions made by Bettina to Goethe’s words were
largely to allow her to give expression to her own thoughts in her replies. As
to the letters that are missing, the exercise shows that many pass the litmus test
of having a ring of truth.
The analysis that follows does not deal with changes that Bettina may
have made to her original letters to Goethe when she included them in her
Goethe Correspondence book. They were, after all, her letters looked at by her
after the passage of almost 30 years, so she was entitled to change them as she
saw fit to better explain her own artistic and intellectual development refracted
by the passage of time. Her book is not about letters from Goethe, but rather

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 A Modern Analysis 97

about her own thoughts and emotions as stimulated by Goethe and his letters.
More than 90 percent of the words and pages of the letters in the Goethe Cor-
respondence book for the two sample years are those of Bettina, not Goethe.
Goethe’s letters are relatively short and serve mainly as a platform for Bettina’s
responses in long and revealing letters of her own. Goethe is her straight man.
I leave an analysis of changes made by Bettina to her original letters to others.
As noted in chapter 4, in her contemporary correspondence, Bettina did
not pretend that her Goethe Correspondence book was simply an edited version of
the originals. And as noted above, the reproduced letters were intended instead
to give a record of Bettina’s own evolving thoughts and emotions concerning
life, art, music, politics, and nature in her rite of passage up to legal adulthood,
which for women in those days was 25, starting as a naive 22-year-old who
previously had been raised and educated for three years in a convent, then as a
teenager had lived at the house of her grandmother, then had studied music in
Frankfurt and near Munich. For the most part, the letters end in 1810 when she
achieved the legal age of majority, although there are a few after the resumption
of her correspondence with Goethe in 1817 after the death of his wife.
If there is fiction in the changes and additions made by Bettina to the
Goethe letters that today survive, it arises mainly from politics. Bettina lived
during the years 1809 and 1810 near Munich, in Bavaria, and many of the
words that she added to the Goethe letters are responses by Goethe to political
observations of Bettina about a complicated war at the time involving shifting
alliances between Napoleonic France, Austria, and Bavaria, with the subplot
of a Tyrolese uprising against Bavaria. Bettina took the side of the Tyrolese.
Goethe’s Weimar employer sided with the French and Bavaria. Open sup-
port of the Tyrolese insurgents in letters written by Bettina in Bavaria would
likely have been censored, and could even have led to her arrest. The same
would apply to letters of Goethe written by him in Weimar and would have
cost him his job if not his freedom. Goethe’s supposed comments on Bettina’s
stand are sympathetic but noncommittal. Bettina may have created those com-
ments because of the views expressed by Goethe in his play Egmont (which
Beethoven so admired), she believing Goethe would have supported her if his
own thoughts could have been freely written.
Table 11.1 analyzes the 16 letters attributed to Goethe by Bettina in her
Goethe Correspondence book for 1809 and 1810, years which I chose because
they were probably the most significant in Bettina’s life. The left-hand column
lists the dates of all 16 letters from Goethe for those years as they appear in
the Goethe Correspondence book. The middle column lists the nine that sur-
vive and their actual dates. The right-hand column notes whether the nine
surviving letters were substantially the same or changed. Seven of the nine
were unchanged or substantially unchanged, and the other two were slightly

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 98 Chapter 11

expanded. That a letter was unchanged or substantially unchanged means mi-

nor editorial changes of punctuation or language style have been ignored. As
for the seven letters that are today missing, their subject matter is summarized
in the right-hand column. Two lie within the 1810 Letter Gap referred to in
chapter 4 and, as discussed there, were quite likely destroyed by Bettina.

ANALYSIS OF SAMPLE LETTERS

Seven of the letters attributed to Goethe in the Goethe Correspondence book for
1809 and 1810 were either unchanged or substantially the same as the nine
surviving originals. The other two also were substantially the same but with
some additions. The seven missing letters were quite possibly genuine, based
on their contents. Many have the ring of truth. The reason they are today
missing may be solely due to external causes, such as destruction by Bettina
of letters within the 1810 Letter Gap. The fact that the Goethe letters were
published in a book that was essentially a platform for Bettina’s own literary,
musical, political, social, and religious writings, and that she never pretended
that it was simply a book of edited correspondence, may explain why she took
liberties with those letters.
February 22, 1809: Letter Surviving. This letter is almost identical to the
surviving original except Bettina added one sentence in which Goethe praises
her ideas on music, one paragraph in which he asks her for more descriptions
of his mother and describes a few memories of her, and another sentence in
which he promises to write at more length with his reaction to her long letters
and urges her to keep writing them.
May 17, 1809: Letter Missing. This letter appears to be a response to two
surviving letters from Bettina dated February 1 and March 8, 1809. Goethe
acknowledges receiving a parcel from Bettina that his employer, the duke, in-
tercepted and was curious about. He also mentions that he discussed Bettina’s
views about the Tyrolean uprising with the duke, who regretted to learn that
Bettina supported the opposing powers. Goethe also mentions that he knew a
person involved in the uprising. The political parts of this letter may be fiction.
Goethe writes about further memories of his mother stimulated by Bettina’s
descriptions in her letters.
July 7, 1809: Letter Missing. In this relatively short, four-paragraph letter,
Goethe acknowledges receiving two long letters from Bettina, probably those
of May 18 and June 16, both of which survive. He also adds fact-specific
comments on what Bettina described in her found letters, including knowing
a prominent Bavarian academic described by Bettina in her surviving letter of
June 16. Finally, he encloses a copy of a poem Bettina apparently asked for.

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 A Modern Analysis 99

September 11, 1809: Letter Surviving. This letter is relatively long and is
identical to the surviving original except for a few insubstantial changes made
to a short postscript in which Goethe apologizes for using a secretary to write
the main body of the letter, including a sentence added by Bettina in which he
mentions a new novel he is writing that will become the subject of comments
by Bettina in her future surviving letters.
September 15, 1809: Letter Surviving. This letter is almost identical to the
surviving original except that a sentence is added in which Goethe expresses
interest in Bettina’s descriptions of the war. He also says in an added sentence
that his patron duke is sympathetic to her views but expects a tragic end. The
additions are very likely fiction because they deal with politics and would have
been censored if written.
October 7, 1809: Letter Missing. In this short, two-paragraph letter, Goethe
acknowledges receipt of surviving letters from Bettina (probably the ones
dated August 6 and September 13), accepts Bettina’s reproach for using a
secretary to write his September 11 letter to her, and asks her to keep writing.
November 3, 1809: Letter Surviving. This long letter is almost identical to
the surviving original except that a paragraph is added in which Goethe de-
scribes initially mistaking for Bettina an unexpected visitor wearing a hooded
coat. He nevertheless hopes he will see her in the spring. (Goethe related a
similar incident in a surviving letter to his wife when Bettina in fact visited
him in Teplitz the following summer.)
February 5, 1810: Letter Surviving. This short, two-paragraph letter, in
which Goethe acknowledges receiving a parcel of gifts from Bettina, coincides
for the most part with the surviving original, except that Bettina expands
Goethe’s description of the parcel’s contents and adds some words explaining
a little about his new novel. Bettina also leaves out a sentence referring to a
painting she apparently sent to him, but adds a postscript acknowledging a
parcel Bettina sent to Goethe’s wife referred to in Bettina’s surviving original.
March 1, 1810: Letter Missing. In this short, one-paragraph letter, Goethe
acknowledges receiving Bettina’s diary and asks her to keep writing.
March 19, 1810: Letter Missing. In this short, one-paragraph letter, Goethe
acknowledges receipt of a missing letter from Bettina in which she described
the tragic (for her) end of the Tyrolese uprising and the execution of one of
its heroes. Goethe expresses sympathy over her disappointment but urges her
to move on. Since letters from Bettina and Goethe about this would likely
have been censored and resemble elements of his Egmont story, they are both
likely fiction.
May 10, 1810: Letter Surviving. This short letter is identical to the origi-
nal, except that a sentence is added in which Goethe states he does not know
where Bettina is (she was traveling to Vienna at the time).

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 100 Chapter 11

June 6, 1810: Letter Missing. This letter lies within the 1810 Letter Gap
described in chapter 4. It is a response to Bettina’s missing 1810 Beethoven
Description letter, also within the 1810 Letter Gap. In it, Goethe suggests that
he and Beethoven might meet next summer in Karlsbad where Goethe says he
goes almost every summer. He also asks for copies of the two songs set to mu-
sic by Beethoven (see chapter 10). The letter’s contents have a ring of truth.
Undated Letter, Probably July or August 1810: Missing. In this missing letter
that is within the 1810 Letter Gap, Goethe says that he is reading Bettina’s di-
ary, that he does not know where she is, asks for further reminiscences about
his mother, and says that he hopes to see her sometime while he is in Bohemia
that summer. It has a ring of truth.

LETTERS FROM BEETHOVEN

As shown in the analysis of sample letters above, Bettina’s changes to Goethe’s

surviving letters were for the most part insubstantial when she modified them
or added to them in her Goethe Correspondence book. Also, as noted in chapter
4, she never pretended that her book was simply an edited version of her cor-
respondence with Goethe; rather, she presented it as a book akin in form to
an epistolary novel. When she published it, she identified herself as its author,
not its editor.
Nevertheless, as described in chapters 9 and 10, the liberties she took
with her Goethe letters in the Goethe Correspondence book led those Beethoven
scholars who were hostile to her to claim that she concocted the three let-
ters from Beethoven that she published in 1839. For example, Adolph Marx
claimed in his 1859 biography of Beethoven that they were concocted, citing
as proof not only that the three letters had not then been verified, but that
the language in the second letter (written in 1811) was “girl-like” and “un-
Beethovian.” When the second letter was found in Nathusius’s papers after his
death in 1872, critics like Marx continued their attacks on the authenticity of
the other two letters unabated. Those attacks continue to this day.
As noted in chapter 5, however, the forum for publication of the three
Beethoven letters was completely different than that of the Goethe letters in
her Goethe Correspondence book. The Beethoven letters were published with-
out editorial comment in a literary and political journal whose editor certified
to Thayer that he had reproduced them from the three originals he had had
before him, and that he subsequently gave them back to Bettina.6 Unlike the
Goethe letters in the Goethe Correspondence book, the Beethoven letters were
not platforms for Bettina to respond with her thoughts and ideas, and there
was no response of any kind from Bettina by way of letters or otherwise in

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 A Modern Analysis 101

the literary and political journal. Further, in no case do the length, contents,
and style of the three Beethoven letters bear any comparison to the length,
contents, and style of the missing letters or additions to found letters attrib-
uted to Goethe in the Goethe Correspondence book. The distinction is apparent.
Consider for example the text of the 1812 Teplitz Letter from Beethoven set
out in appendix C. It is lengthy and rich in detail, and uses language that Ro-
main Rolland believes would have required a “second Beethoven” to invent.
In contrast and by way of example only, consider the length and contents of
one of the missing letters from Goethe, the one dated March 1, 1810, sum-
marized above. Assuming but without accepting that it was concocted by
Bettina, it contains just five sentences, and responds to a letter from Bettina in
which she asks Goethe if he received a diary that she had sent to him. Goethe
apologizes for not acknowledging its receipt before and says he has read it and
put it with all her many other letters which he rereads from time to time and
finds stimulating.
In summary, the liberties Bettina took with the Goethe letters in the
Goethe Correspondence book do not prove or even give a rational basis for con-
tending that she did the same with or even concocted the Beethoven letters.

NOTES

1. Bruce G. Charlton, Editorial Preface to the English translation of Bettine von

Arnim’s Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child, www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/preface
-bettina.html.
2. Charlton, Editorial Preface.
3. See, for example, Alessandra Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven (New
York: Rizzoli, 1987), 111–14; see also “A Virtuoso Muse,” in The Guardian, August
23, 2003, www.guardian.co.uk.
4. Albert Köster, “Der Letze Brief von Goethes Mutter an Bettina Brentano,” Insel-
Verlag Almanach 1918 (Leipzig: Leipzig Insel, 1918): 64–68.
5. Walter Schmitz and Sibylle von Steinsdorff, eds., Bettine von Arnim Werke und
Briefe, 4 vols. (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1992), 2:575–753. For a version
of Bettina’s Goethe Correspondence book in original German, see Schmitz and Steins-
dorff, 2:111–571.
6. Thayer English, 2:185.

