Among our family papers there is absolutely nothing bearing on the matter—no letters, no diary. The prejudices of the period, the incredible point of view held by persons of our station towards artists, even towards artists of Beethoven’s greatness, may have been responsible for the fact that no interest was felt in the matter. All that verbal tradition has brought down to me is summed up in the one circumstance that Beethoven figured only as a music-teacher in the house of my great-grand-parents.
On the suggestion of the grand-children of the Countess Giulietta, La Mara called on Fräulein Karoline Languider, a life-long friend of the Gallenbergs, who had lived with them and the Countess Marie Brunswick. This witness testified:
I do not believe that the Schwärmerei for Countess Julia Gallenberg-Guicciardi—though it may have been warm and wonderful, for she was a very beautiful, elegant woman of the world—ever took such possession of the heart of Beethoven as did the later love for Countess Therese Brunsvick, which led to an engagement. That was decidedly his profoundest love, and that it did not result in marriage, it is said, was due to the—what shall I call it?—real artistic temperament (Natur) of Beethoven, who, in spite of his great love, could not make up his mind to get married. It is said that Countess Therese took it greatly to heart. Having lived during my childhood with my parents in Pressburg, I often heard—with childish ears, of course—persons speak about the matter, and am able to remember that Countess Therese was greatly beloved, and that my mother was always very glad when she came to Pressburg, which was every year.
La Mara having sent Fräulein Languider some of her writings and a copy of Lampi’s portrait of the Countess Therese, she wrote on January 24, 1901: “After all that has been said pro and contra I remain of the unalterable opinion that the Countess Therese was the ‘Immortal Beloved’ and fiancée of the great master, concerning which fact I heard innumerable conversations in my childhood, and that the portrait is hers. Countess Marie does not see a resemblance, but I do not trust her memory.” Countess Marie Brunswick had said to La Mara that she did not consider the painting which is now preserved in the Beethovenhaus in Bonn a portrait of her aunt; “but,” says La Mara, “since there was a difference of 57 years, she could no longer judge of a likeness with the youthful picture.”
Count Géza Brunswick, son of Beethoven’s friend, died in the spring of 1902, having outlived his sister Marie. The direct line of Brunswicks reached its end in him. The castles Korompa and Martonvásár passed into other hands. Count Franz’s art collection was sold at auction in Vienna, but the widow of Count Géza retained possession of the Beethoven relics (the letters and an oil portrait) and took them with her to Florence, where subsequently she married the Marchese Capponi. She, too, gave her testimony: “It is certain that there were soul-relationships between Beethoven and Therese Brunsvik.”
Next, La Mara went to Pressburg (in search of such traditions as Thayer had found in Pesth), working on the hint thrown out by Fräulein Languider. In Pressburg she met Johann Batka, municipal archivist, who bore testimony to the fact that a relative of the Countess Therese Brunswick, who was in possession of her memoirs (a copy, evidently, since La Mara obtained the original from the family of Count Deym), had persuaded him to believe that Therese was the “Immortal Beloved” and secret fiancée of Beethoven. After La Mara had published the results of her investigation in the January number for 1908 of the “Neue Rundschau,” the grand-niece of Countess Therese, Isabella, Countess Deym, and her sister Madame Ilka Melichar, confirmed the statement that the letter had been addressed to their illustrious grand-aunt. An estrangement had sprung up between Count Franz and his sister Therese after his marriage; but the intimacy between the sisters Therese and Josephine, Countess Deym, had continued, and the romance, never known to the families of Count Franz and his sister Countess Teleky, had come down as a tradition in the family of Count Deym.
The rest of La Mara’s book is filled with the memoirs of Therese Brunswick, which she began writing in September, 1846, and called “My Half-Century.” In introducing the interesting document, La Mara thought herself compelled to abandon Thayer’s contention that the love-letter had been written in 1806, and substituted 1807 (a date urged also by Ladislaw Jachinecki, in an article published in the “Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft” for July and August, 1908), on the ground that 1806 had become untenable, 1807 agreed with the almanac and that Beethoven’s sojourn at Baden in the summer of 1807 did not preclude a visit to Hungary of three weeks’ duration between the end of June and July 26. La Mara was persuaded to make the change by her discovery in the memoirs of the fact that on July 5, 1806, Countess Therese was in Transylvania visiting her sister Charlotte, Countess Teleky, and was present when the latter gave birth to a daughter, Blanca, on that date. Having assumed, with Thayer, that Beethoven wrote the love-letter very soon after a visit to the Brunswicks at Korompa (which is her reading of the mysterious “K” in the letter), and sent it from a neighboring watering-place, convinced that Therese was with her sister on July 6, 1806, she adopted the theory that the letter was written in 1807, in which year the much-discussed 6th of July fell on a Monday. She also alludes to other evidence which she does not describe but by which she doubtless means a letter by Beethoven to Breitkopf and Härtel dated “Vienna, July 5, 1806,” which became known to the investigators when the well-known publishers of Leipsic made a private publication of the letters from the composer found in their archives. This was after the death of Mr. Thayer. Touching this letter and the significance of Beethoven’s “K” the writer of this note submits, without argument, a few suggestions:
New Suggestions Concerning the Letter
1. There is nothing in the letter, beyond what might be called its atmosphere, to indicate that Beethoven had recently visited the object of his love. The words “To-day—yesterday—what tearful longings for you,” to which such an interpretation might be given, plainly refer only to his mood and his thoughts on the two days when the letter was in his mind; they tell us nothing about the distance or time which lay between him and his “ferne Geliebte.”