by Suchet, John
Beethoven, predictably, would have none of it, and then, unpredictably, agreed. He even made the arrangement himself. For that reason – that Beethoven himself agreed to hive it away from Op. 130 – the Grosse Fuge is most often performed today as a separate work, and the string quartet performed with the new final movement that Beethoven was to write later in the year.
What neither he, nor anybody else, could have foreseen, was that the new final movement was to be the last complete piece of music Beethoven was ever to compose. He wrote it fairly quickly in October and November of 1826, and it is uncharacteristically light, even to a degree optimistic.
This is all the more remarkable, given that Beethoven had just lived through what were undoubtedly the tensest, most traumatic, most numbingly dreadful four months of his life.
IN THE SPRING of 1826 matters with Karl came to a head. Karl asked his uncle for more money. Beethoven went round to his lodgings on a Sunday and confronted him. It appears there was a third, unidentified, person in the room. Beethoven demanded to see the receipt of payment to Karl’s landlord Matthias Schlemmer for the previous month’s rent. Karl said he had already given it to his uncle. Beethoven denied it. Karl then searched his room but could not find it. He wrote in Beethoven’s conversation book that it would surely show up, and if it didn’t Schlemmer could give him another one.
Beethoven evidently then demanded to know from Karl how he spent his money, because Karl wrote, ‘I go out walking and have a drink and that sort of thing. I don’t have any other expenses.’
There are no further entries in the conversation book, but we know that an angry scene ensued, because a few days later Beethoven again went round to Karl’s lodgings, and Karl wrote:
You accuse me of insolence if, after you’ve shouted at me for hours when I haven’t deserved it, I can’t just switch off the bitterness and pain you have caused me and become jovial. I am not the wastrel you accuse me of being. I can assure you that since that embarrassing scene in front of another person on Sunday, I have been so upset that everyone in the house has noticed it. I now know for certain that I gave you the receipt for the 80 florins I paid in May. I told you that on Sunday. I have searched my room and it is not there, so it has got to turn up.
Karl then told his uncle to leave him alone, because he had an inordinate amount of work to do for the upcoming exams. Beethoven accused him of appearing to have work to do only when he came to see him, and for being idle and dissolute for the rest of the time.
Karl denied it, and then in turn accused Beethoven of believing tittle-tattle and gossip from other people. It is not written down, but Karl then seems to have made some kind of dire threat.
Tempers were flaring on both sides. Karl suddenly exploded and grabbed his uncle by the chest. At that moment Holz came in, and separated them. We know this from an entry by Holz in the conversation book: ‘I came in just as he took you by the chest.’
Beethoven was deeply upset, and spent a sleepless night. But by the next day he felt remorse and forgiveness. He wrote to Karl:
If for no other reason than I now know you obeyed me, all is forgiven and forgotten. I will tell you more when I see you. I have calmed down now. Do not think I have any other thought on my mind but your well-being. That is how you must judge my actions. Do not take any course of action which would cause you misery and put an early end to my life. I did not get to sleep until about 3 o’clock, for I was coughing the whole night. I embrace you with all my heart and I am convinced that soon you will no longer misjudge me. I understand why you did what you did yesterday. Come round to see me at 1 o’clock today without fail. Do not cause me any more sorrow and anxiety. For the moment, farewell!
Your loving and true Father
THE RECONCILIATION did not last long, mainly due to the efforts of a mediocre musician who had attached himself to Beethoven by the name of Anton Schindler.2 This man, undoubtedly the most sycophantic of all Beethoven’s admirers – Beethoven himself wrote, ‘I have long found this importunate hanger-on Schindler most repulsive’, and after Beethoven’s death the German poet Heinrich Heine described Schindler as ‘a black beanpole with horrible white tie and funereal expression who presents himself everywhere as l’ami de Beethoven and bores everyone to death with his fatuous chatter’ – formed a dangerous aversion to Karl, for the sole reason that the youth was causing the great composer problems.
