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The von Breuning Family—Beethoven Brought Under Refining Influences—Count Waldstein, His Mæcenas—The Young Musician is Forced to Become Head of the Family.

In 1527, the year in which the administration of the office of Hochmeister of the Teutonic Order was united with that of the Deutschmeister, whose residence had already been fixed at Mergentheim in 1525, this city became the principal seat of the order. From 1732 to 1761 Clemens Augustus was Hoch- und Deutschmeister of the order; according to the French edition of the Court Calendar of 1761, Christoph von Breuning was Conseiller d’État et Référendaire, having succeeded his father-in-law von Mayerhofen in the office.

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.

There must have been something very engaging in the character of the small, pockmarked youth, or he could not have so won his way into the affections of the Widow von Breuning and her children. In his “Notizen” Wegeler writes:

In this house reigned an unconstrained tone of culture in spite of youthful wilfulness. Christoph von Breuning made early essays in poetry, as was the case (and not without success) with Stephan von Breuning much later. The friends of the family were distinguished by indulgence in social entertainments which combined the useful and the agreeable. When we add that the family possessed considerable wealth, especially before the war, it will be easy to understand that the first joyous emotions of Beethoven found vent here. Soon he was treated as one of the children of the family, spending in the house not only the greater part of his days, but also many nights. Here he felt that he was free, here he moved about without constraint, everything conspired to make him cheerful and develop his mind. Being five years older than Beethoven I was able to observe and form a judgment on these things.

It must not be forgotten that besides Madame von Breuning and her children the scholastic Abraham von Kerich and the canon Lorenz von Breuning were members of the household. The latter especially seems to have been a fine specimen of the enlightened clergy of Bonn who, according to Risbeck, formed so striking a contrast to the priests and monks of Cologne; and it is easy to trace Beethoven’s life-long love for the ancient classics—Homer and Plutarch at the head—to the time when the young Breunings would be occupied with them in the original under the guidance of their accomplished tutor and guardian. The uncle, Philipp von Breuning, may also have been influential in the intellectual progress of the young musician, for to him at Kerpen “the family von Breuning and their friends went annually for a vacation of five or six weeks. There, too, Beethoven several times spent a few weeks right merrily, and was frequently urged to play the organ,” as Wegeler tells us in the “Notizen.” There let him be left enjoying and profiting by his intimacy with that family, and returning their kindness in some measure by instructing Eleonore and Lenz in music, while a new friend and benefactor is introduced.

Count Waldstein’s Arrival in Bonn

Emanuel Philipp, Count Waldstein and Wartemberg von Dux, and his wife, a daughter of Emanuel Prince Lichtenstein, were parents of eleven children. The fourth son was Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel, born March 24, 1762. Uniting in his veins the blood of many of the houses of the Austrian Empire, there was no career, no line of preferment open to younger sons of titled families, which was not open to him, or to which he might not aspire. It was determined that he should seek activity in the Teutonic Order, of which Max Franz was Grand Master. According to the rules and regulations of the order, the young nobleman came to Bonn to pass his examinations and spend his year of novitiate. Could the time of his arrival there be determined with certainty, the date would have a most important bearing either to confirm or disprove the chronological argument of some of our earlier pages; but one may well despair of finding so unimportant an event as the journey of a young man of 25 from Vienna to the Rhine anywhere upon record. One thing bearing directly upon this point may be read in the “Wiener Zeitung” of July 2, 1788. A correspondent in Bonn says that on “the day before yesterday,” i.e., June 17, 1788, “our gracious sovereign, as Hoch- und Deutschmeister, gave the accolade with the customary ceremonies to the Count von Waldstein, who had been accepted in the Teutonic Order.” Allowing for the regular year of novitiate, the Count was certainly in Bonn before the 17th of June, 1787.

