In her diary, a young Fanny del Rio records the visit Beethoven made to her father in 1816.  She writes that Beethoven said that five years earlier he had found the perfect love: “Five years ago he had become acquainted with a person, a more intimate union with whom he

Beethoven lived and worked in Vienna for 35 years and he moved constantly - he may have lived in at least 60 places during those years. In 1802, he was living in Heiligenstadt, then a rural village in one of the wine-growing areas (heurigen) and now in the northern suburbs

Beethoven knew it as Teplitz, at a time when the majority population spoke German. It was a popular spa town for artists, writers and the aristocracy and Beethoven met Goethe here in 1812 and began writing Symphony No. 7. Above is the Castle Square today, Zámecké námestí in Czech, with

Some of us grew up with a vague knowledge of who The Sandman was. He sprinkled sand in our eyes until we fell asleep. But in E.T.A. Hoffmann's short story, The Sandman (Der Sandmann) (1816), he steals the eyes of children who won't go

Gustav Klimt's amazing Beethoven frieze of 1902 is inspired by Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Below is the striking part: the left half of the middle wall. That's not Beethoven in the middle; it's Typhon the giant. He is said to be buried underneath

* 1770 Beethoven born in Bonn * 1774 First version of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther published; final version in 1787 * 1789 French Revolution * 1792 Beethoven moves to Vienna at the age of 22 * 1800 Relationship with Countess Giulietta Guicciardi begins; Beethoven by now famous throughout Europe * 1801 This year

Karlovy Vary was known as Karlsbad to Beethoven when he went for walks there with Goethe and when it was one of the leading spa towns of Europe. The names literally mean "Charles Bath" after Charles IV, the founder of the town in the 14th century. The town

The Brunsvik family had two mansions that Beethoven visited frequently. Below are photos of the Martonvásár mansion in Hungary and then one photo of the Dolná Krupá mansion in what is now Slovakia. The Martonvásár mansion (or Brunsvik Castle) is a 30 minute drive west from Budapest. It has been

6 July, in the morning My angel, my all, my very self: Only a few words today, and these in pencil (in your pencil). Not until tomorrow will my lodgings be definitely engaged. What a useless waste of time such matters are! Why this profound sorrow when necessity speaks? Can

Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns is a 1939-40 novel by Thomas Mann. In the novel, Mann imagines what it might have been like if Lotte (Charlotte Kestner), the childhood sweetheart of Goethe’s who inspired The Sorrows of Young Werther, comes to Weimar many decades later to see him.