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 •• 12
1 ••

TheChapter
AntonieTitle
Theory

WHY ANTONIE BRENTANO COULD NOT

HAVE BEEN THE IMMORTAL BELOVED

A consensus has developed over the past 75 years, as noted in chapter 1,

that the letter to the Immortal Beloved was written by Beethoven in the Bo-
hemian town of Teplitz in 1812 and was intended to be sent to the woman
in the nearby spa town of Karlsbad. The eminent American musicologist
Maynard Solomon thus reasoned that the woman must be Antonie Brentano,
Bettina’s sister-in-law, because she was the only woman closely connected to
Beethoven in 1812 who was in Karlsbad when Beethoven wrote his letter.1
There are, however, a number of serious problems with his theory. In
1812 when Beethoven’s letter to the Immortal Beloved was written, Antonie
was the sickly mother of four young children and pregnant with her fifth.
She and her husband, Franz, were good friends and financial supporters of
Beethoven. Beethoven referred to them in a letter, according to his secretary
Schindler, as “his best friends in the world.”2 He was like an uncle to their
children and dedicated music to one of them, who sat in his lap when a child.
In his letter to the Immortal Beloved, Beethoven talked of their possibly
living together. Would living together have been an option that Antonie and
Beethoven realistically discussed, let alone mentioned in a letter intended to
be sent to her in the small spa town of Karlsbad where she was staying with
Franz and one of her children? After 1812, both Antonie and Franz, who by
then had moved from Vienna to a town near Frankfurt, loaned money to
Beethoven. In later years, Franz acted as Beethoven’s financial agent and rep-
resentative. In letters from Beethoven to Franz written after he and Antonie
moved away from Vienna, Beethoven politely asked Franz to give his best

102

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 The Antonie Theory 103

regards to Antonie. For example, he ended an 1817 letter to Franz with the
words “All my best greetings to my beloved friend Toni and to your dear
children” [alle schöne meiner Werthen Freundin Toni u. ihren lieben Kindern], and
he ended an 1821 letter with the words “With all my heart, I embrace you
and ask you to remember me again to your excellent and especially lovely
Toni. I remain, Sir, with kindest regards, your Beethoven” [ich umarme Sie von
Herzen, u. bitte mich noch ihrer ausgezeichneten einzig herrlichen Toni zu emphelen.
Euer wohlgebohrn Hochachtungs Voll verharrender Beethoven].3
Beethoven’s letters to Antonie after she moved away from Vienna in
1812 clearly show a formal and polite respect. For example, he would begin
those letters to her with words such as “My worthy friend,” “Most honored
friend,” and “My honored friend” (“Meine werthe Freundin,” “Verehrteste
Freundin,” and “Meine verehrte Freundin,” respectively). He ended his other
letters to her with the same formality, as in an 1816 letter which concluded
with the words “With true and sincere regards, your admirer and friend,
Ludwig van Beethoven” (Mit wahrer inniger Hochachtung ihr verehrer u. Freund).4
In all of them, he addressed her in the formal German “Sie” form, not the
intimate “du” form that he used in his 1812 letter to the Immortal Beloved.
As noted elsewhere in this book, the use of “du” demonstrated a degree of
intimacy between a German-speaking male and female not lightly bestowed
by either of them, especially the woman. So far as is known, Beethoven never
used “du” in any letter to a woman with whom he may have been romanti-
cally involved, except in the letter to the Immortal Beloved and one of his
letters to Bettina. A change from “du” back to “Sie,” although not unheard
of,5 would be rare. And while a change from “du” to “Sie” may be one thing,
a change from the intimacy of a passionate love letter to the extreme respect
and formality shown in Beethoven’s letters to Antonie is another. One could
try to explain it as an attempt at deception by Beethoven in case Franz inter-
cepted the letters to Antonie, since Beethoven was writing to both of them,
but deception was not one of Beethoven’s faults.
As noted in chapter 1, Richard Specht, a distinguished Viennese musi-
cal critic and biographer, wrote in 1933 that “marriage meant for Beethoven
a divine sacrament against which it would be a sacrilege to offend,” and “he
would have torn out his tongue rather than suffer it to utter words in the Im-
mortal Beloved letter of such glowing passion and regret to another’s wife.”6
This would be especially so given that Beethoven was a close friend to both
the husband and wife, and was like an uncle to their children.
The principal reason Antonie must be ruled out as Beethoven’s Immortal
Beloved, however, stems from Beethoven’s confession in 1816 overheard by
Fanny Giannastasio del Rio, a young admirer, that he had met (“kennenge-
lernt”) a woman five years before who would have been his ideal life-mate

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 104 Chapter 12

and he still could not get her out of his mind.7 Whoever that woman was,
she is generally thought today to have been Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved.8
Beethoven’s most definitive biographer, Alexander Thayer, whose biography
of Beethoven first published in the 1870s remains one of the principal sources
for Beethoven research, quoted a reliable source stating that Beethoven had
known Antonie even before her marriage to Franz in 1798 as a result of
Beethoven’s visits to the house of her father before then.9 That being so,
Antonie could not be the woman Beethoven was referring to in 1816, and was
therefore almost certainly not the Immortal Beloved. How Maynard Solomon
attempted to discount Thayer’s evidence in order to support his own theory
will be dealt with in some detail below.

SOLOMON’S METHODOLOGY IN SUPPORT OF ANTONIE

That Antonie might be the Immortal Beloved was improbable, given the close
relationship of Beethoven with Antonie and her husband Franz and their chil-
dren, and Beethoven’s idealization of the institution and sanctity of marriage.
Nevertheless, Maynard Solomon developed a skilful but specious methodology
to lend his theory an aura of factual certainty. Instead of arguing his case from the
ground up as others had done with their candidates, he purported to establish,
without identifying who the woman was, a group of “primary requirements”
and another group of “secondary requirements” that he maintained any woman
would have to satisfy in order to be the Immortal Beloved. Having set out these
“requirements,” he then deduced that the only woman who met all of them was
Antonie. The flaw in this methodology was that he established requirements that
he knew only his candidate could meet. They were therefore not independent
objective requirements at all. What follows is an examination of the strength and
validity of each of Solomon’s requirements:
Requirement #1: The woman must have lived in Vienna.
Flaw: Beethoven in 1812 was quite well-known in Vienna and had a
number of friends and acquaintances there. To have had romantic intimacy
with a married woman who also lived there would likely have been noticed
by his friends and acquaintances, if not by the husband. That the woman lived
there is a possibility, not a requirement.
Requirement #2: The woman passed through Prague on her way to
Karlsbad at the same time Beethoven was in Prague on his way to Teplitz, and
they met while both were in Prague.
Flaw: This is pure speculation based on three feeble arguments: (1)
Beethoven mentions writing the letter with the woman’s pencil; (2) he also

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 The Antonie Theory 105

writes in the letter “today, yesterday, what tearful longings for you”; and (3)
he describes events of the “last few days,” that is, his travel misadventures in
getting to Teplitz. As to the first argument, the ordinary manufactured lead
pencil had only been invented in 1795, would still have been a novelty for
travelers, and was seldom used by Beethoven in writing letters. In no way does
Beethoven’s use of the woman’s pencil connect her to Prague. As to the sec-
ond argument, the reference to tearful longings “today and yesterday” is more
consistent with language referring in general terms to present and past, and has
no connection to Prague. Even if one reads the word “yesterday” literally and
accepts the speculation that Beethoven in fact met with the woman on July 3,
the evening before he left Prague for Teplitz, those words in his letter were
written on the following Tuesday, four days after his last evening in Prague.
Finally, the description of events of the “past few days” (Beethoven’s travel
misadventures) does not mean that Beethoven must have met the woman in
Prague, only that on the trip into Teplitz, his coach became stuck in the mud
late at night. This was simply an adventure worth mentioning to someone
Beethoven expected would be traveling around the same time to Karlsbad, a
town in the vicinity of Teplitz. The Prague “requirement” is therefore merely
speculation that might provide support for independent evidence establishing
the woman’s identity.
Requirement #3: Since the letter was to be mailed to the woman in
Karlsbad, the woman must have been there when the letter was written.
Flaw: The fact that the letter was in Beethoven’s possession when he
died strongly supports the argument that he never mailed it, which works to
support a candidate who first intended to go to Karlsbad but then traveled to
Teplitz instead, as Bettina did.
Requirement #4: Beethoven confessed in 1816 that he had met the
love of his life five years before.
Flaw: None. This is a valid independent, objective, and nonspeculative
requirement. How Solomon attempted to deal with it is described in some
detail later in this chapter
Requirement #5: The Immortal Beloved’s name may have started with
the letters “A,” “T,” or “M.” Beethoven appears to have written these letters
in his diary during the relevant years.
Flaw: There is no clear indication in the diary that they referred to the
Immortal Beloved, and Beethoven did not write his uppercase “A” in the
way it appears in his diary. Solomon specifically states that the Immortal
Beloved did not need to have any or all of these initials, thus conceding
that this “requirement” was not a requirement at all. It should be noted,
however, that after Bettina’s marriage in 1811 (a year before the letter to
the Immortal Beloved was written), her last name (Arnim) began with an

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“A.” One commentator has speculated that whatever the letter was, it might
possibly refer to the woman’s husband.10
Requirement #6: In his letter, Beethoven said that he expected to see
the Beloved “soon.” If Beethoven did meet a woman soon after he wrote
his letter, the identity of that woman would, in conjunction with other valid
requirements, help verify that she was the Immortal Beloved.
Flaw: This is merely a statement of expectation by Beethoven. It cannot
therefore be a probative requirement pointing to any one woman, although if
the identity of the woman is established through other means (not necessarily
Solomon’s “requirements”) and Beethoven did see her shortly after the letter
was written, it would corroborate other evidence that firmly established the
identity of the woman. It should be noted in this regard that Bettina arrived in
Teplitz where Beethoven was several weeks after Beethoven wrote his letter.
Had she gone to Karlsbad, she would likely have had to pass through Teplitz
on her way back to Berlin.
What follows is a closer examination of Requirement #1, the Vienna
connection; Requirement #2, the specious Prague connection; and Require-
ment #3, the Karlsbad connection.

THE VIENNA CONNECTION

As noted above, it would have been difficult for Beethoven to have had a
romantic affair with Antonie (or for that matter, any other married woman
in Vienna), without Antonie’s husband, her children, and Beethoven’s friends
noticing it. And he surely would never have considered the possibility of liv-
ing together, as suggested in the letter to the Immortal Beloved. As noted
above, Antonie had four young children, was pregnant with her fifth, and was
married to a wealthy and loyal husband who was a close friend to Beethoven
when Beethoven’s letter was written. One commentator has suggested that
Beethoven’s reference to “living together” was meant in a metaphorical, not
literal sense, pointing out a possible distinction between the verb and preposi-
tion combination of “leben mit” (to live with) and “wohnen mit” (to dwell
with), but “leben mit” clearly indicates co-habitation in the German language.
Even Solomon makes it clear that co-habitation was the intention.11
In contrast, assume that Bettina in Berlin was writing to Beethoven in
Vienna the same kinds of letters that she wrote to Goethe before Goethe
ostracized her (see chapter 6). When she became depressed during her
pregnancy and almost died at the birth of her first child (the child that her
husband needed to gain control of his grandmother’s estate and one of the
main reasons for their marriage), it would have been natural for Bettina to

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 The Antonie Theory 107

rethink her decision to marry instead of remaining unmarried and devoting

her life to music and politics, as she had told Achim von Arnim she wanted
to do when he first proposed to her. If she did express these thoughts in her
last despairing letter to Beethoven before he left for his summer interlude in
Bohemia, it would have prompted Beethoven to write his comforting and
hopeful letter to her, his Immortal Beloved, noting that she was “suffering”
and tentatively ruminating about them living together if she joined him as
his muse in a life of music.
Further, in his letter to the Immortal Beloved, Beethoven referred to
his life “in V” as being “miserable.” The reference to “V” is undoubtedly to
Vienna,12 where he then lived. This reference would have been unnecessary
if the woman also lived there.

THE SPECIOUS PRAGUE CONNECTION

As noted above, the asserted Prague connection was based on three arguments
that really had no apparent connection with Prague at all. For example, the
writing of the Immortal Beloved letter with the woman’s pencil did not mean
she and Beethoven had met in Prague unless the pencil was established to have
been made in Prague or came from an inn in which the Beloved stayed while
there. However, it did superficially suggest that Beethoven had probably seen
the woman recently. This is based on the modern perception of the pencil as
being a cheap, mass-produced, and frequently used writing instrument. But in
1812, the manufactured lead (graphite) pencil had only been invented within
the last two decades. At that time, correspondents almost always used quill and
ink, which was available to travelers at all inns. But there were no fountain
pens or other easily portable writing instruments. So for a reasonably well-to-
do, “with-it” musician, writer, and artist on an extended trip across Europe,
all of which applied to Bettina when she met Beethoven two years earlier, the
pencil would have been a useful tool to take with her while walking in the
outdoors and wanting to jot down artistic thoughts and sketches. The great
bulk of Beethoven’s letters and music sheets and sketchbooks up to the time
he met Bettina were written with quill and ink. That Beethoven would have
kept, treasured, and used when he traveled a very useful gift or writing tool
that he had received or borrowed from Bettina two summers before is entirely
plausible. In his single surviving 1811 letter to Bettina, he wrote that he car-
ried the first letter she wrote to him around with him all summer and that it
made him feel supremely happy. This clearly demonstrates that he treasured
mementos from her. Of the 116 catalogued letters that Beethoven wrote after
he met Bettina up to the time he wrote the letter to the Immortal Beloved,

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only four were written in pencil.13 All of them were very short. The letter to
the Immortal Beloved was very long.
Another argument used in support of the contention that Beethoven met
the Beloved in Prague is that on Friday, July 3, the day before he left Prague
for Teplitz, he was not able to meet that evening with a male acquaintance as
he had originally intended. He wrote to the acquaintance after he arrived in
Teplitz that something unexpected had occurred on his last evening in Prague
but that he would explain all when they next met. Solomon suggests the un-
expected occurrence was that Beethoven and Antonie met that evening and
discussed significant issues about their relationship which prompted Beethoven
to write to her as his Immortal Beloved.14 The improbability of this theory
becomes evident from the fact that Franz and Antonie, with their five-year-
old daughter, only arrived in Prague that same Friday after an exhausting
two-day coach journey from Vienna that began at 2 a.m. Tuesday morning.
They stayed that evening at an inn which was some distance from the inn
where Beethoven stayed, and left at 6 a.m. the next morning on the coach for
Karlsbad.15 A significant tryst in those circumstances? And if it were a pivotal
meeting between the two as Solomon suggests, why would Beethoven write
in a matter-of-fact way to the male acquaintance afterward that he would
explain all about it when they next met?16
The Prague requirement is not a requirement at all. The fact that the
two of them passed through the same city, a necessary start-off point for spa
destinations in Bohemia by the many coach travelers from Vienna, was noth-
ing more than a coincidence.

