The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume I

by Alexander Wheelock Thayer

Beethoven’s Friends: The von Breunings

Christoph von Breuning had five sons: Georg Joseph, Johann Lorenz, Johann Philipp, Emanuel Joseph and Christoph. Lorenz became chancellor of the Archdeanery of Bonn, and the Freiadliges Stift at Neuss; after the death of his brother Emanuel he lived in Bonn so that, as head of the family, he might care for the education of the latter’s children. He died there in 1796. Johann Philipp, born 1742 at Mergentheim, became canon and priest at Kerpen, a place on the old highway from Cologne to Aix-la-Chapelle, where he died June 12, 1831. Christoph was court councillor at Dillingen.

Emanuel Joseph continued in the electoral service at Bonn; at the early age of 20 years he was already court councillor (Conseiller actuel). He married Hélène von Kerich, born January 3, 1750, daughter of Stephan von Kerich, physician to the elector. Her brother, Abraham von Kerich, canon and scholaster of the archdeanery of Bonn, died in Coblenz in 1821. A high opinion of the intellect and character of Madame von Breuning is enforced upon us by what we learn of her influence upon the youthful Beethoven. Court Councillor von Breuning perished in a fire in the electoral palace on January 15, 1777. The young widow (she had barely attained her 28th year), continued to live in the house of her brother, Abraham von Kerich, with her three children, to whom was added a fourth in the summer of 1777. Immediately after the death of the father, his brother, the canon Lorenz von Breuning, changed his residence from Neuss to Bonn and remained in the same house as guardian and tutor of the orphaned children. These were:

1. Christoph, born May 13, 1771, a student of jurisprudence at Bonn, Göttingen and Jena, municipal councillor in Bonn, notary, president of the city council, professor at the law school in Coblenz, member of the Court of Review in Cologne, and, finally, Geheimer Ober-Revisionsrath in Berlin. He died in 1841.

2. Eleonore Brigitte, born April 23, 1772. On March 28, 1802, she was married to Franz Gerhard Wegeler of Beul-an-der-Ahr, and died on June 13, 1841, at Coblenz.

3. Stephan, born August 17, 1774. He studied law at Bonn and Göttingen, and shortly before the end of the electorship of Max Franz was appointed to an office in the Teutonic Order at Mergentheim. In the spring of 1801 he went to Vienna, where he renewed his acquaintance with Beethoven. They had simultaneously been pupils of Ries in violin playing. The Teutonic Order offering no chance of advancement to a young man, he was given employment with the War Council and became Court Councillor in 1818. He died on June 4, 1827. His first wife was Julie von Vering, daughter of Ritter von Vering, a military physician; she died in the eleventh month of her wedded life. He then married Constanze Ruschowitz, who became the mother of Dr. Gerhard von Breuning, born August 28, 1813, author of “Aus dem Schwarzspanierhause.”

4. Lorenz (called Lenz, the posthumous child), born in the summer of 1777, studied medicine and was in Vienna in 1794-97 simultaneously with Wegeler and Beethoven. He died on April 10, 1798 in Bonn.[39]

Madame von Breuning, who died on December 9, 1838, after a widowhood of 61 years, lived in Bonn until 1815, then in Kerpen, Beul-an-der-Ahr, Cologne and finally with her son-in-law, Wegeler, in Coblenz.

The acquaintance between Beethoven and Stephan von Breuning may have had some influence in the selection of the young musician as pianoforte teacher for Eleonore and Lorenz,[40] an event (in consideration of circumstances already detailed and of the ages, real and reputed, of pupils and master) which may be dated at the close of the year 1787, and which was, perhaps, the greatest good that fate, now become propitious, could have conferred upon him; for he was now so situated in his domestic relations, and at such an age, that introduction into so highly refined and cultivated a circle was of the highest value to him both morally and intellectually. The recent loss of his mother had left a void in his heart which so excellent a woman as Madame von Breuning could alone in some measure fill. He was at an age when the evil example of his father needed a counterbalance; when the extraordinary honors so recently paid to science and letters at the inauguration of the university would make the strongest impression; when the sense of his deficiencies in everything but his art would begin to be oppressive; when his mental powers, so strong and healthy, would demand some change, some recreation, from that constant strain in the one direction of music to which almost from infancy they had been subjected; when not only the reaction upon his mind of the fresh and new intellectual life now pervading Bonn society, but his daily contact with so many of his own age, friends and companions now enjoying advantages for improvement denied to him, must have cost him many a pang; when a lofty and noble ambition might be aroused to lead him ever onward and upward; when, the victim of a despondent melancholy, he might sink into the mere routine musician, with no lofty aims, no higher object than to draw from his talents means to supply his necessities and gratify his appetites.