Antonie Brentano

Antonie Brentano, Portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1808

Antonie Brentano (born 28 May 1780 in Vienna; died 12 May 1869 in Frankfurt am Main; born Johanna Antonie Josefa Edle von Birkenstock, known as Toni) was a philanthropist, art collector, and arts patron.

Early life

Antonie was the daughter of Austrian diplomat, educational reformer, and art collector Johann Melchior Edler von Birkenstock (1738–1809) and his wife Carolina Josefa von Hay (born 1755 in Fulnek/Böhmen; died 18 May 1788 in Vienna). She had three siblings, two of whom died in infancy.

Her father was an Imperial advisor to Empress Maria Theresa and the reformist Emperor Joseph II. Through his wife, he was the brother-in-law of Joseph von Sonnenfels, the dedicatee of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in D-Major op. 28 (1802). Antonie von Birkenstock Brentano's mother was the sister of Königgrätz Jan Leopold Ritter von Hay (1735-1794).

From 1782 until approximately 1784, the Birkenstock family lived in Frankfurt-am-Main, where Antonie's brothers Konstantin Viktor and Johann Eduard von Birkenstock were born and died in infancy. It is possible that Johann Melchior von Birkenstock became acquainted with the Brentano family at this time. In Vienna, the family lived in a forty-room mansion in the Landstraße suburb, located at Erdberggasse Nr. 98 (today, Erdbergstraße 19), which housed a large library and Birkenstock's sizable art collection.

Ten days before her eighth birthday, Antonie lost her mother to an epidemic and was sent to the school at the Ursuline convent in Pressburg.

Marriage

In September 1797, prosperous Frankfurt merchant Franz Brentano (1765-1844), the half-brother of authors Clemens Brentano (1778-1842) and Bettina von Arnim (1785-1859), sent his half-sister, Sophie Brentano (1776-1800), and his stepmother Friederike Brentano née von Rottenhof (1771-1817) to Vienna to meet Antonie.[1] Franz had met Antonie briefly at the end of 1796 or beginning of 1797. After a long negotiation with Antonie's father, Franz and Antonie were wed on July 23, 1798 at St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. Eight days after the wedding, the pair departed Vienna for Frankfurt-am-Main. Antonie and Franz had six children:

Vienna years

In August 1809, Antonie returned to Vienna to care for her ailing father, who died on October 30, 1809. After his death, Antonie remained in Vienna for three years to sort out her father's art collection and supervise its sale. Franz Brentano established a branch of his business in Vienna and joined his wife there. Bettina von Arnim, in her epistolary novel Goethe's Correspondence with a Child describes Birkenstock's collection as follows: "I am much pleased with the old tower, from whence I overlook the whole Prater: trees on trees of majestic appearance, delightful green lawns. Here I live in the house of the deceased Birkenstock, in the midst of two thousand engravings, as many drawings, as many hundred antique urns, and Etrurian lamps, marble vases, antique remains of hands and feet, pictures, Chinese dresses, coins, collections of minerals, sea-insects, telescopes, countless maps, plans of ancient buried kingdoms and cities, skilfully carved sticks, valuable documents, and lastly the sword of the Emperor Carolus. All these surround us in gay confusion, and are just about being brought into order, so there is nothing to be touched or understood, and with the chesnut-alley in full blossom, and the rushing Danube, which bears us over on his back, there is no enduring the Gallery of Art."[2]

The Brentano family also made the acquaintance of Beethoven and Goethe at this time, in 1810 and 1812 respectively.

Maynard Solomon's Immortal Beloved theory

Main article: Immortal Beloved

American Beethoven scholar Maynard Solomon, in his 1972 article "New Light on Beethoven's Letter to an Unknown Woman" and his 1977 follow-up essay, "Antonie Brentano and Beethoven", sets forth the theory that Antonie was the composer's Immortal Beloved.[3] Although Solomon's theory enjoyed a long vogue, it has been widely discredited by scholars such as Goldschmidt, Beahrs, Gail S Altman and Marie-Elisabeth Tellenbach. Solomon himself acknowledges that his evidence is at best circumstantial. As Beethoven enjoyed a deep friendship with Antonie Brentano's husband, it is unlikely that, given what is known about Beethoven's moral code, he could have engaged in an affair with a friend's wife. In addition, there is strong evidence that the relationship between Antonie and Franz Brentano was not as unsatisfactory as Solomon purports.[4][5]

Other possible candidates for the "Immortal Beloved" include: Therese von Brunswick (1775–1861), Josephine Brunsvik (1779–1821), Countess Marie Erdődy (1779–1837), the singer Amalie Sebald,[6] and Giulietta Guicciardi (1782-1856).

Charitable work

After the Brentanos returned from Vienna, Franz was elected a senator of Frankfurt (1816). Antonie was known as "the mother of the poor" for her work in raising funds for the poor and disenfranchised citizens of Frankfurt. She founded and ran several charities.[7] Antonie was also one of the foremost cultural figures in Frankfurt and helped to establish a salon society there. The Brentanos entertained notables such as Goethe and the brothers Grimm both at their house in Frankfurt and at their summer home, Winkel near Rheingau.[8]

Notes

  1. ↑ Schenck zu Schweinsberg, Karen (1985). Meine Seele ist bey Euch Geblieben. Germany: Acta humanoria. ISBN 3-527-17537-7.
  2. ↑ von Arnim, Bettina (1837). Goethe's Correspondence with a Child (English Ed). London, UK: LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS.
  3. ↑ Already in 1955 the French scholars Jean and Brigitte Massin had noticed the fact that Antonie Brentano was present in Prague and Franzensbad at the time and discussed her as a possible candidate for the “Immortal Beloved”: "The assumption that it could have been Antonie Brentano, is both tantalizing and absurd." („L’hypothèse d’Antonia Brentano est à la fois séduisante et absurde.“ Jean and Brigitte Massin 1955, p. 240)
  4. ↑ Schenk zu Schweinsberg, Karen (1985). Meine Seele ist bey Euch Geblieben. Acta humanoria. ISBN 3-527-17537-7.
  5. ↑ Strohmeyer, Armin (2006). Die Frauen der Brentanos: Portäts aus drei Jahrhunderten. Berlin: Claasen.
  6. ↑ http://lvbeethoven.co.uk/page12.html|Beethoven reference site
  7. ↑ Solomon, Maynard (April 1977). "Antonie Brentano and Beethoven". Music and Letters 58 (2): 153–169. doi:10.1093/ml/58.2.153.
  8. ↑ Robinson, Henry Crabb (1898). Diary and Reminiscences of Henry Crabb Robinson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Further reading

External links