THE KARLSBAD CONNECTION

As noted above, the fact that the Immortal Beloved letter likely was not mailed
works against, not for, Antonie’s candidacy. In order to explain why the letter
was in Beethoven’s possession when he died 14 years later, Solomon suggested
that perhaps Beethoven did mail it but Antonie gave it back and he kept it.
Recognizing the improbability of that conjecture, Solomon alternatively sug-
gested that the copy in Beethoven’s possession when he died was merely a first
draft, and that he wrote out a revised second letter and mailed it.17 That con-
jecture is even more improbable, since Beethoven ended the letter with tender
closing words and the initial of his first name. And if he did write a new letter,
why would he keep his first draft? Of course if he did, it should be noted that
the “new” letter never surfaced among Antonie’s possessions after her death.
Also, why would Beethoven write such a long and intimate letter to
Antonie, who came to Karlsbad with her husband and one of her children?

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 The Antonie Theory 109

The risk of interception of the letter by the husband in that very small town
would have been quite high, and Beethoven would only need to have waited
until both he and Antonie returned to Vienna to give it to her or tell her about
it if she were the Beloved.

WHEN BEETHOVEN MET ANTONIE

Only one of the six requirements asserted by Solomon is truly independent

and objective: Beethoven’s 1816 confession to the father of young Fanny Gi-
annastasio that he had met the love of his life, almost certainly the Immortal
Beloved, “five years before.” Allowing a year’s leeway on either side of this
approximate time period, Beethoven must have met the woman between
1810 and 1812. Solomon contended that Antonie first met Beethoven at the
same time as did Bettina when, in May of 1810, she accompanied Bettina to
Beethoven’s lodgings. However, Solomon was faced with a number of au-
thoritative sources showing that Antonie as a child was known to Beethoven
even before her marriage in 1798 as a result of visits of Beethoven to the house
of her father. Antonie was born in 1780, sent for education to a convent when
she was eight, then returned to live in her father’s house from 1795 until 1798,
when she married her husband, Franz, and moved to Frankfurt. She returned
afterward for occasional visits to her father in Vienna from time to time, and
finally for an extended period in late summer 1809 to care for him because he
was ailing (he died in October of that year), but she and her husband remained
in Vienna in her father’s house until his effects were finally disposed of in
1812, when she and her husband moved back to Frankfurt.
In order to establish that Antonie did not meet Beethoven until 1810 and
only then in company with Bettina, Solomon had to overcome two hurdles: (1)
the sources that said Beethoven was a frequent visitor to the house of Antonie’s
father during her childhood, and (2) the sources that said she was known to
Beethoven as a result of those visits even before her marriage in 1798.

BEETHOVEN AS A VISITOR TO THE

HOUSE OF ANTONIE’S FATHER

The fact that Beethoven was a frequent visitor to the house of Antonie’s fa-
ther does not of itself prove that Beethoven had come to know her as a result
of his visits, but it was more than a remote possibility and so had to be dealt
with by Solomon, especially because of Beethoven’s reference to Antonie as

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“die Tonie” in Beethoven’s found letter to Bettina.18 This kind of diminutive

nickname is often used in German when referring to someone who as a child
was known to an adult, and is in marked contrast to the great formal respect
Beethoven paid to Antonie in his letters to her when she had become an adult.
For example, as noted earlier in the chapter, he ended letters to her with such
words as “my most honoured friend.”
Solomon contended, however, that it was not likely Beethoven even
knew Antonie’s father. He used as support for this theory the fact that the fa-
ther was not among the subscribers to performances of Beethoven’s trios, nor
was he on the guest or gift list at Antonie’s wedding in 1798. As for Beethoven
coming to know the father after Antonie came to Vienna to care for him in
late summer of 1809, Solomon suggested that it was improbable the father
would have come to know Beethoven while he was “on his deathbed.”19
A number of sources contradict Solomon’s theory. For example, An-
ton Schindler, Beethoven’s assistant and secretary, wrote in the revised 1860
edition of his biography of Beethoven that Beethoven had come to know
Antonie’s father and had been a visitor to his house since Beethoven’s arrival
in Vienna in 1792. Ludwig Nohl wrote in his biography of Beethoven pub-
lished in 1867 that Beethoven was known in the house of Antonie’s father
since Beethoven’s arrival in Vienna in 1792.20 The 1884 edition of Adolph
Marx’s biography of Beethoven states that Beethoven already knew Antonie’s
father and Antonie’s husband (and therefore Antonie) when Bettina came to
visit the Brentanos in 1810.21 Hans Tabarelli, in a book of Viennese “historical
miniatures” published in 1947, wrote that Beethoven got to know Antonie’s
father shortly after Beethoven came to Vienna in 1792, and that the father had
given Beethoven a key to his house’s watchtower.22 Klaus Günzel, in his 1993
book on the history of the Brentano family, wrote that Antonie had through
her father known Beethoven from childhood.23

WHEN BEETHOVEN CAME TO KNOW “DIE TONIE”

As noted previously, if Beethoven knew Antonie since she was a child, she
could not be the Immortal Beloved. This was Solomon’s greatest hurdle.
The issue as to when Beethoven came to know Antonie first came to light
as a result of a statement in the original 1840 edition of Schindler’s biography
of Beethoven. There, Schindler stated that Antonie had first met Beethoven
in the company of Bettina in 1810, as claimed by Solomon. In the 1860
edition, Schindler, who had since moved to Frankfurt and had presumably
interviewed her or members of her family, retracted his earlier statement and
instead stated Antonie had known Beethoven since a child in the house of
her father.24

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 The Antonie Theory 111

Solomon contended that Schindler was mistaken.25 The only support for
this contention came from a footnote in a book of Beethoven letters published
by Nohl in 1867, where Nohl wrote:

Beethoven was . . . not known in the house of [Antonie’s father] since

1792 [as Schindler had written]. More than that, as the now 87-year-
old [Antonie] has emphatically assured me, not until Spring of 1810 did
[Antonie] become acquainted with Beethoven, and indeed that was a result
of the visit of Bettina, who would not give up insisting until her sister-in-
law [Antonie] accompanied her there.

Antonie added to Nohl that as a consequence of “her” resulting request

[Bettina’s, or possibly Antonie’s, the meaning is not clear], Beethoven became
a frequent informal guest at the house of the Brentanos, who although living
in Frankfurt, were present in Vienna for a few years in connection with their
inheritance [from Antonie’s father].26
A number of points should be noted in considering Nohl’s footnote.
First, in an 1877 publication, 10 years after he published this footnote, Nohl
wrote that Antonie’s daughter Maxe, born in 1802, had sat on Beethoven’s
knee at the house of Antonie’s father in 1808 (when she was six) during one
of Antonie’s visits to her father.27 Second, in two publications made by Nohl
after publication of the 1867 footnote upon which Solomon relied, Nohl
stated that it was Bettina’s sister Gunda, not Antonie, who accompanied
Bettina to Beethoven’s lodgings.28 Third, on the question as to Beethoven’s
visits to the house of Antonie’s father, Nohl’s footnote does not deny that
Beethoven was a visitor to the father’s house, only that it was not as early as
1792 as Schindler had written.
Fourth, Antonie’s emphasis when Nohl interviewed her was that Bettina
persistently pressed Antonie to go with Bettina to Beethoven’s lodgings, not
her actual going with Bettina. When Antonie made her statement to Nohl,
she was in her 80s, and the sequence of events some 50 years before may
have become blurred in her mind. Bettina reported in a contemporaneous
(1810) surviving letter to her friend Alois Bihler, “I very nearly did not see
him at all, for no one wished to take me to meet him, not even those who
called themselves his best friends [presumably Franz and Antonie] for fear of
his melancholia, which so completely obsesses him that he takes no interest
in anything and treats his friends with rudeness rather than civility.”29 She
repeated essentially the same description in her missing letter to Goethe (see
chapter 10).30 Also, as noted later in this chapter, Franz was hosting a luncheon
party that day, so it was unlikely that Antonie, as hostess, would be available
to accompany Bettina.
Fifth, in the context of Antonie’s statement to Nohl, it appears that it
was Bettina who invited Beethoven to go back to the Brentano house, not

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Antonie. Sixth, the fact that “the now 87-year-old” Antonie would openly
discuss with Nohl her recollections of how she became a friend of Beethoven
makes it unlikely that she and Beethoven would have had an illicit romantic
connection many years earlier.
What appears most likely is that Beethoven would have known Antonie
only casually as her father’s daughter when he visited her father’s house
before and after her marriage, but that Antonie did not come to consider
Beethoven as her own friend, as opposed to a friend of her father’s, until
after the time when Bettina brought him to her father’s house in May 1810.
Her father had died some seven months before Bettina brought him there.
From Beethoven’s perspective, Antonie would of course not be known to
him as a friend, but rather as the child of his friend, her father. Accordingly
she could not be the person he said in 1816 he had “met” (“kennengelernt”)
some five years before.
The revised statement by Schindler in his 1860 edition that Antonie had
known Beethoven since she was a child and its inconsistency with Nohl’s
1867 footnote led Alexander Thayer to try to settle the question once and for
all. In 1872, he obtained through the American consul in Frankfurt a writ-
ten statement from the then head of the Brentano family (Antonie had died
in 1869). Thayer published the statement verbatim in German. Here is an
English translation:

The friendly relations of Beethoven with the Brentano family in

Frankfurt/M [i.e., Antonie and her husband, Franz] originated in the
friendly intercourse which had existed between Beethoven and Frau
Brentano’s father . . . already at the time when Frau Brentano visited her
father in Vienna, where she went in 1809 for quite a long time with her
older children, because her father had been seriously ill for some time. This
friendly relationship [of Antonie and Franz with Beethoven] was continued
after the death of [Antonie’s father] on October 30, 1809, in Vienna and
during the three years’ stay of the Brentano family in Vienna.

Clearly, Antonie’s friendship with Beethoven arose out of her father’s friend-
ship with Beethoven, which already existed when Antonie came to Vienna
in 1809 to care for her father, and the friendship of Antonie and Franz with
Beethoven continued after the death of Antonie’s father in October 1809.31
Thus Antonie and Franz knew Beethoven even in October 1809, well before
Bettina came to visit them the following year. In addition to the family’s state-
ment, the American consul added in his communication to Thayer that he had
independently ascertained that Antonie’s father was a friend of Beethoven, that
Beethoven was often in the father’s house, and that Antonie and Beethoven
knew one another even before her marriage to Franz in 1798.32

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 The Antonie Theory 113

Solomon contended that the consul had “misread” the family statement
and that the father’s friendship with Beethoven only arose after Antonie came
to Vienna to care for her father. Solomon then went on to contend that since
the father was on his deathbed when Antonie came to care for him, it was
unlikely that her father even knew Beethoven at all. This contention flew in
the face of not only the family statement but also the many authorities referred
to earlier in this chapter. Solomon also contended that the additional informa-
tion from the American consul came from the consul’s misreading of the fam-
ily statement and therefore was wrong. However, the additional information
contained in the consul’s statement clearly did not come from the family state-
ment but was supplemental to it, because the family statement made no men-
tion of Antonie and Beethoven being acquainted before her marriage in 1798.
Based on Thayer’s evidence and these other authorities, Antonie could
not have been the love of Beethoven’s life that he said in 1816 he had met five
years before, and therefore could not have been Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved.

BETTINA’S RECOLLECTION

There is no question that Bettina sought out and met Beethoven in 1810
while she was staying at the house of Antonie and Franz. What were Bet-
tina’s recollections? They are set out in four separate letters that she wrote to
Goethe, Alois Bihler, Max Freyberg, and Prince Pückler-Muskau. Three of
those letters survive, while the letter to Goethe, as described in chapter 10,
is today missing. Three of the four, including the missing one to Goethe,
were written contemporaneously in 1810 within a few weeks after she met
Beethoven. However, as noted in chapter 10, the surviving portion of her let-
ter to Goethe breaks off in midsentence just where she begins to describe her
meeting with Beethoven, likely for the reasons explained in chapter 4. The
missing portion was copied or re-created by Bettina in her Goethe Correspon-
dence book. In the two surviving contemporaneous letters to her friends Bihler
and Freyberg, both written in 1810, she also described essentially the same
facts but with less detail.33 The third surviving letter was written to Pückler-
Muskau in 1832, 22 years later, when she was 47.
In Bettina’s 1810 missing letter to Goethe, she wrote, “they were afraid
to take me to him.” In her surviving 1832 letter to Pückler-Muskau, she
wrote, “no one cared to take me to him because of his eccentric disposition
and unsociability.” In the surviving contemporaneous letter to Bihler, she
wrote, “I very nearly did not see him at all, for no one wished to take me to
meet him, not even those who called themselves his best friends.”34 Those

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reluctant to take her to see Beethoven were probably Antonie and her hus-
band, who, as established by Thayer, already knew him.
In one of the four letters, Bettina mentioned that “we” had to wait for
half an hour because Beethoven was shaving at the time.35 Who was with Bet-
tina? As noted in chapter 7, one possibility was that Bettina was alone but was
using the “royal we” in her letter, or that the other person was Beethoven’s
man-servant, whom she mentioned in another of the four letters as receiving
her and chatting with her while they waited.36 If she was not alone, it is likely
that she was accompanied by her married sister Gunda, who was accompa-
nying Bettina in her travels through Europe that year. This was the view of
Nohl in publications of his dated after he published the footnote on which
Solomon relied.
Thayer interviewed Bettina several times from 1849 to 1855, asking
about her recollections of meeting Beethoven as she had described in her
missing 1810 Goethe letter and her surviving 1832 letter to Pückler-Muskau,
which were the only two published at the time. In his 1877 biography of
Beethoven, Thayer wrote, “The present writer had the honour of an inter-
view with Mme. von Arnim in 1849–50, and heard the story [of meeting
Beethoven] from her lips; in 1854–5, it was his good fortune to meet her often
in two charming family circles—her own and that of the brothers Grimm.
Thus at an interval of five years he had the opportunity of comparing her state-
ments, of questioning her freely and of convincing himself, up to this point,
of her simple honesty and truth.” Of Bettina’s accounts in the two letters that
had then been published, Thayer wrote, “The two accounts differ, but they do
not contradict, they only supplement each other.”37 (Part of Thayer’s account
of his interviews with Bettina describing her visit to Beethoven’s lodgings is set
out in chapter 7.) In none of the four letters is there any mention of Antonie,
except that Bettina brought Beethoven back to a luncheon party being held
at her house that day.
Bettina’s account is also corroborated by specific details about their
meeting, such as Beethoven playing and singing for her his setting of a poem
by Goethe about Mignon (a fictional character with whom she identified,
as described in chapter 2), her insistence that he put on a better coat to ac-
company her back to the party at Antonie’s house, and their reception at that
party.38 “Everyone was surprised to see me enter a company of more than forty
persons, sitting at the table, hand in hand with the unsociable Beethoven.”39
Later in the same letter, Bettina wrote that a lady at the party played a sonata
by Beethoven in his honor, and that he then played it himself. This indicates
clearly that the party was a mixed gathering and makes it virtually certain that
Antonie would have been the hostess and would not have accompanied Bet-
tina when she went to meet Beethoven.

