Beethoven's family

Dilettante wrote:

Can someone talk about Beethoven's family?

I mean the actual family members; once someone passed me a presentation intended to make one reflect on abortion, and in that regard, they spoke of a pregnant woman with syphilis who already had 8 children, of whom three were deaf, two blind, and one mentally retarded.

What is true about this?

Sorry, but let me understand correctly: was that woman supposed to be Beethoven's mother? Or who are we talking about?

Well, I know his mother certainly had 5 children including Ludwig..... from 2 different husbands

...but regardless..of B.'s mother, what is known?

little and nothing that I know of, there is some information about the father though, Johann van Beethoven

Beethoven's mother was named Maria Magdalene Keverich; she was born in Ehrenbreitstein near Koblenz on 19.12.1746. Daughter of Joahnn Heinrich Keverich (1702-1759) and Anna Klara Wirstorff (1704-1768).

On 30.01.1763, she married Joahnn Leym (1733-1765), who worked at the Electorate of Trier, but he died on 28.11.1765, when Beethoven's mother was not yet nineteen years old, and from whom it seems she had a son who died shortly after birth.

Two years later in Bonn, on 12.11.1767, she married Johann van Beethoven and from this union, in addition to the composer Ludwig, she had six other children:

Ludwig Maria (baptized 23.02.1779 – died 27.02.1779)

Kaspar Anton Karl (bapt. 08.04.1774 – 15.11.1815)

Nikolaus Johann (bapt. 02.10.1776 – 12.01.1848)

Anna Maria Franziska (bapt. 23.02.1779 – 27.02.1779)

Franz Georg (bapt. 17.01.1781 – 16.08.1783)

Maria Margarete Josepha (bapt. 05.05.1786 – 26.11.1787)

Ludwig was very close to his mother and it is said that it was precisely the news of her serious illness that made him return in great haste from Vienna (which he indeed left on April 20, 1787) to Bonn, and immediately after her death, he wrote to Joseph von Schaden: “She was a very dear mother to me, my best friend”.

Gottfried Fisher, in his memoirs of Beethoven's family, speaks of Beethoven's mother as “quite tall, a long face and the eyes of a very honest person” but also “always serious,” perhaps due to the vicissitudes of her life: the loss of her father when she was young, her first husband, and her mother one year after her second marriage.

Wegeler describes her as very kind and amiable towards her family. Intelligent, modest, and respectful. She spent her time with her children, sewing, and embroidering.

As is known, Beethoven judged his mother to be a very affable and kind woman, unlike his father “who was lonely and always severe”.

She died in Bonn on 17.07.1787, and the news of her death was also reported in the Bonn newspaper Intelligenzblatt.

I hope I have given you some useful information about the composer's mother.

Bye.

Luigi

Hi Luigi, how are you?

Allow me to add just a small postscript to your lovely writing, just so our mutual friends have a broader view of things.

The issue of Beethoven's relationship with his mother is, in reality, debated and is one of those many things in Beethoven's biography for which there are no certain or shared answers.

On one hand, we have scholars like Professor Klaus Kropfinger who, adhering only to certain sources and thus linking themselves solely to the statement written by Beethoven in that letter, assert that the relationship between Beethoven and his mother was characterized by great affection; on the other hand, we have Maynard Solomon who, in his psychological biography of Beethoven, says something quite different based on third-party testimonies from witnesses who lived alongside the Beethoven family, starting with Cäcilia Fischer, who stated that Beethoven was "often dirty and neglected," and her husband Gottfried, who said that "the Beethoven children were not raised with much delicacy; they were often left alone with the maids."

The highly complex relationship Beethoven had with women, also according to Solomon, would be largely attributable to the family dynamic: his parents' failed marriage accompanied by the fact that his mother poured her frustrations as a poorly married woman onto her children, venting and talking about it with them. Also according to Cäcilia, Beethoven was present when she warned him of the risks of marriage—words that Beethoven reported more or less in the same way in 1817 to Fanny Giannatasio and which, in the mind of a child, especially one as particularly sensitive as Ludwig was, could become indelibly rooted.