Schindler wrote in a conversation book of seeing Karl gambling with coachmen in coffee-houses, and of gambling with drinkers and cheating them out of money. He also wrote that Karl had said to his teachers, ‘My uncle! I can do what I want with him. A little flattery and a few friendly gestures, and everything will be fine.’ Holz didn’t help, writing that Karl had said he could wrap his uncle round his finger.
Beethoven did not stop to ask how his confidants could have known these details. Instead it all fed his paranoia, and he took to going to the Polytechnic Institute at lunch-time to wait for his nephew and escort him home arm in arm.
Karl’s behaviour, coupled with the buildup of threats, gossip, hints, and innuendo, led Beethoven to believe something dreadful was about to happen. If those close to him dismissed this as over-dramatic, he paid no attention. Why else would he personally turn up at the Institute to escort Karl home? No, some sixth sense told him to prepare for the worst.
HE DID NOT HAVE long to wait. In the last days of July, when Karl should have been sitting exams at the Institute, he disappeared – but not before telling both Karl Holz and his landlord Schlemmer that he intended killing himself. He might have hinted that he was in possession of a pistol and gunpowder, hidden in his trunk, because after Holz reported the threat to Beethoven, Beethoven wrote in a conversation book, ‘Trunk Karl’. The two words are written in a large scrawl, one underneath the other, on the top right-hand side of the page, the page then folded lengthways down the middle, as if as a sort of aide-memoire.
On Saturday, 5 August, Schlemmer went to see Beethoven and wrote in a conversation book:
I learned today that your nephew intended to shoot himself by next Sunday at the latest. All I could learn from him was that it was to do with debts he had accumulated from past misdeeds, though I cannot be certain of this as he would not tell me everything. I had a good search of his room, and found in his trunk a loaded pistol with bullets and gunpowder. I am telling you this so that you can take appropriate action as his father. I have the pistol safely locked away.
If Beethoven had any suspicion that this was merely a melodramatic threat, since Karl had given enough hints to allow his plot to be foiled, he was swiftly disabused.
On the same day, Karl pawned his watch, and with the money bought two new pistols, bullets and gunpowder. He then took the coach south to Baden, one of his uncle’s favourite locations, where Beethoven had spent many a summer, and Karl with him.
Karl checked into a boarding house for the night. The following morning he took one of his uncle’s favourite walks, west out of the town towards Helenenthal. There he climbed a thickly wooded hill, on top of which stood the ruins of a medieval monastery, the Rauhenstein.
The derelict towers of the monastery today stretch up into the sky like broken fingers, as they did nearly two hundred years ago. Karl climbed into one of them, loaded the bullet into the first pistol, put it to his temple, and fired. The bullet missed. He loaded the second pistol, put it to his temple, and fired. The bullet tore across the skin, burning it and ripping it open, but failed to penetrate the skull.
Karl fell wounded to the ground, where he was later found by a hill walker. In pain but conscious, he asked to be taken ... to his mother.
BEETHOVEN’S WORLD fell in. Not only had his nephew, his ‘son’, tried to kill himself, but he had then asked to be taken to his mother. Everything that Beethoven had fought for in that long exhausting court case – all the arguments, the successes, setbacks, and ultimate victory – had come to nothing. The wretched boy had cast it all aside, and in his moment of utmost desolation he had opte
d to be reunited with that immoral woman, his mother.
As soon as he heard what had happened, Beethoven went straight to Johanna’s house. One can only imagine the frostiness between them, the tension in the air, as the two of them – mother and uncle – approached the bed on which lay the wounded Karl. Beethoven did not spare the boy. He berated him for what he had done. Karl wrote in a conversation book, ‘Do not plague me with reproaches and lamentation. It’s done. Later we can sort everything out.’
Beethoven asked, ‘When did it happen?’ It was Johanna – we can surmise cautioning her son not to strain himself by trying to write or speak – who wrote in the conversation book:
He has just come. The person who found him carried him down from a rock in Baden – I beg of you not to let the doctor make a report, or they will take him away from here at once, and we fear the worst.