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 The Antonie Theory 115

MORE WEAKNESSES IN THE ANTONIE THEORY

Beethoven wrote many songs between 1809 and 1811, one of them entitled
“To the Distant Beloveds” and another entitled “To the Beloved.” The first
was dedicated to a Viennese princess who certainly was not the Immortal Be-
loved, but he never dedicated the second. However, a manuscript of the sec-
ond bears unsigned handwritten words in the upper corner: “requested by me
from the author, March 2, 1812.” The handwriting is not Beethoven’s but is
possibly Antonie’s. Solomon suggests that the song was written by Beethoven
for Antonie, and Solomon used the inscription as evidence that Antonie was
the Immortal Beloved. Even if we assume the handwriting is Antonie’s, how-
ever, the inscription is not a dedication by Beethoven. As noted previously,
Antonie was a friend, admirer, and financial supporter of Beethoven, and the
words are hardly words of passion referring to a secret lover but rather an ac-
knowledgment that she received the manuscript from Beethoven.40
Found with the letter to the Immortal Beloved after Beethoven’s death
were two miniature portraits in ivory, apparently of two different women.
One of them is generally thought to be a woman who certainly was not the
Immortal Beloved. As to the other, Thayer thought it was likely Therese von
Brunsvik.41 Solomon thought it was likely Antonie,42 while proponents of dif-
ferent candidates thought it was likely their candidate.43 However, there is no
evidence that the woman in the miniature was in fact the Immortal Beloved.
In addition to the flaws in Solomon’s theory outlined earlier in this
chapter, the reader should consider as well the emotional outpouring of
Beethoven in his 1812 letter to the Immortal Beloved as contrasted with the
polite, formal letter exchanges between Beethoven, Antonie, and Antonie’s
husband in their surviving correspondence. Unless Beethoven and Antonie
were both deceptive, it does not make any sense that those surviving letters
could involve the same person as the Immortal Beloved. Compare them
with the emotional content of the one surviving 1811 letter from Beethoven
to Bettina (see appendix B), a letter that shows his grief at her marriage and
his almost obsessive love for her. It has also been established beyond any
reasonable doubt by the facts shown in chapter 2 that Beethoven and Bettina
were corresponding in the months between 1811 and the time he wrote his
letter to the Immortal Beloved.
Finally, the reader should consider whether it makes experiential sense
that Beethoven could have had a passionate connection with a woman with
four children who was expecting another and was married to a man who
subsequently became a financial supporter and respected friend of Beethoven.
Why would Beethoven risk sending a long, passionate letter to the small town
of Karlsbad where Antonie was vacationing with her husband and one of their

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 116 Chapter 12

children, when all he had to do was wait until they both returned to Vienna?
I submit that it does not make experiential sense, let alone evidentiary sense.
In the 1990s, the British writer Susan Lund, an ardent believer in the
Antonie theory, visited the ancestral home near Frankfurt of Antonie and
Franz, where they lived after they moved from Vienna in 1812. Lund was
hoping to find mementos, letters, portraits, or other relics of Beethoven in
Antonie’s remaining effects or somewhere in her household, but she found
none. Contrast this with the finding in Bettina’s possessions after her death of
a plaster relief of Beethoven, likely a gift from him to Bettina as described in
chapter 2. Consider also Bettina’s well-known reverence throughout her life
for Beethoven and his music, even as musical fashions changed, as described in
chapter 3. Finally, consider the pressed foliage and flowers from Beethoven’s
grave found in the possessions of one of Bettina’s daughters, quite likely passed
down to her by her mother.44

NOTES

1. Solomon, Beethoven, 207–46.

2. Schindler, Beethoven, 259. If Schindler was referring to Beethoven’s letter to
him of January 23, 1823, the actual words Beethoven used were “meiner einzigen
Freunde in der Welt,” or “my only [true] friends in the world.” See Brandenburg,
Letter No. 1524.
3. Anderson, Letter No. 758; Brandenburg, Letter No. 1083; and Anderson, Let-
ter No. 1064; Brandenburg, Letter No. 1451.
4. Anderson, Letter No. 607; Brandenburg, Letter No. 897.
5. Kopitz, “Antonie Brentano in Wien,” 144.
6. Richard Specht, Beethoven as He Lived, trans. Alfred Kalisch (London: Macmil-
lan, 1933), 177–80.
7. Thayer Forbes, 646.
8. Solomon, Beethoven, 220.
9. Thayer German, 3:216. An abbreviated version of the information supplied to
Thayer by the American consul may be found in Thayer English, 2:180.
10. Rita Steblin, “‘Auf diese Art mit A geht alles zu Grunde’: A New Look at
Beethoven’s Diary Entry and the ‘Immortal Beloved,’” Bonner Beethoven Studien 6
(Bonn: Beethoven Haus Verlag, 2007), 153.
11. Solomon, Beethoven, 241.
12. Thayer Forbes, 534.
13. Brandenburg, Letter Nos. 450, 460, 547, and 575. The first found pencil-
written pocket sketchbook of Beethoven was written in 1811 and contains only 20
small pages. The next found pocket sketchbook was written by him in 1815. See
Barry Cooper, Beethoven and the Creative Process (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 3; and
for a more detailed analysis, see The Beethoven Sketchbooks, ed. Douglas Johnson, Alan

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 The Antonie Theory 117

Tyson, and Robert Winter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 81–4 and
accompanying explanatory charts.
14. Solomon, Beethoven, 241, 245.
15. Kopitz, “Antonie Brentano in Wien,” 137.
16. Kopitz, “Antonie Brentano in Wien,” 137–8.
17. Solomon, Beethoven, 243–4.
18. Brandenburg, Letter No. 485. Beethoven referred to Antonie, in his respectful
letters to her husband, Franz, as “Toni,” not “die Tonie” as he did in this surviving
letter to Bettina. I believe the difference to be significant, as he did not refer to her as
if she were still a child in letters to her husband but did so to Bettina.
19. Solomon, Essays, 175–6.
20. Ludwig Nohl, Beethovens Leben, 3 vols. (Leipzig: E. J. Günter, 1867 and 1877),
2:318.
21. Adolph Bernhard Marx, Ludwig van Beethoven: Leben und Schaffen, in 2 parts
(Berlin: Verlag Otto Janke, 1884), 2:293.
22. Hans Tabarelli, Altwiener Scherenschnitte (Vienna: Paul Neff Verlag, 1947), 154.
23. Klaus Günzel, Die Brentanos: Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte (Munich: Artemis
and Winkler, 1993), 83–86.
24. Schindler, Beethoven, 259. The statement of Schindler in his first 1840 edition
is quoted verbatim by Thayer in Thayer German, 3:215.
25. Solomon, Essays, 175.
26. Ludwig Nohl, Neue Briefe Beethovens (Stuttgart: Verlag Cotta, 1867), 53. The
principal part of the footnote reads: “Beethoven war . . . nicht bereits wie Schindler
angegeben hat, seit 1792 in seinem [Antonie’s father’s] Hause bekannt; vielmehr ward
er, wie mir die jezt 87 jährige Frau Brentano [Antonie] in Frankfurt selbst ausdrücklich
versichert hat, erst im Frühjahr 1810 mit dieser seiner Tochter bekannt und zwar in
Folge des Besuches von Bettina, die eben nicht nachgelassen hatte als bis ihre Schwä-
gerin sie dorthin begleitet hatte. Ihre Aufforderung folgend war dann Beethoven häu-
fig ungenirter Gast bei Brentanos, die für gewöhnlich in Frankfurt lebend, eben jezt
wegen Regulirung der [family] Erbschaft für einige Jahre in Wien anwesend waren.”
27. Ludwig Nohl, Beethovens Leben, 3 vols. (Leipzig: E. J. Günther, 1867 and 1877),
3:275. Vol. 3, with the description of Antonie’s daughter Maxe sitting on Beethoven’s
lap in 1808, was published in 1877, 10 years after publication of Nohl’s footnote on
which Solomon relied. Because Thayer in his 1877 biography of Beethoven pointed
out the inconsistencies (see Thayer English, 2:180), Nohl added a qualifying endnote
in an appendix to his 1877 publication in which he stated that Antonie’s daughter
Maxe must have sat on Beethoven’s lap in 1810 [when she was eight], “or even
later”(3.2:873). In the 2nd edition of Nohl’s biography (published in 1913), the year
in which Maxe sat on Beethoven’s lap was changed to 1809 (before Bettina’s visit to
Beethoven), and Nohl’s qualifying endnote was deleted (3:80).
28. Ludwig Nohl, Beethoven Depicted by His Contemporaries, trans. Emily Hill
(London: Reeves Fleet Street, 1880), 86. Nohl’s dedication of this book was dated
“Heidelberg, October, 1876,” nine years after his publication of the book containing
the footnote on which Solomon relied. Also see Nohl, Musiker-Biographien, Beethoven
(Leipzig: Verlag Reclam, 1917), 66.

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 118 Chapter 12

29. Sonneck, Impressions, 76.

30. Sonneck, Impressions, 80.
31. For the original German text of the Brentano family statement, see Thayer
German, 3:216. It is set out below, as well as the text of the supplemental statement
from the consul.

Die freundschaftlichen Beziehungen Beethovens zu der Familie Brentano in Frankfurt

a/M, resp. zu Frau Antonie Brentano . . . und ihrem Gatten Herrn Franz Brentano . . .
entsprangen aus dem freundschaftlichen Verkehr, in welchem Beethoven zu dem Vater
der Frau Brentano, dem Kaiserlichen Hofrath Johann Melchior von Birkenstock . . .
schon zur Zeit gestanden hatte, in welcher Frau Brentano ihren Vater in Wien besuchte,
wohin sie sich im Jahre 1809 mit ihrem älteren Kindern fár längere Zeit begab, weil ihr
Vater, Hofrath von Birkenstock, schon seit einiger Zeit in ernster Weise kränkelte. Dieser
freundschaftliche Umgang wurde auch nach dem am 30 Octob., 1809 in Wien erfolgten
Tode des Hofrath von Birkenstock und während des dreijährigen Verbleibens in Wien der
Familie Brentano fortgesezt.
The supplemental statement from the consul dated October 18, 1872, reads as follows:

Ich erfuhr, dass Hofrath Birkenstock ein Freund Beethovens war; dass Beethoven sehr oft
im Birkenstockischen Hause war; und dass die Bekanntschaft der Tochter mit ihm vor ihrer
Heirath mit Hrn. Brentano begann.

Solomon’s incorrect translation of the family statement (Solomon, Essays, 175) reads
as follows:

The friendly relations with the Brentano family of Frankfurt [i.e., Antonie and Franz]
. . . had their origin in the friendly intercourse between Beethoven and Frau Brentano’s
father which had existed since the time when Frau Brentano . . . visited Vienna in 1809.
. . . This friendly association [i.e., of Antonie and Franz] was maintained after the death of
[Antonie’s father] on 30 October 1809.

Solomon’s phrase “had existed since the time when” should read “already existed at
the time when.”
It should also be noted that even Solomon’s incorrect translation states that the re-
lationship of Antonie and her husband with Beethoven was maintained after the death
of Antonie’s father in October 1809. That means it existed almost seven months before
Bettina came to Vienna and visited Beethoven, which is when Solomon contends
Antonie first met Beethoven.
32. Thayer German, 3:216. This additional communication to Thayer from
the American consul in Frankfurt to the effect that Antonie was acquainted with
Beethoven even before her marriage was not included in Thayer English, 2:180.
33. For letters to Bihler, Goethe (partial text only), and Pückler-Muskau, see Son-
neck, Impressions, 76–79, 79–82, and 84–88. The complete text of the letter to Goethe
may be found in the Goethe Correspondence book, 283–8. For the letter to Freyberg,
see Steinsdorff, Briefwechsel Freyberg, 68–71. Bettina dated the missing Goethe letter
May 28, 1810. The surviving letters were dated June 8, 1810 (Freyberg), July 9, 1810
(Bihler), and March, 1832 (Pückler-Muskau).