For my part, without wanting to take a position with this, I note that Beethoven was absolutely reserved about his personal and family matters and that he often did not tell the truth in his letters.

Bye dear Luigi, and have a great holiday to you and everyone!

Hi Daniele,

I am well, thank you, and I hope you are too. I am going on vacation soon, so I will have more time to dedicate to my family and my hobbies.

You are right about what you wrote, but I did not want to go into detail regarding the relationships between Ludwig and his family for several reasons. There are many writings and opinions, starting from Schindler, to Wegeler, Thayer, Nohl, to many other more modern authors such as Schiedermair, Krofinger, and Solomon whom you cited. Unfortunately, the only direct source is the very few words of Beethoven in his notebooks or letters and, of course, the account written by Gottfried Fischer. The father, Theodor Fischer, a baker, had 9 children; Gottfried was born in 1780 (ten years after Ludwig) and died in 1864; the house in Rheingasse (at no. 934) where the Beethovens moved around 1775 had been owned by the Fischer family for generations. Beethoven lived in that house for about 10 years.

Fischer, who was a baker by profession, began writing (on paper used for flour!) his "memoirs" on Beethoven and his family in 1838 together with his sister Caecilia (who was born much earlier in 1762). So we can say that Caecilia's contribution was very significant for several reasons: first of all because she was 18 years older than her brother and had more complete memories and information about the Beethoven family compared to Gottfried. Furthermore, the German written by Gottfried (having not received an adequate education) was not the best, with many errors and omissions, and his sister tried to help him in a draft that ultimately turned out mediocre, with many notes and repetitions. Not everything can be considered pure truth, as in several parts when he writes regarding the three generations of the Beethoven family. Caecilia died in 1845.

The 25-page manuscript was completed in the 1850s and they tried to publish it without success; a few years earlier, the biographies by Schindler (1840, second edition in 1845) and Wegeler-Ries (1838, addendum in 1845) were written. On the occasion of the erection of the Beethoven monument in 1845, Fischer rewrote it in "fair copy," but many parts differ from his original manuscript.

A.W. Thayer himself visited Fischer several times (the last time while Fischer was in a hospital bed) and read the complete manuscript, giving it considerable value, but the price Fischer asked was very high, so he gave up on purchasing it every time.

It then passed to the Bonn city archives and was later donated to the Beethoven Haus in 1889 when it was founded. Both manuscripts (first and second copies) are now at the Beethoven House Museum in Bonn.

It was published in full in 1971 by Schmidt-Görg, "Des Bonner Bäckermeisters Gottfried Fischer Aufzeichnungen über Beethovens Jugend," although Thayer allowed Deiters to publish it in the appendix of Vol. I published in 1866. After Thayer's death, in the second edition of Vol. I written by Deiters, this gave him much more importance than Thayer and included it in the text that was published in 1901.

I should note that the house in Rheingasse, which Fischer sold before 1850, was later destroyed by an air raid in October 1944, while the birthplace in Bonngasse is one of the very few buildings spared from the destruction of the Second World War.

Returning to the initial topic, there is very little news reported by Beethoven himself to his mother; obviously, as with all such information, these are personal and there is almost never an intention to write them in letters or elsewhere.

A to you Daniele and to all of you, I wish you a good vacation.

Luigi

Thank you Luigi (taking this opportunity to say hello) for bringing the conversation to appropriate levels, even though we started from an unpresentable base. Normally, reflections on complex issues such as abortion or similar (without offending anyone, let it be clear) start from disgusting premises like "you would have killed Beethoven, whereas by saving the naturalist vegetarian teetotaler you would have saved Hitler". I believe that the moral and execrable quality of these disgusting arguments contains within itself its own condemnation. To define these reprehensible arguments, perhaps I will coin a neologism like "Allevic reasoning" or "Allevism".... well, we'll see... Anyway, it is worth continuing on the subject, also because the precious memories of the baker Fischer and other memories from the Bonn period have not been translated into our language, so they are only accessible to scholars like Luigi. I return to reiterate, finally, that for serious and competent research, the only existing solution is to go and seek certain sources. Everything else (rumors, sensationalism, 19th-century gossip et similia) is.... "Allevism" (good neologism! it fits perfectly!).