Well might Johanna have been concerned. Attempted suicide was a crime. A doctor would be obliged to report it to the police, who would then take appropriate action. Beethoven was probably horrified to learn Johanna had already sent Karl Holz to get a doctor – she said she had no choice, since it seemed apparent from looking at Karl’s wound that a bullet was lodged in his skull. There was no doubt some relief when Holz reported that the doctor was not at home.
Beethoven scribbled a quick note to Dr Carl von Smetana, who had operated on Karl’s hernia some years before, and who he believed could be relied on to be discreet.
Most honoured Herr von Smetana,
A great misfortune has happened, which Karl accidentally inflicted upon himself. I hope that he can still be saved, especially by you if you come quickly. Karl has a bullet in his head. How, you shall learn – But be quick, for God’s sake, be quick.
Yours respectfully,
Beethoven
Beethoven gave the letter to Holz and told him to be quick, but he returned with the news that another doctor had already been called in – it is not clear by whom – by the name of Dögl. Holz carried a message from Smetana that Dögl was a capable doctor, and that he would not intervene unless Dögl wished to consult him professionally.
Karl – for once – took the initiative, and declared himself satisfied with Dögl, and announced that was the end of the matter.
Beethoven left, distraught in the belief that his nephew had a bullet lodged in his skull, and was hovering between life and death.
As soon as his uncle had left, Karl’s frustration poured out: ‘If only I never had to see him again! If only he would stop blaming me for everything!’ He even threatened to tear the blood-soaked bandage off if another word was spoken to him about his uncle.
Again we know this from Holz, who stayed to explain the situation to Johanna and her son. He said it would be impossible to hide what had happened from the authorities. The police would have to be told, and it was better it came from him, rather than somebody else.
Holz duly went to the police and explained what had happened. He returned with the depressing, but expected, news that Karl would be severely reprimanded, that he would have to be taken to hospital for treatment, and while there be subject to religious instruction from a priest into the wrong of what he had done. Only when the authorities were satisfied that he had been morally corrected, and he was able to pass a ‘complete examination in religious instruction’, would he be released from surveillance – if, that is, he survived.
The following day, Monday, 7 August, the case was reported to the criminal court and placed under the jurisdiction of a magistrate. It was up to the magistrate to appoint a priest to carry out the religious instruction. The same day, Karl was removed from his mother’s home and admitted to hospital.
Beethoven was crushed. It would be charitable to say that his concern was entirely for Karl, but that appears not to be the case. He was aware the incident left him publicly humiliated. Crossing the Glacis to his apartment, he bumped into Stephan von Breuning’s wife Constanze, who described him to her husband as ‘completely unnerved’.
‘Do you know what has happened to me?’ he said to her. ‘My nephew Karl shot himself!’
‘Is he dead?’ she asked.
‘No, he only grazed himself, he is still alive. There is hope that he can be saved. But the disgrace this has caused me – and I loved him so much.’
Vienna was awash with the story. Within hours it seemed the entire city knew. In cafés, restaurants, in the back of fiacres, on street corners, there was only one topic of conversation. Have you heard what happened to the Great Deaf One? His nephew, his son, tried to kill himself! What will this do to him? This’ll tip him over the edge ...
It is not difficult to imagine the effect of this trauma on Beethoven, himself in failing health and not far from mental collapse. Even Schindler, rarely known to utter any words about his master not in the form of a hagiography, wrote later that the strain of it all ‘bowed the proud figure of the composer’, and that he soon looked like a man of seventy.
Gerhard von Breuning, in his memoir, wrote, ‘The news was shattering to Beethoven. The pain he felt at this event was indescribable. He was crushed, like a father who has lost his beloved son.’