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 The Antonie Theory 119

34. Sonneck, Impressions, 76.

35. Sonneck, Impressions, 77.
36. Sonneck, Impressions, 84.
37. Thayer English, 2:181.
38. Thayer English, 2:186. It was translated as a “dinner party” in Thayer English,
but in the original German edition, it was called “Mittagsmahl,” a luncheon party. See
Thayer German, 3:217.
39. For the letter to Pückler-Muskau, see Sonneck, Impressions, 84–88.
40. Solomon, Beethoven, 229.
41. Thayer Forbes, 1052.
42. Solomon, Beethoven, 230–1.
43. For an overview of the various theories about the two portraits, see Sieghard
Brandenburg, Beethoven: Der Brief an die Unsterbliche Geliebte (Bonn: Beethoven Haus
Verlag, 2001), 54–55.
44. Susan Lund, “The Visit That Beethoven Did Not Make—A Journey to the
Brentanohaus in Winkel Germany,” Beethoven Journal 13, no. 1 (1998): 24–30.

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 •• 13
1 ••

Synopsis
Chapter
and Conclusion
Title

SUMMARY OF THE NARRATIVE

P resented here is a summary of the narrative contained in chapters 2 and

3 establishing that Bettina Brentano was Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved. Fol-
lowing it is a summary of the sources corroborating the facts leading up to
this conclusion.
1. Bettina Brentano, a German of Italian descent, age 25, traveled to
Vienna in 1810, where she looked up the 39-year-old musical genius Ludwig
van Beethoven and spent almost a week in his company, attending concerts,
strolling through palace gardens, and attending social functions with him.
2. Bettina, who studied music, played the guitar, sang in choirs and as
a soloist, and wrote music that is still performed, was fascinated with genius
and especially music. Three years earlier, she had similarly looked up the fa-
mous German writer Goethe, 35 years older than she and married, resulting
in a lifetime correspondence with him. In one surviving letter to him written
in 1810, the same year she met Beethoven, and two years before Beethoven
wrote his letter to the Immortal Beloved in which he acknowledged that the
Immortal Beloved loved him, she told Goethe emphatically how much she
loved him and promised physical intimacy with him as a reward for what his
artistic genius had brought to her.
3. Several weeks after Bettina met Beethoven, her future husband, Achim
von Arnim, proposed marriage. He needed at least one legitimate child to be
able to inherit control over his wealthy grandmother’s estate, and he told Bet-
tina he considered her the ideal woman for this purpose. To his astonishment,
Bettina initially declined, saying she was contemplating forgoing marriage and
devoting her life to a career in music and politics.

120

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 Synopsis and Conclusion 121

4. After receiving Arnim’s marriage proposal, Bettina wrote a long letter

to Goethe asking his advice, and she ultimately traveled to meet him to ask his
advice in person. She also wrote two letters to Beethoven.
5. Bettina finally decided to accept Arnim’s marriage proposal and mar-
ried him in a private and secret ceremony in early spring 1811.
6. After the marriage, Bettina continued to write to Goethe and
Beethoven, and in midsummer, while on a belated honeymoon, she visited
Goethe and his wife. Bettina and Goethe’s wife quarreled, and Goethe’s wife
forbade any further communication between Bettina and Goethe. Goethe
acquiesced. Bettina had by then become pregnant.
7. During her pregnancy, Bettina became ill and depressed. She wrote
later that a woman finds it difficult not to hate the man who caused her preg-
nancy. She nearly died at the birth of her child in the spring of 1812. Her
doctor prescribed a rest cure for her, so her husband planned to take her to
the Bohemian spa town of Karlsbad, where his brother was spending the sum-
mer. In the meantime, Bettina continued to write to Beethoven, telling him
that having given her husband the child he needed, she considered marriage
to have been a mistake, and suggesting and finally promising she would join
him in Vienna as his apprentice and muse. She also told him of her husband’s
plans to take her to Karlsbad, and that if Beethoven went to nearby Teplitz,
they could meet in one town or the other, when she would announce her
decision to her husband.
8. Beethoven traveled to Teplitz, arriving there in the middle of the night
on July 5, 1812. He wrote his letter to Bettina, his Immortal Beloved, over the
next several days, intending to send it to her and believing she was by then in
Karlsbad. In it, he noted that she was “suffering” and hesitatingly hinted that
perhaps they might be able to live together if she came to Vienna.
9. Bettina’s departure for Karlsbad had been delayed due to her illness.
She induced her sister, who was to travel with Bettina, Arnim, and the baby,
to press Arnim not to go to Karlsbad but instead to Teplitz, where both
Beethoven and Goethe were. Bettina wrote to Beethoven in Teplitz of her
trip’s delay and change of destinations, which caused him not to send his letter
to the Immortal Beloved. He kept it instead.
10. When Bettina arrived in Teplitz on July 23, Beethoven was over-
joyed and wrote immediately to his publisher to send to him in Teplitz as
quickly as possible the manuscript of Bettina’s favorite song that he had played
and sung for her when they met in Vienna two years before. He therefore
expected to stay in Teplitz for some time.
11. Bettina and Beethoven met the day after she arrived. Her husband
described in a surviving letter Beethoven’s “friendly smiles” but noted that the
composer was growing increasingly deaf.

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 122 Chapter 13

12. When Bettina and Beethoven met, she told him that she had changed
her mind and would not leave her husband and child to join Beethoven in
Vienna.
13. Beethoven was shattered and disoriented. He left Teplitz soon after,
neglecting to take with him even his travel papers. In leaving, he handed
Bettina a letter in which he wrote that “even minds can love one another,”
begged her to keep writing to him, and ended with the words “God, how I
love you!”
14. Bettina and Beethoven continued to secretly write to one another
after Teplitz. Bettina confided to a friend in her old age that Beethoven had
loved her until he died.
15. Except for the one letter from Beethoven that Bettina gave away to a
young literary disciple in her middle years, no others from him to her survive
nor any letters from her to him. This leads to the inference that he agreed to
destroy her letters to him before his death to protect her marriage and family,
and that she did the same with his letters to her before her death. But she could
not destroy the single letter from him that she had given away.

SUMMARY OF THE CORROBORATING SOURCES

This section reviews the sources corroborating the narrative summarized

above. No sources are given for facts in the narrative that are generally ac-
cepted. Where facts stated in the narrative do not have direct corroborating
sources but are reasonable inferences from them, the corroborating sources
from which the inferences were drawn are cited. Where facts in the narra-
tive are speculative and have no corroborating sources, such as the contents
of letters between Beethoven and Bettina in the interval between his surviv-
ing 1811 letter to her and his letter to the Immortal Beloved, the narrative
identifies the facts as speculation. The sequence of the corroborating sources
generally follows the sequence of the narrative.
1. Bettina’s 1810 letter to the 60-year-old married Goethe telling him of
her deep love for him and promising physical intimacy as a reward for what
his genius had brought to her. See surviving letter from Bettina to Goethe
dated January 8, 1810.1
2. Time spent by Bettina with Beethoven in Vienna, 1810. See surviving
letters from Bettina to Freyburg, Bihler, and Pückler-Muskau2 and the missing
letter to Goethe about Beethoven contained in Bettina’s Goethe Correspondence
book.3 Critics contend that Bettina exaggerated the number of days she spent
with Beethoven in Vienna in her Goethe Correspondence book. However, as
shown in chapter 7, their contention is wrong.

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 Synopsis and Conclusion 123

3. The economic reasons behind Achim von Arnim’s marriage proposal

to Bettina. See surviving letter from Arnim to Bettina.4
4. Bettina initially declining Arnim’s marriage proposal for the possibility
of a career in music and politics. See surviving letter from Arnim to Bettina.5
5. Bettina seeking Goethe’s advice about marriage or a music career.
This is an inference drawn from (1) the fact that Bettina made a detour to
the Bohemian spa town where Goethe was vacationing about nine weeks
after she left Beethoven in Vienna and about seven weeks after she received
Arnim’s marriage proposal; (2) Goethe’s surviving letter to his wife writ-
ten shortly after Bettina left him in which he says that it was quite certain
that Bettina had decided to marry6; (3) the fact that Bettina’s 1810 letters to
Goethe, beginning in the middle of a surviving letter just where she started
to describe what happened between her and Beethoven and extending up
to the time she made her detour to see Goethe, are missing; they did exist,
however, because they were referred to in surviving letters from Goethe to
her7; (4) the fact that Bettina mentioned in a missing letter to Goethe falling
within the 1810 Letter Gap (referred to in chapter 4), but rewritten or recre-
ated in her Goethe Correspondence book, that she gave several of her songs to
Beethoven, who had praised them and suggested that if she were to devote
herself to music, she had great musical potential8; (5) Bettina’s confession in
a surviving letter to a young literary disciple many years later that she had
broken a promise she made to Beethoven.9
6. Bettina’s depression during pregnancy and her near death during child-
birth. See two surviving letters from Bettina to Arnim and one surviving letter
to one of her children.10
7. Bettina’s correspondence with Beethoven during pregnancy and after
childbirth. This is a reasonable inference based on (1) Beethoven’s surviving
letter to her of February 1811 in which he acknowledges already receiving
two letters from her, recognizes her marriage, and begs her nevertheless to
write to him again “soon and often”; and (2) the sonnet Beethoven wrote for
Bettina that she later gave to Joachim. The contents of her letters to him are
unknown, but it is a reasonable inference that she confided in Beethoven her
depression, pregnancy, and near death at the birth of her child. It is also a rea-
sonable inference that having been cut off from writing to Goethe, she wrote
in a similar vein to Beethoven, admitting a spiritual love for Beethoven and
lapsing occasionally into hints of physical longing as she had done previously
in her surviving letters to Goethe.11
8. Change of plans of the Arnims to go to Teplitz instead of Karlsbad. See
surviving letter from Arnim to his brother-in-law Clemens.12
9. Beethoven’s excitement when Bettina arrived in Teplitz. See surviving
letter from Beethoven to his publisher dated July 24, 1812.13

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 124 Chapter 13

10. Beethoven and Bettina meet in Teplitz in 1812. See surviving let-
ter from Arnim to his brother-in-law Savigny commenting on Beethoven’s
“friendly smiles” and growing deafness.14
11. What Bettina told Beethoven when they met in Teplitz. This is a
reasonable inference based on (1) Bettina’s surviving letter to a young literary
disciple written many years later in which she gave him the one letter to her
from Beethoven that survives and confessed that she had broken a promise to
Beethoven15; (2) Beethoven’s Teplitz Letter handed to Bettina as he hurriedly
left town.
12. Authenticity of Beethoven’s Teplitz Letter. This missing letter, writ-
ten only several weeks after the letter to the Immortal Beloved, proves con-
clusively that Bettina was that woman. Bettina’s editor-publisher certified to
Thayer that he had seen and copied it from the original,16 and its authenticity
was also publicly confirmed by a prominent Berlin professor and writer, who
stated that he had seen the original and urged its publication by Bettina for po-
litical reasons.17 See chapter 5 for additional evidence proving its authenticity.
13. Beethoven’s hurried and unexpected departure from Teplitz. See the
surviving July 27 letter from Goethe to his wife that Beethoven had already
left Teplitz to go to Karlsbad.18 There is also the Karlsbad registration of
Beethoven on July 30 (there were several days of grace before registration was
mandatory), noting that he had left his passport in Teplitz but that he should
produce it in a few days.19 Consider also the fact that Beethoven did not return
to Teplitz until the second week of September, around the time when Bet-
tina’s original registration there showed she was to leave.
14. Secret correspondence between Bettina and Beethoven after their
1812 meeting in Teplitz. This is a reasonable inference arising from (1)
Beethoven’s plea in the Teplitz Letter asking Bettina to continue to write to
him despite his devastation by her decision20; (2) Beethoven’s confession in
1816 overheard by a young admirer that the relationship with Beethoven’s
beloved was the same then as at its beginning five years before (i.e., “a chi-
mera”)21; (3) Bettina’s admission to a close friend shortly before Bettina’s death
that Beethoven loved her until he died (how would she know if she had not
been corresponding with him?)22; (4) Bettina asserting facts about Beethoven
and Goethe in her surviving letter to a friend in 1832 that she could not have
learned during her 1812 sojourn in Teplitz.23
15. Destruction of correspondence between Bettina and Beethoven. Bet-
tina carefully preserved letters to her from others, and she actively reclaimed
and preserved her own letters to others, as described in chapter 4. But missing
are the most significant letters from her to Goethe during the 1810 Letter Gap,
starting just where she began to describe what happened between her and
Beethoven in Vienna. That they existed is corroborated by Goethe’s reference

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 Synopsis and Conclusion 125

to them in his surviving letters to her; he called them the most interesting that
she had sent to him up to then. We know that by the time of her marriage,
Bettina had already written two letters to Beethoven, and Beethoven had
written to her at least once before (they are referred to in his surviving letter
to her). We know that in the surviving letter from Beethoven to Bettina and
in the Teplitz Letter, Beethoven begged her to write to him soon and often.24
We know that Bettina was a compulsive letter writer (surviving letters from
her number in the hundreds). We also know that Bettina refused to discuss
her correspondence with Beethoven when asked about it by Schindler when
he visited her in 1843. 25 All of this leads to an inference that letters to Bettina
from Beethoven were destroyed by Bettina, likely for the reasons discussed
in chapter 4. As to the letters from Bettina to Beethoven, we know that two
certainly existed and that many others likely existed, yet none were found in
his estate. But they were important to him because in his surviving letter to
Bettina, he wrote that he carried her first letter around with him all summer.
This leads to an inference that either she got them back from Beethoven and
destroyed them herself as she had done with some of her Goethe letters, or
that Beethoven destroyed them himself, possibly at her request.