The misfortune of two unlucky Bohemian peasants, strange as it may seem, gives us, after the lapse of a century, a satisfactory solution of the difficulty. Some one reports in the “Wiener Zeitung” of May, 19, 1787, that on the 4th of that month two peasant houses were destroyed by fire in the village of Likwitz belonging to Osegg, and adds: “Count Ferdinand von Waldstein, moved by a noble spirit of humanity, hurried from Dux, took charge of affairs and was to be found wherever the danger was greatest.” It was between May 4 and June 17, 1787, that Waldstein parted from his widowed mother and journeyed to the place of his novitiate. His name may easily have become known to Wegeler before the latter’s departure from Bonn for Vienna.[41] Here follows what the good doctor says of the Count—to what degree correct or mistaken, the reader can determine for himself:

The first, and in every respect the most important, of the Mæcenases of Beethoven was Count Waldstein, Knight of the Teutonic Order, and (what is of greater moment here) the favorite and constant companion of the young Elector, afterwards Commander of the Order at Virnsberg and Chancellor of the Emperor of Austria. He was not only a connoisseur but also a practitioner of music. He it was who gave all manner of support to our Beethoven, whose gifts he was the first to recognize worthily. Through him the young genius developed the talent to improvise variations on a given theme. From him he received much pecuniary assistance bestowed in such a way as to spare his sensibilities, it being generally looked upon as a small gratuity from the Elector.

Beethoven’s appointment as organist, his being sent to Vienna by the Elector, were the doings of the Count. When Beethoven at a later date dedicated the great and important Sonata in C major, Op. 53, to him, it was only a proof of the gratitude which lived on in the mature man. It is to Count Waldstein that Beethoven owed the circumstance that the first sproutings of his genius were not nipped; therefore we owe this Mæcenas Beethoven’s later fame.

Frau Karth remembered distinctly the 17th of June upon which Waldstein entered the order, the fact being impressed upon her mind by a not very gentle reminder from the stock of a sentinel’s musket that the palace chapel was no place for children on such an occasion. She remembered Waldstein’s visits to Beethoven in the years following in his room in the Wenzelgasse and was confident that he made the young musician a present of a pianoforte.

To save his line from extinction the Count obtained a dispensation from his vows and married (May 9, 1812) Maria Isabella, daughter of Count Rzewski. A daughter, Ludmilla, was born to him; but no son. He died on August 29, 1823, and the family of Waldsteins of Dux disappears. While all that Wegeler says of this man’s kindness in obtaining the place of organist for Beethoven and of his influence upon his musical education is one grand mistake,[42] there is no reason whatever to doubt that those qualities which made the youth a favorite with the Breunings, added to his manifest genius, made their way to the young count’s heart and gained for Beethoven a zealous, influential and active friend. Still, in June, 1778, Waldstein possessed no such influence as to render a petition for increase of salary, offered by his protégé, successful. That document has disappeared, but a paper remains, dated June 5, concerning the petition, which is endorsed “Beruhet.” Whatever this word may here mean it is certain that Ludwig’s salary as organist remained at the old point of 100 thalers, which, with the 200 received by his father, the three measures of grain and the small sum that he might earn by teaching, was all that Johann van Beethoven and three sons, now respectively in their eighteenth, fifteenth and twelfth years, had to live upon; and therefore so much the more necessity for the exercise of Waldstein’s generosity.

Ludwig the Head of the Family

After the death of the mother, says Frau Karth, a housekeeper was employed and the father and sons remained together in the lodgings in the Wenzelgasse. Carl was intended for the musical profession; Johann was put apprentice to the court apothecary, Johann Peter Hittorf. Two years, however, had hardly elapsed when the father’s infirmity compelled the eldest son, not yet nineteen years of age, to take the extraordinary step of placing himself at the head of the family. One of Stephan von Breuning’s reminiscences shows how low Johann van Beethoven had sunk: viz., that of having seen Ludwig furiously interposing to rescue his intoxicated father from an officer of police.

Here again the petition has disappeared, but its contents are sufficiently made known by the terms of the decree dated November 20, 1789:

His Electoral Highness having graciously granted the prayer of the petitioner and dispensed henceforth wholly with the services of his father, who is to withdraw to a village in the electorate, it is graciously commanded that he be paid in accordance with his wish only 100 rthr. of the annual salary which he has had heretofore, beginning with the approaching new year, and that the other 100 thlr. be paid to the suppliant’s son besides the salary which he now draws and the three measures of grain for the support of his brothers.

It is probable that there was no intention to enforce this decree in respect of the withdrawal of the father from Bonn, and that this clause was inserted in terrorem in case he misbehaved himself; for he continued, according to Frau Karth, to dwell with his children, and his first receipt, still preserved, for the reduced salary is dated at Bonn—a circumstance, however, which alone would prove little or nothing.