Again, though, Beethoven seems as much concerned about himself as he does his unfortunate nephew, and is far from forgiving over what has happened. An eyewitness account graphically illustrates this. Breuning recounts how a certain Ignaz Seng, assistant in the surgical division at Vienna General Hospital, was doing his rounds in the late summer of 1826. A man in a grey coat who had the appearance of a ‘simple peasant’ came up to him. The man asked in a dull tone, ‘Are you Assistant Dr Seng? The office referred me to you. Is my scoundrel of a nephew in your ward?’
Dr Seng asked the name of the patient, and on being told it was Karl van Beethoven, he replied that yes, he was in a hospital ward, and he asked the man if he wanted to see him. Beethoven, realising that the doctor did not recognise him, said, ‘I am Beethoven.’
As Dr Seng led Beethoven upstairs, he was harangued by Beethoven, who said, ‘The truth is, I do not want to see him. He does not deserve it. He has caused me too much trouble.’ Seng relates how Beethoven continued talking about the dreadful thing his nephew had done, how he had spoiled him by being too kind to him, and so on.
‘His nephew, his son, tried to kill himself! What will this do to him?’
Dr Seng concludes his account – given verbally to Breuning – by saying the aspect that surprised him most about the whole encounter was the realisation that the plain individual he took to be a simple peasant was none other than ‘the great Beethoven’. He promised the renowned composer that he would take the best possible care of the young man.
Karl spent a little over six weeks in hospital, and was discharged when his wound was considered to have healed sufficiently. In accordance with the law for would-be suicides, he was handed over to the police. In the afternoon, around three o’clock, a clergyman came to see him, examined him for evidence of improved morals and religious obedience, and wrote out an affidavit on his behalf.
That evening Karl’s mother went to see him, and gave him a little money so he could send out for food. Johanna told Beethoven that Karl had to spend the night ‘among common criminals and the scum of humanity ... without a bed’. Karl himself later told his uncle he was in total darkness during the evening, and couldn’t sleep because of rats running around his cell. The following day a meal of meat was brought to him, but he was made to eat it without knife or fork, ‘like an animal’.
It is possible there was a touch of exaggeration from both Karl and his mother, with the intention of making Beethoven feel guilty about his nephew’s plight, because there now began something of a concerted campaign to persuade Beethoven to allow Karl to join the army. Stephan von Breuning wrote in a conversation book, ‘A military life will be the best discipline for one who finds it hard to lead a purposeful life on his own. It will also teach him how to live on very little.’
Breuning also reminded Beethoven that through hi
s position at the War Ministry he was on cordial terms with Field Marshal Joseph von Stutterheim, commander of the Eighth Moravian Infantry Regiment, and was sure he could persuade the Field Marshal to give Karl a place in his regiment. Both Schindler and Holz added their weight to Breuning’s argument.
Karl himself was keeping up the pressure on his uncle. Even while in hospital he wrote in a conversation book:
I still wish to pursue a military career, and if allowed to do so I would be very happy. I am convinced it is a way of life that would suit me and which would make me happy. So please do what you think best, and above all please see to it that I get away from here as soon as possible.
This was a subtle approach by Karl, which he calculated would resonate with Beethoven, because there was the issue of where he should go when he was discharged. Beethoven was adamant that he should not spend even a single day with his mother, and he told Karl as much. To join the army and move away from Vienna would solve that problem at least, even if a military career ran totally counter to Beethoven’s wishes.
But Karl, after his suicide attempt, was newly emboldened. Maybe it was the knowledge that other people – Breuning, Holz, Schindler – supported him. Maybe it was a compulsion not to allow his act of desperation to fade without any clear benefit to him. For the first time in his life, Karl was beginning to stand up to his overpowering uncle. He wrote in a conversation book in the hours after being taken to his mother, clearly moments after Beethoven had ranted against Johanna in her absence:
I do not want to hear anything that is derogatory to her. It is not for me to be her judge. If I were to spend even a little time here with her, it would only be small compensation for all that she has suffered on my account. You cannot say it will be harmful for me to be here, if for no other reason that I will only be here for a short time.
And moments later:
Under no circumstances will I treat her with any more coldness than I have before, whatever words you may care to say on the subject.