CONCLUSION

The purpose of this book has been to show not only that Bettina was
Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved, but also that (1) she was an extraordinarily
musical, literary, artistic and talented woman, worthy of Beethoven’s adora-
tion and love; (2) her descriptions of Beethoven are not “richly embroidered”
or even concocted as some contend, but are rather the most accurate descrip-
tions we have of this great musical genius, of far greater importance than other
accounts of him in his later life by other firsthand witnesses such as Schindler;
(3) what she reported he said to her is totally truthful and gives the most pen-
etrating insights into his beliefs and psyche that we have; and (4) throughout
her long life, she never betrayed Beethoven or his image, or flaunted her in-
timacy with him, but in fact tried to hide it, and she also remained an ardent
advocate of his music throughout her life even as musical fashions changed.
From a contemporary witness’s letter, Nobel Prize laureate Romain Rol-
land extracted a description of Bettina as she was when she met Beethoven.
The writer of the letter, says Rolland, “could not sufficiently idolize and ad-
mire this charming girl—the riches of her mind, the bountiful spring of her
fancy, her poetical passion, her natural grace, and the kindness of her heart.
She was then 25, but appeared to be only 18 or 20 at the most; there was in

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 126 Chapter 13

her nothing false, nothing mean; she displayed a generosity without limit, of
both mind and heart, and spontaneity without compare.”26
As Bettina grew older and married, she became not only a musical com-
poser and performer, but a writer of poetry and literature, an artist, and a po-
litical activist who publicly sympathized with the liberal reforms which were
the foundations of the 1848 European uprisings. She also advocated expansion
of Jewish rights. She spoke her mind to but was nevertheless tolerated and
respected by the king of Prussia in the face of her pleas to him to establish a
constitutional democratic monarchy. She became prominent in musical and
literary circles. The Grimm brothers were close friends. Brahms, Schumann,
and Joachim dedicated music to her; Franz Liszt was a friend; and Beethoven
would have dedicated one of his masses to her had she not married.27 Alex-
ander Thayer, the great biographer of Beethoven and a meticulous scholar,
met with Bettina repeatedly from 1849 to 1855 and thus, as he stated, “had
the opportunity of comparing her statements [about her letters describing
Beethoven], of questioning her freely and of convincing himself . . . of her
simple honesty and truth.”28
However, after publication of her Goethe Correspondence book in 1835
and of three letters to her from Beethoven in a political journal in 1839, ac-
cusations began to be made that she had concocted the letters she claimed
to have received from Goethe and Beethoven. Thayer was convinced of the
authenticity of the Beethoven letters and defended them vigorously in a peri-
odical and also in the text of his biography of Beethoven. He quarreled with
his own German translator, Hermann Deiters, about them, noted that persons
who did not know Bettina as he did were wrongly attacking her credibility,
and that she ought to have refuted them but “then it was too late—she lay
on her death-bed. Her silence under the attacks made upon her veracity is
therefore no evidence against her.”29
After Bettina’s death, her detractors began to gain the upper hand, while
supporters who knew and admired her, such as Thayer, Carrière, and Nohl,
died off. A whole new generation of academics who did not know her, but
possibly were biased because of her politics or gender, began to pile calumny
after calumny upon her. She was sometimes called “hysterical.” Max Unger
called her a “phantastin,” and Oscar Fambach accused her of forgery (a few
of their most blatant academic blunders in their efforts to discredit Bettina are
detailed in chapters 9 and 10). When Romain Rolland continued to defend
her, he was dismissed by Unger as a Frenchman not capable of understanding
Beethoven.30 Rolland, one of Bettina’s last defenders, died in 1944.
So now we have a whole new generation of academics who accept the
views of Unger, Fambach, Riemann, and Deiters as akin to absolute truth.
They ignore evidence such as that detailed in chapter 11, that the letters from
Goethe in her Goethe Correspondence book adhered substantially to the origi-

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 Synopsis and Conclusion 127

nals. As shown in that chapter, the main changes Bettina made to a sample
group of them were additions to create a sequential narrative, as well as words
she attributed to Goethe supporting the cause of Tyrolean insurgents similar
to the thoughts he expressed in Egmont. He could not do this in his letters
to Bettina because his Weimar employer was part of a political alliance with
Bavaria that was suppressing the Tyrolean insurgency.
The academics of the new generation also ignore the evidence obtained
by Thayer as to the authenticity of the three Beethoven letters she published,31
and dismiss as unimportant the fact that one of those survives (the one Bettina
gave away), and more importantly, that it is identical to what she published.
They also ignore the fact that the forum for publication of the Beethoven
letters (a literary and political journal) was very different from the forum for
publication of her Goethe Correspondence book, which she considered an epic of
her own personal and artistic development, not simply an edited version of her
correspondence with Goethe. As for her description of Beethoven, her critics
contend that Beethoven’s image has been distorted by what they believe to be
overblown accounts of him. But again to quote Rolland:
Her picture of Beethoven is as true as that famous painting by Claude Lor-
rain of the Roman Campagna. Scrupulous realism could not reproduce
more faithfully the plains of Rome and the brilliance of the light. Thus with
the Beethoven whom Bettina saw and painted. No other eye has fathomed
the depth of his genius so deeply as hers; feminine intuition absorbed his
secret thoughts even before Beethoven himself had a clear conception of
them. It is a plunge into the fiery furnace of the Cyclops. Bettina listened,
just as Beethoven spoke, in a raptus, and that is why she perceived what
ponderous intellectuals, who know nothing of the lightning which illumi-
nates the soul, are unable to grasp.32

NOTES

1. Goethe Correspondence book (German), 671–3.

2. Sonneck, Impressions, 76 and 84; and Steinsdorff, Briefwechsel Freyberg, 68.
3. Sonneck, Impressions, 79–82.
4. Otto Betz and Veronika Straub, eds., Bettine und Arnim: Briefe der Freundschaft und
Liebe, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Verlag Josef Knecht, 1986), 2:358. For a condensed English
translation of this remarkable letter from Arnim to Bettina, see Helps and Howard,
Bettina, 71–72.
5. Helps and Howard, Bettina, 72; and Betz and Straub, Bettine, 2:359.
6. Fritz Böttger, Bettina von Arnim: Ihr Leben, ihre Begegnungen, ihre Zeit (Mu-
nich: Scherz, 1990), 108; Heinz Härtl, Bettina von Arnim 1785–1859: Eine Chronik
(Wiepersdorf, Germany: Stiftung Kulturfonds Kuenstlerheim Bettina von Arnim,
n.d.), 17; Ingeborg Drewitz, Bettine von Arnim (Munich: Goldmann Verlag, 1989), 79.

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 128 Chapter 13

7. See the chapter 4 discussion of the 1810 Letter Gap. For the text of Goethe’s
surviving letters, see Goethe Correspondence book (German), 2:575–753.
8. Goethe Correspondence book, 291.
9. Ilius, 2:623. See chapter 3 for a translation of the part of that letter in which
Bettina mentions breaking a promise she made to Beethoven.
10. Helps and Howard, Bettina, 143; Böttger, Bettina, 118; Wolfgang Bunzel and
Ulrike Landfester, eds., Bettine von Arnims Briefwechsel mit ihren Sohnen (Göttingen:
Wallstein, 1999), 1:85; and Steinsdorff, Briefwechsel Freyberg, 224–5.
11. Goethe Correspondence book (German), 2:671–3.
12. Reinhold Steig and Herman Grimm, eds., Achim von Arnim und die ihm nahe
standen, 3 vols. (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1970), 1:302–3.
13. Anderson, Letter No. 379.
14. Wilhelm Schellberg and Friedrich Fuchs, eds., Die Andacht zum Menschenbild:
Unbekannte Briefe von Bettine Brentano (Bern: Herbert Lang, 1970), 178.
15. Ilius, 2:623. See chapter 3 for a translation into English of the key part of that
letter.
16. Thayer English, 2:185.
17. Thayer English: 2:185.
18. Thayer Forbes, 537.
19. Kopitz, “Antonie Brentano in Wien,” 142.
20. Teplitz Letter (for a translation into English of this remarkable letter, see ap-
pendix C).
21. Thayer Forbes, 646; Harry Goldschmidt, Um die Unsterbliche Geliebt: Ein
Beethoven Buch (Leipzig: Rogner and Bernhard, 1977), 100, 472.
22. Rolf Strube, ed., Sie Sassen und Tranken am Teetisch: Anfänge und Blütezeit der
Berliner Salons, 1789–1871 (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1991), 191, quoting Karoline
Bauer, a well-known Berlin actress.
23. See the 1832 letter from Bettina to Pückler-Muskau in Sonneck, Impressions,
84–8. It is possible Bettina learned details about Goethe and Beethoven in her brief and
emotional meeting with Beethoven in Teplitz, but unlikely. See chapter 3.
24. For the text in English of the 1811 found letter from Beethoven to Bettina, see
Anderson, Letter No. 296. An independent translation into English of the 1812 Teplitz
Letter from Beethoven to Bettina is included in appendix C.
25. Schindler, Beethoven, 158.
26. Rolland, Goethe and Beethoven, 9.
27. Anderson, Letter No. 325; Brandenburg, Letter No. 523. Beethoven wrote in
the letter, “As to the Mass, the dedication might be altered. The lady is now married,
so the dedication would have to be changed accordingly.” It is a reasonable assumption
that given the date of the letter (October 1811), he was referring to Bettina, although
the original letter to his publisher naming Bettina has not been found.
28. Thayer English, 2:181.
29. Thayer English, 2:183.
30. Unger, “Romain Rolland als Beethoven-Forscher,” Deutsche Musiker-Zeitung
60 (May 1929): 440.
31. Thayer English, 2:185.
32. Rolland, Goethe and Beethoven, 21.

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 Appendix A: English Translation of
Beethoven’s Letter to the Immortal Beloved

Translated by Virginia Beahrs, in “My Angel, My All, My Self: A Literal

Translation of Beethoven’s Letter to the Immortal Beloved,” Beethoven News-
letter 5, no. 2 (1990): 29. Courtesy of the Beethoven Journal.

PAGE 1

July 6
In the morning.—
My angel, my all, my self.—only a few words today, and indeed with
pencil (with yours)—only tomorrow is my lodging positively fixed, what
a worthless waste of time on such—why this deep grief, where necessity
speaks—Can our love exist but by sacrifices, by not demanding everything,
can you change it, that you not completely mine, I am not completely
yours—Oh God

PAGE 2

look upon beautiful nature and calm your soul over what must be—love de-
mands everything and completely with good reason, so it is for me with you,
for you with me—only you forget so easily, that I must live for myself and
for you [words in italics underlined by Beethoven], were we wholly united,
you would feel this painfulness just as little as I—my trip was frightful, I
arrived here only at 4 o’clock yesterday morning, because they lacked horses,
the postal service chose another route, but what a
129

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 130 Appendix A

PAGE 3

horrible way, at the next to the last station they warned me about travel-
ing at night, made me afraid of a forest, but this only provoked me—and
I was mistaken, the coach had to break down on the terrible route, a mere
bottomless country road without 2 such postillions as I had, I would have
been stranded on the way. Esterhazy on the other customary route here had
the same fate with 8 horses, as I with four—still I had some pleasure again,

PAGE 4

as always, whenever I fortunately survive something—now quickly to inte-

rior from exterior, we will probably see each other soon, even today I cannot
convey to you observations, which I made during these last few days about
my life—were our hearts always close together, I would of course make none
of the sort my heart is full of much to tell you—Oh—there are still moments
when I find that speech is nothing at all—cheer up—remain my faithful
only treasure, my all, as I for you the rest of the gods must send, what must
and should be for us—your faithful ludwig

PAGE 5

Monday evening on July 6—

You are suffering you my dearest creature—just now I notice that let-
ters must be posted very early in the morning Mondays—Thursdays—the
only days on which mail goes from here to K.
—you are suffering—Oh, wherever I am, you are with me, I talk to
myself and to you—
—arrange that I can live with you, what a life!!!! as it is!!!! without
you—Persecuted by the kindness of people here and there, which I think—I
want to deserve just as little as I deserve it—Humility of man to man—it
pains me—and when I regard myself

PAGE 6

in the framework of the universe, what am I and what is he—whom one

calls the Greatest—and yet—herein is again the divine spark of man—I
weep when I think that you will probably not receive the first news of me
until Saturday—as much as you love me—I love you even more deeply
but—but never hide yourself from

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 English Translation of Beethoven’s Letter to the Immortal Beloved 131

PAGE 7

me—good night—as one bathing I must go to sleep—Oh god—so near! So

far! Is not our love a true heavenly edifice—but also firm, like the firmament—
good morning on July 7—while still in bed my thoughts thrust them-
selves toward you my Immortal Beloved now and then happy, then again
sad, awaiting fate, if it will grant us a favorable hearing—I can only live
either wholly with you or not at all

PAGE 8

yes I have resolved to stray about in the distance, until I can fly into your
arms, and can call myself entirely at home with you, can send my soul
embraced by you into the realm of spirits—yes unfortunately it must be—
you will compose yourself all the more, since you know my faithfulness to
you, never can another own my heart, never—never—O God why have
to separate oneself, what one loves so and yet my life in V as it is now is a
miserable life—Your love makes me the most happy and the most unhappy
at once—at my age I would need some conformity regularity of life—can

