The German poet and philosopher Goethe loved many women, and although the woman he finally married seemed to contemporaries to be a pretty face with a pretty vacant head, most of the woman he admired were clever as well as good-looking. It was through the child of one of those women that the giant of German letters met Beethoven, the giant of German music. The mutual friend was a young woman called Bettina Brentano, and it has been conjectured that she may in fact have been Goethe’s daughter: their relationship certainly seems to have been an intense but platonic one: she once fell asleep in his lap. Goethe never knew quite what to make of her (and neither did Napoleon, who definitely wasn’t her dad).
In 1812, all three were present at the Teplitz Spa, and Bettina introduced the two. Love was in the air. Spas were sites of raised emotion (as lovers of Persuasion know). and it was while at the spa that Beethoven wrote his mysterious ‘Letter to the Immortal Beloved’, which was found in a drawer after his death in 1827. Bettina had earlier, in 1810, introduced Beethoven to her relation Antonie Brentano, who is considered by many to be one of the likeliest suspects for the ‘Immortal Beloved’ .
In one of these scenes that are rather too good to be true (and although recorded by Bettina, some feel it is too good to be true), Beethoven and Goethe were strolling arm-in-arm when they encountered the Empress of Austria and a gaggle of Dukes coming in their direction. Beethoven – who had been holding forth on the superiority of men of genius to men of birth – told Goethe to keep his arm locked with his: ‘They must make room for us. not we for them’. But Goethe’s day job, after all, had been as a courtier, and he found this impossible to do.
Goethe took out his arm, took off his hat, and bowed to the Empress. Beethoven crossed his arms and kept walking, the Dukes parting before him like the Red Sea before Moses. After Goethe had bowed his way out, Beethoven told him he had waited for him because he honoured, indeed revered, Goethe for his mind, and told him off for bowing to talentless aristocrats. The scene has become emblematic of the emerging new age of Romantic genius trampling on outdated mores, and a splendid contemporary picture called The Incident in Teplitz depicts the scene in that light: Goethe bows reverentially, while Beethoven strides away with his head held high.
What Happened Next
Goethe wrote home that Beethoven was ‘turbulent’; Beethoven told his publisher that Goethe was too enamoured of courts. Years later, Beethoven wrote to Goethe, but the latter did not reply. Apart from genius, they had little in common. Bettina became quite radical in her politics, and befriended Karl Marx in 1842. A utopian commune established by Germans in Texas in 1847-8 was named ‘Bettina’ after her. The communists got on well with the Comanches – who found the commune useful for surgery, and also a handy dumping ground for unwanted captives – but the communists did not get on with each other. Several Bettinans became leading Texans. This has nothing to do with Beethoven and Goethe of course, but is fascinating. There were so many Germans about in Texas in the 1840s that some companies of Texas Rangers were comprised wholly of Germans, which is possibly even more irrelevant, but makes one long for westerns – featuring German Marxists – which were never made.