A presto,

Armnd

Hi Armando, I return your greetings.

Indeed, there are many writings that have not been translated into Italian, starting with the Biography (capital B) by Alexander Wheelock Thayer, available only in German, English and... Japanese. But Ludwig Nohl's biography is also very interesting, unfortunately this one is only in German. Translating in this period is not easy; one should not stop at mere translation but at the numerous notes to be added to make the biography up-to-date based on all the studies carried out to date.

As for translating Schindler, it is a work that, while interesting and often well-informed, does not greatly excite, being full of intentional falsifications, distortions, and inaccuracies. It should be translated and rectified simultaneously in notes based on the latest studies on Beethoven, but in that case, the undertaking would be truly imposing. Therefore, the Schindler would be an arduous task, not so much for the translation itself, but for the rectification, refutation, reorganization, and confirmation of the innumerable pieces of information contained within. In fact, it would make no sense today to offer the reader an edition without commentary, as if the text contained only truths. It would require a team effort, but what publisher would be willing to pay 3 or 4 people for the creation of a volume that in Italy would sell maybe 1,000 copies? Perhaps it is better to abandon the idea of such an Italian edition, unless some learned sponsor intervenes decisively.

But as you know, topics such as Beethoven's family, his illnesses, or how much wine he drank, his women, and trying to understand who might be the immortal beloved, do not excite me, nor could I dedicate myself to them with will.

A study that I have started but which is very long is "Beethoven in Italy." Understanding and knowing how Beethoven was “learned” in this land and by our compatriots. Not much on what music of Beethoven was performed, but mainly what was printed by Italian publishers; what strikes me is that they were piano pieces and, moreover, variations. Among the first pieces of Beethoven printed in Italy, it is worth remembering those printed from 1817 by Lorenzi in Florence: Op. 90, Op. 1 (no.2), Op. 79, WoO 069, Op. 17, Op. 76, Op. 49 no.1-2, WoO 070, Op. 11, Op. 12, Op. 18, Op. 1 (no. 3), Op. 50, Op. 26, Op. 105, WoO 046. And to say that the first book solely dedicated to Beethoven was a theatrical essay by Cossa from 1872, followed by Mastrigli in 1886, although biographical passages were published in various Italian magazines, starting from the one in 1828 in L’eco to the long and very interesting biography on Lucifero in 1841 and in 1846-47 in La Gazzetta Musicale di Milano.

Forgive me, I have strayed from the subject of this topic, which is the Beethoven family. There would still be much to say about the grandfather, the father, as well as the brothers or the nephew Karl and his children, including Hermine, who was not only a mediocre pianist but very similar to Ludwig. Up to Karl's son, Ludwig, who had to flee to America to escape prison for the sale of forged manuscripts or objects belonging to his musician ancestor. The last to have the name Beethoven is Ludwig's son, Karl Julius Maria, born on 08.05.1870, right in the centenary year of the composer; he wrote for several newspapers in England, France, Belgium, and Germany, dying single in a military hospital (he had also been a mediocre soldier) in Vienna on December 10, 1917, due to a combination of heart attack and malnutrition. In the same city where 90 years earlier his coffin was carried by nobles and musicians and a large crowd, the last one with the name van Beethoven was buried in great haste in a simple grave.

See you soon,

Luigi

...I just want to thank you for these notes even if only as a simple reader.. Assia

I echo Assia's thought

On my part, it has been a pleasure to give this small and simple contribution regarding Beethoven's family.

I wish everyone a peaceful August, and for those going on vacation or already on it, a good rest.

A presto.

Luigi

Thank you Friends

I had lost track of the developments in this thread... little by little I am catching up on some of the backlog.

What a beautiful tribute to Beethoven's family