PAGE 9

this exist in our relationship?—Angel, right now I hear that the mail goes
every day—and I must therefore close, so that you will receive the L[etter]
immediately—be calm, only through quiet contemplation of our existence
can we reach our goal to live together—be patient—love me—today—yes-
terday—What longing with tears for you—you—you—my

PAGE 10

love—my all—farewell—o continue to love me—never misjudge the most

faithful heart of your beloved
L.
forever yours
forever mine
forever us

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10-622_Walden.indb 132 12/17/10 7:33 AM
 Appendix B: English Translation
of Beethoven’s Surviving
1811 Letter to Bettina

V ienna, Feb 10, 1811

Dear, Dear Bettine
I have already received two letters from you, and see from your letter to
“die Tonie” [Bettina’s sister-in-law Antonie] that you still think of me, and
far too favorably at that. I carried with me your first letter all summer long,
and it has often made me very happy . . . ; although if I haven’t written to
you often, and although you don’t see anything of me at all, in thought I
write to you a thousand letters a thousand times. Even though you haven’t
written to me about it, I can imagine how you have to put up in Berlin with
those “worldly” good-for-nothings—much chatter about art but no action!!!!
The best description of this can be found in Schiller’s poem “die Flüsse,”
where the Spree River [in Berlin] is imagined to speak about it—you are
getting married, dear Bettine, or maybe it has already happened, yet I
haven’t even been able to see you beforehand; nevertheless may all blessings
that marriage offers stream down upon you and your husband; What can I
say about myself? “Pity my fate!” I exclaim with poor Johanna [referring to
Johanna Sebus, in a poem by Goethe]. If I am granted a few more years of
life, I shall thank the all-embracing almighty for it, whether those years be
ones of contentment or pain.
If you write to Goethe about me, try to use words that will convey to
him my most profound respect and admiration for him. I am just about to
write to him myself about Egmont which I have set to music, quite literally
out of love for his poetry, which makes me very happy; but who can thank
enough a great poet, the most precious jewel that a nation can possess? And
now I must close, dear good B. I did not get back home until 4 this morning
from a drunken party that made me laugh heartily, and for which I am now

133

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 134 Appendix B

tempted to cry nearly as much. Uproarious jollity often drives me back into
myself. Many thanks to Clemens [Bettina’s brother] for his kind interest; as
for the Cantata the topic is not important enough for us here; it’s otherwise
in Berlin—as for affection, the sister has such a large part of it that not much
is left over for the brother; will he be satisfied with that? And now goodbye,
dear, dear B., I kiss you [the words “with pain,” so mit Schmerzen!,
are written, then struck out] on the forehead, and thus press on it as with
my seal all my thoughts for you [N.B. this entire sentence is written in the
intimate German “du” form]. Write soon, soon and often to your friend
Beethoven

Illustration 7 is a photocopy of this found letter, reproduced with the kind

permission of Sotheby’s London from its 1990 Salzer catalogue.

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 Appendix C: English Translation
of Beethoven’s Missing 1812
Teplitz Letter to Bettina

The authenticity of this letter is disputed because the original does not sur-
vive. See chapter 5 for a defense of its authenticity. Here is its text.

Dear good Bettine

Kings and princes can indeed make professors and privy councilors, and
can hang upon them ribbons of titles and orders, but they cannot make great
men, spirits that rise above the world’s rabble. That is beyond them, so such
great must be held in respect. When two men like Goethe and me come to-
gether, then these great gentlemen [kings and princes] should discern what real
greatness means in men like ourselves [Goethe and me].
On the way home yesterday we met the entire imperial family. From
far away we saw them coming towards us and Goethe slipped away from me
to stand to one side; and whatever I said, could not convince him to advance
a step further. I pulled my hat down on my head, buttoned my overcoat, and
with folded arms pushed through the most crowded part of the group. Princes
and hangers-on moved aside into a line; Duke Rudolph took off his hat; the
Empress was the first to greet me. Persons of rank know me. To my great
amusement, I saw the procession file past Goethe; who hat in hand stood
at the side, bowing deeply. Afterwards I criticized him thoroughly, showed
him no mercy and reproached him for all his weaknesses, especially relating
to you, dearest Bettine. We had just been talking about you. God! Had I
been able to spend as much time with you as he has, I know I would have
produced many, many more great works. A musician is like a poet; and by
a pair of eyes he can feel himself suddenly transported into a lovelier world
where mighty spirits join with him to give him daunting challenges.
All kinds of ideas came into my mind when I got to know you in the
little observatory during the splendid May rain that excited me as much as
135

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 136 Appendix C

you. Then the most beautiful themes came from your eyes into my heart,
themes that will enchant the world when Beethoven will no longer be there
to conduct them.
If God will only spare me a few more years, I must see you again, dear
dear Bettine; so calls within me the voice that must be obeyed and never errs.
Even minds can love one another, and I shall always court yours. Your praise
is dearer to me than that of the rest of the whole world. I gave Goethe my opin-
ion of how praise should affect people like ourselves—and that we wish to be
listened to in the intellects of our equals; forgive me for saying this, but emotion
is only for women; but for a man, music must strike fire in his mind. Oh dear-
est girl! I have known for so long that we are of one mind about everything!!!
The important thing is to possess a beautiful, kind spirit that is shown
through every act and in the presence of which nothing need be hidden. One
must be somebody special if one wants to be so recognized; the world must
recognize him, and it is not always wrong. To me, however, that is of no
importance, for I have an even higher aim.
I hope to find a letter from you when I get back to Vienna. Write soon,
soon—a long letter. I will be there in a week; the court leaves tomorrow, and
there is one more performance today. The empress rehearsed her role with
him. He and his duke want me to perform some of my music. I have refused
them both. They are both mad about Chinese porcelain so there is need for
indulgence, since common sense has taken a back seat. I shall not conform
to their silly whims; I shall not take part in absurdities at public cost with
princes who never themselves have pay those costs.
Farewell, farewell, darling. Your last letter lay for a whole night on my
heart and comforted me there. Musicians are permitted to take those kinds
of liberties.
God, how I love you!
Your most faithful friend and deaf brother.
Teplitz, August 1812
Beethoven
As first published in the Athenaeum in 1839, the place and date “Teplitz, Au-
gust 1812” appears at the left-hand margin above and across from Beethoven’s
signature, which was at the right-hand margin. These words were probably in
Bettina’s handwriting on the autograph copy loaned to the editor of the Ath-
enaeum, a political and literary journal. The letter bore no date or place of writ-
ing in the usual place at its head, unlike the other two letters from Beethoven
published in the same journal (including the surviving 1811 letter). Edouard
Duboc (pen name Waldmüller), who must have been shown the letter by
Bettina (see chapter 8), confirms that the letter was undated (see Waldmüller,
228). In Bettina’s handwritten copy of the letter in her Ilius manuscript (see
chapter 5), the date appears below the replication of Beethoven’s signature and
reads “Teplitz, August 15, 1812.”

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 Bibliography

ABBREVIATED REFERENCES FREQUENTLY CITED

“Anderson.” Emily Anderson, ed. and trans., The Letters of Beethoven, 3 vols. (London:
Macmillan, 1961). This is the most recent collection of Beethoven letters translated
into English.
“Brandenburg.” Sieghard Brandenburg, ed., Ludwig van Beethoven: Briefwechsel Gesamt
Ausgabe, 7 vols. (Munich: G. Henle Verlag, 1996).
“Goethe Correspondence book.” English translation of Bettina von Arnim, Goethe’s Cor-
respondence with a Child (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1859). This is the only English
version of the book published in North America. It is out of print and very rare.
Thanks to Bruce Charlton of Newcastle University, U.K., it may be found online
at www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/bettina-goethe.html.
“Goethe Correspondence book (German).” Original German version of Bettine von
Arnim, Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde, vol. 2 of Bettine von Arnim Werke und
Briefe, 4 vols., ed. Walter Schmitz and Sibylle von Steinsdorff (Frankfurt: Deutscher
Klassiker Verlag, 1992).
“Ilius.” Bettina von Arnim, Ilius Pamphilius und die Ambrosia, vol. 2 of Bettina von Arnim
Werke und Briefe, 5 vols., ed. Gustav Konrad (Darmstadt: Frecken Verlag, Wissen-
schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1959).
“Thayer English.” Alexander Wheelock Thayer, The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, 3
vols., ed., trans., and completed by Henry Krehbiel (New York: Beethoven As-
sociation, 1921).
“Thayer Forbes.” Elliot Forbes, ed. and rev., Thayer’s Life of Beethoven (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1989).
“Thayer German.” Alexander Wheelock Thayer, Ludwig van Beethovens Leben, 5 vols.,
ed. and enlarged by Hermann Deiters and Hugo Riemann (Leipzig: Breitkopf and
Härtel, 1923).

137

10-622_Walden.indb 137 12/17/10 7:33 AM

 138 Bibliography

OTHER FREQUENTLY CITED REFERENCES

Theodore Albrecht, ed. and trans., Letters to Beethoven, 3 vols. (Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1996).
Arthur Helps and Elizabeth Howard, Bettina: A Portrait (London: Chatto and Windus,
1957).
Klaus Martin Kopitz, “Antonie Brentano in Wien, 1809–12,” Bonner Beethoven Studien
2 (Bonn: Beethoven Haus Verlag, 2001).
Ludwig Nohl, Beethovens Leben, 3 vols. (Leipzig: E. J. Guenther, 1867 and 1877).
Romain Rolland, Goethe and Beethoven, trans. G. A. Pfister and E. S. Kemp (New
York: Harper, 1931).
Anton Felix Schindler, Beethoven As I Knew Him, ed. Donald MacArdle, trans. Con-
stance Jolly (New York: Norton, 1972).
Maynard Solomon, Beethoven Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1988).
Maynard Solomon, Beethoven, 2nd ed. (New York: Schirmer, 1998).
O. G. Sonneck, ed., Beethoven: Impressions by His Contemporaries (New York: Dover,
1967).
Sibylle von Steinsdorff, ed., Der Briefwechsel zwischen Bettine Brentano und Max Prokop
von Freyberg (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1972).
Max Unger, “Auf Spüren von Beethovens Unsterblichen Geliebten,” Musikalisches
Magazin 37 (Langensalza, 1910).
Max Unger, “Neue Liebe, Neues Leben,” Zeitschrift für Musik 9 (September 1936).
Robert Waldmüller (Edouard Duboc), WanderStudien: Italien, Griechenland, und da-
heim, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Theodor Thomas, 1861). This book is very rare. I located a
copy in the Staats und Universitätsbibliothek in Dresden with the sonnet facsimile
intact. Since then, Google.de has reproduced the book online, but half the sonnet
is cut or blocked out.

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 Index

Altman, Gail, xxi–xxii Beethoven, Ludwig van, illustration 2

American Beethoven Society, ix, xxxn1 Antonie Brentano: first coming
American Musicological Society, x, xx to know, 7–8, 103–4, 109–13,
Aoki, Yayoi, xiii, xxxin10, xxxivn60 118n31, 118n32; formality in
Arnim, Achim von, illustration 4, xxv, letters to, 102–3, 115
xxxivn55, 6, 9–11, 21, 34–35, correspondence with Bettina:
43–46, 48n5, 60, 62n18, 68, 105, missing, 4, 9, 11–12, 14, 16–17,
121, 123–24, 127n4 19–20, 24–25, 32–36, 39,
initial plans to take Bettina to 41n6, 57–61, 85–86, 100–101;
Karlsbad in 1812 for a rest-cure, translation of 1810 letter, 57–58;
10, 17, 19, 36, 121, 123 translation of 1812 letter (Teplitz
marriage to Bettina: financial reasons Letter), 135–36
for, xxxvi, 17, 20, 59–60, 120, correspondence with Bettina:
123; marriage proposal to Bettina surviving, illustrations 7a and
and her initial refusal, 8–9, 13–14, 7b, xxxvii, 4, 9, 12, 14, 16–17,
17, 27, 33–34, 44, 59–60, 85, 107, 27–28, 32, 36–37, 40, 59–60;
120–21, 123; promise extracted translation of, 133–34
by Bettina from Arnim not to be deafness of, 11, 123–24
jealous of Goethe, 9, 46; separation dedication of music to Antonie and
from Bettina, 21. See also Brentano, daughter Maximiliane, xii–xiv, xx
Bettina, marriage to Arnim descriptions of, xxxviii, 8, 11, 25n6,
Arnim, Bettina von. See Brentano, Bettina 29–35, 47, 50–55, 58, 60, 75–77,
Arnim, Gisela von, 63 84–85, 88, 90, 100, 111, 113–14,
Aus dem Wintergarten von Arnim, xxvii– 118n33, 122, 123–24, 127. See
xxix also Beethoven Description Letter
destruction of letters from Bettina,
Bauer, Karoline, 24, 26, 128 20, 33–35
Beahrs, Virginia, x, xvii, xxxiin38, letter to publisher from, 11, 17, 19
49n11, 129 love for Bettina, 12, 18, 47–48

139

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 140 Index

love for Josephine Brunsvik, 3–4 19–20, 24–25, 32–39, 41n6,

marriage, idealization of, 3, 5, 19 57–61, 85–86, 100–101, 115;
marriage plans in 1810, 54–55, 88– correspondence with, surviving,
90, 111, 113, 118n33 illustrations 7a and 7b, xxxvii, 4, 9,
music of, relationship to biography, 12, 14–15, 27–28, 32, 36–37, 40,
xi–xix 59–60; love for, 46–48; meetings
pencil, use of by, xxiii, 56, 59, with, 11, 50–57, 77, 123–24;
105, 107–8, 116n13; in letter to publication of three letters from,
Immortal Beloved 5, 21, 37, 100–101
Beethoven Center. See Ira F. Brilliant controversy about trustworthiness,
Center for Beethoven Studies at of, xxxviii, 5, 51–52, 67, 69–70,
San José State University 72–73, 75, 78, 79n6, 79n22,
Beethoven Description Letter (missing 81–92, 126
portion of 1810 Bettina letter to descriptions of, 12, 17, 32–33, 52,
Goethe), xxxviii, 29–35, 50–55, 55–56, 69, 114, 125, 127
58, 77, 84, 88, 90, 100 destruction of letters from Beethoven
Beethoven Forum, xx and Goethe, 33–35
Beethoven Newsletter/Journal, ix, xvii, xxx, genius, adoration of, 14, 16, 18–19,
129 22, 31, 34, 47, 120, 122
Behncke, Gustav, 69 Goethe: love for, 44–46, 82; love
Bengochea, Christopher, xxxiiin53 letter to, 15, 42–43; meetings
Biermann, Joanna Cobb, xxxivn57 with, 8–10, 46, 60, 82, 120;
Bihler, Alois, xxv–xxvi, 54–55, 85, missing correspondence with (see
90, 92, 111, 113, 118–19, 122, Beethoven Description Letter);
125–26 mother, correspondence with and
biography and music, relationship of, publication of, 94 ; ostracism of,
xi–xix by Goethe and his wife, xxxv,
Birkenstock, Johann Melchior von, xiii, 9, 14, 18, 47, 60, 106, 121,
118 123; possible sexual relationship
Birkenstock house, 55, 61, 118 with, 8, 30–31; surviving
Boronnia, Annette, xxxin10 correspondence with, 28
Brahms, Johannes, xix, 20, 68, 126 Jewish rights, advocating, xxiv, 68,
Brandenburg, Sieghard, xxxin12, 126
xxxiiin40, 119n43 letter writing, 12–14
Brentano, Antonie (Birkenstock), x, love, concept of, 42–49
xii–xiv, xvi, xxi–xxiii, xxv, xxx, marriage: disdain for, 8, 44; reasons
xxxin10, xxxin11, xxxiiin38, for, 8–9, 43–45, 71; separation,
xxxvii, 2–3, 7–8, 14, 23–24, 50– 21; to Arnim, xxxvi, 9, 60
51, 54–55, 77, 102–16, 117n18, muse and musical assistant to
117n26, 118n33 Beethoven, possibility of, 20,
Brentano, Bettina (later Bettina von 33–34, 47, 107
Arnim), illustration 1, xxv–xxvii, music, love for, xxv–xxx 7, 9, 12,
xxxv–xxxvi, 5–10 14–17, 19–20, 44
Beethoven: correspondence with, pregnancy of, xxxvi, 9–10, 16, 60,
missing, 4, 9, 11–12, 14, 16–17, 123

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 Index 141

Brentano, Clemens, 6–7 Fambach, Oscar, 72–73, 75n4, 78, 82,

Brentano, Franz, xiv, xxi, 24, 50, 55, 91, 126
118 foliage from Beethoven’s grave, 12, 18,
Brentano, Gisela, 63 22, 116
Brentano, Gunda, 6–7, 9–10, 27, 50, 54, Forte, Allen, xi–xii, xiv, xviii, xxxin6
60, 111, 114 Frankfurt/Main (“Frankfurt”), 112,
Brentano, Karl Joseph, x, xiii, xxxiiin38 118n31, 118n32
Brentano, Maximiliane, xii, xiv Frederiksen, Elke, xxiv, xxxiiin40
Breuning family, xiv; statement of, 112, Freyberg, Max Prokop von, 113
118nn31–32 Frimmel, Theodore, 71
Brilliant, Ira, xxxiiin40 Fritz, Malin, xxxiiin53
Brunsvik, Josephine, 3–4, 14
Burnham, Scott, xxi Giannastasio del Rio, Fanny, xiv,
xxiii–xxiv, 1–2, 11, 24, 103–4, 109
Carrière, Moritz, 12, 37, 39, 40, 69–70, Gleichenstein, Ignaz von, xiv
73, 76, 78, 126 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von,
Charlton, B. G., xxxvii, 93 illustration 3, xxxvii–xxxviii, 6–8,
chimera, xiii–xv, xxiv, xxxivn41, 1, 124 21, 28, 58, 64, 72–73, 124, 133,
Cooper, Barry, xxi–xxii 135
Czerny, Carl, xiv Beethoven and, xxxv, 10, 11, 23,
73, 75–76, 82, 85–86, 135–36
Deiters, Hermann, 67, 70, 75, 79, 81, Bettina’s mother, early romance
126 with, 7, 44–46
Deym, Josephine, See Brunsvik, correspondence with Bettina. See
Josephine Brentano, Bettina
Döring, Julius, 12, 21, 37 mother (Katharina Elisabeth), 12,
“double-B” seal, illustrations 9 and 10, 21, 38–39, 41n6, 74, 76–78,
xxxiiin40, 11, 18, 24–25, 85 93–95
“du” form, xxii–xxiii, 3, 4, 9, 14, 16, ostracism of Bettina, 9, 14, 18, 47,
60, 65, 71, 103, 134 60, 106, 121, 123
use of by Beethoven in letter to the poems set to music by Beethoven,
Immortal Beloved, xxiii 9, 82–83
use of by Bettina and Goethe in wife (Christiane), xxxv, 9, 12, 14,
correspondence with one another, 60, 99, 121
68, 72 Goethe Correspondence, xxxvii–xxxviii,
Duboc, Edouard (“Robert 21, 28, 36, 47, 51, 93, 126
Waldmüller”), 63–64, 71, 74, 136 Bettina’s purpose in publication of,
28, 31, 37, 46, 68, 72, 96–98,
Egmont, 82, 97, 99, 127, 133 100, 127
Ellison, Paul, xxxivn57 comparison of Goethe letters to
epistolary, xxvi, xxxvii, 21, 28, 37–38, surviving originals, 29, 32–33, 72,
68, 100 83, 95–101
Esterhazy, Almeria, xxii missing correspondence between
Esterhazy, Prince Nikolaus, 56–57, Bettina and Goethe in, 46. See also
130 Letter Gap

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 142 Index

Goldschmidt, Harry, xvi–xvii, xxxiin37 Kalischer, Alfred, 69–70, 73, 78, 81–82,
Goodman, Katherine, xxiv, xxxiiin40 88–90, 92
Goozé, Marjorie, xxxiiin40 Keating, Corey, xxxiiin54
Grimm brothers, 7, 12, 52, 68, 114, Kerman, Joseph, xxi, xxxin6
126 Kinderman, William, xvii
Günzel, Klaus, 110 Kinsky, Georg, 91n8
Koch, Heinrich Christoph, xii
Hansen, Volkmar, 41n5 Kramer, Lawrence, xx
Hoffmann, Philip Carl, xxv Krehbiel, Henry, 70, 79n6

Ilius, illustration 8, 12, 21, 37–39 Ladenburger, Michael, viii, 92n14

Immortal Beloved, ix, x, 2 legal principles, 13
Antonie Brentano as, ii, x, xii– Lemke, Ann Willison. See Willison,
xiv, xxii–xiii, xvi–xvii, xxi, Ann
xxii–xxxiii, xxxin10, xxxin11, Letter Gap (1810), xxxviii, 28–32, 34–
xxxivn60, xxxvii, 2–3, 7–8, 14, 35, 50, 53, 83, 95–96, 98, 100,
102–8, 112, 114–16 123–24, 128
Beethoven’s devastation linked to, Levin, Rahel, 44, 60, 86
23–24, 25n3 Lewes, George Henry, 93
Bettina Brentano as, xxii–xxx, Liszt, Franz, 63, 68, 126
xxxv–xxxvi, 2, 4–5, 13–20, 43, Lühning, Helga, 86
120–27 Lund, Susan, x, xxxiiin38, 116
inspiration for Seventh, Eighth, and
early ideas for Ninth symphonies, Malfatti, Therese, 89
xxxv, 23 Malfatti family, xiv
Josephine Brunsvik as, xv–xix, xxix– Marx, Adolph Bernhard, 40, 69–70, 76,
xxx, 2–3, 4–5 80–81, 100, 110
letter from Beethoven to, illustrations Massin, Jean and Brigitte, xv–xix
5a and 5b, xxii–xxiii, 1–2, 10, 15– Mass in C, 56–57, 62n18
16, 35, 43, 47–48, 56–58, 61, 77, Merz, Julius, 37, 39, 70–71, 76
102, 107–8, 121; similarity of style “Mignon’s Song,” 8, 11, 29–35, 82–
to Bettina’s letter-writing style, 83, 88, 114
13, 18; translation of, 129–31 miniature portraits in Beethoven’s
love for by Beethoven assumed to be possession at his death, 115
physical, 5, 33 “missing” letters, meaning of,
“informational cascade effect,” xix–xxii, xxxviii
xxxiin28 Moering, Renate, 41n6
Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Morgan Library, New York, 28, 39,
Studies at San José State 85–86, 92
University, ix, xxxn1 Moscheles, Ignaz, 68–69, 73, 78, 81

Jander, Owen, xxxiiin41 Nathusius, Philipp, 12, 17, 20–22,

Joachim, Josef, 64–65, 68, 70–71, 123, 24–25, 32–34, 37–38, 40–41, 69,
126 75, 77–78, 100
Johnson, Douglas, xix–xx New Grove Beethoven, xxxiin32

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 Index 143

New Grove Dictionary of Music and sonnet for Bettina, illustration 12, 9, 17,
Musicians, xxi 63–66
“New Love, New Life,” illustration 6, Sotheby’s London, 40, 134
9, 39, 86–87. See also Unger, Specht, Richard, 3, 5, 18–19, 103
Max Spies, Heike, 41n5
Nohl, Ludwig, 69, 70, 73, 78n1, 81– Spontini Songbook, xxvi–xxix
82, 110–12, 114, 117, 126 Stroh, Patricia, viii, xviii, xxxiiin53
Nürnberg, 37, 74, 76 Sulzer, Johann Georg, xi
“surviving” letters, meaning of, xxxviii
plaster relief of Beethoven, illustration Swafford, Jan, 35
11, 12, 18, 22, 115
Prague, 104, 106, 108 Tabarelli, Hans, 110
Pückler-Muskau, Hermann Fürst von, Tellenbach, Marie-Elisabeth, x, xvii–
24–25, 47, 52, 55, 75–76, 84, xviii, xxii, xxxn1
88, 113–14 Teplitz, 10–11, 11, 17, 60
Teplitz Letter, illustration 8, xxxviii,
Rainier, Prince. See Rudolph, 5, 11, 23–24, 36–41, 41n6, 48,
Archduke 53–54, 61, 71–77, 78n1, 79n6,
Rätsch-Rivera, Adriana, xxxivn56 90, 101, 124–25, 135–36
Reynolds, Christopher, x, xviii–xix Thayer, Alexander Wheelock, 3, 23,
Riemann, Hugo, 67, 70–71, 79, 81, 25, 43, 52, 54, 55–56, 57, 67,
89, 126 68, 69–71, 73, 75–76, 78, 79n21,
Ries, Ferdinand, xiii 80, 81–82, 89, 104, 112–13, 114,
Righini, Vincenzo, xxv 115, 118nn31–32, 126
Rolland, Romain, xv, 70, 73, 78, Tieck, Ludwig, xxvi
81–82, 101, 125–27 Trobitz, Norbert, 41n5
Rudolph, Archduke (also called Prince Turner, J. Rigby, 92n14
Rainier), xiv, 76 Tyrolian insurgents, 96–99, 127
Tyson, Alan, x, xviii–xix, xxi, xxxiin32
Salzer, Mrs. Felix, 40
Savigny, Gunda von. See Brentano, Unger, Max, 5, 18, 19, 29, 43, 45, 64,
Gunda 67, 70–73, 78, 81–83, 86–91,
Savigny, Karl Friedrich von, xxv, 6–7, 126
9, 27, 50, 57, 60, 124
Saxony, royal family, 10, 73, 75 Varnhagen, Rahel. See Levin, Rahel
Schindler, Anton, 12, 17, 32–33, 65, Varnhagen von Ense, Karl August, 43–
69, 102, 110–12, 116, 125 44, 48, 60, 71, 86, 90
Schlesinger, Maurice, xxxin12 Vienna, 50–57, 77
Schumann, Clara, 20, 68
Schumann, Robert, xix, 68, 126 Waldmüller, Robert. See Duboc,
Smart, George, xix Edouard
Solomon, Maynard, x, xiii, xvii–xviii, Wendel, Thomas, xxx
xx–xxi, xxxn1, xxxn10, 2, 54– Willison, Ann, xxv–xxix, 66n7
55, 102, 104–6, 108–11, 113–15, Winter, Peter von, xxv
117nn27–28, 118nn31–32 Winter, Robert, xix

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 About the Author

Edward Walden was born near Toronto, Canada. He obtained a degree in

honors history from the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario,
in 1956, a diploma in European philosophy from the University of Vienna in
1957, and a Dr. Juris from York University in Toronto in 1960. Before his
retirement in 2001, he practiced law with one of Canada’s largest law firms.
He has four grown children, one teaching philosophy at New York University
in the United States. His interest in Bettina and Beethoven was stimulated by
his passion for music, mystery, history, and romance.

145

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