Auguste Léo

Auguste Léo (actually August Leo ; born November 12, 1793 in Strelitz , Mecklenburg , † June 7, 1859 in Versailles ) was a German-Jewish banker and patron of numerous artists.

Life

Léo settled in Paris in 1817, where he became an authorized officer of the Mendelssohn & Co. banking house and converted to Protestantism . On October 7, 1824, he married the writer Sophie Augustine Dellevie (born September 14, 1796 in Hamburg ; † July 3, 1864 in Versailles) in the Les Billettes church . Through her he came into contact with important artists: Her sister Serena Dellevie (1782–1818), married to Adolph Embden, was the mother of Charlotte Moscheles nee. Embden, the wife of the pianist and composer Ignaz Moscheles . Adolph Embden's brother Moritz was in turn Heinrich Heine's brother-in-law . In 1824 he founded his own bank in Paris, and in 1848 retired from business life.

For Ignaz Moscheles, who first met Auguste Léo in 1821, he was “a friend and protector of many artists”, whom he praised at the same time as having a true “musical understanding and a graceful compositional talent”. In the spring of 1825, the young Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy visited the Léo family for the first time . When Mendelssohn stayed in Paris for a long time from December 9, 1831 to April 20, for the first few days he even stayed with Léo, 11 rue Louis-le-Grand, and then visited him almost every day. On December 28th he wrote to his sister Fanny Hensel :

“Leo is a very amiable person, and the most amateurish dilettante that seemed to me; he knows everything by heart, plays the wrong bass, only he lacks the quality of arrogance and he is very modest and reserved with his real talent. "

Clara Wieck visited the Léo family for the first time on February 16, 1832. During her guest performance in Paris in 1839, the 19-year-old again noted five visits to the Léos in her diary: on March 10, March 17, April 1, April 28. April and May 11th. The highlight was a concert performance of Carl Maria von Weber's opera Oberon , at which Giacomo Meyerbeer was also present.

Friendship with Chopin

Frédéric Chopin, Polonaise in A flat major op. 53, autograph , “dédiée à Monsieur Auguste Léo”, 1842 - New York , Morgan Library & Museum , Dannie and Hettie Heineman Collection, sign. MS 42

From 1832 Frédéric Chopin in particular visited Léo regularly and became a close friend of the family. On June 20, 1833, Chopin Ferdinand Hiller announced that he had "often seen the Léo family and their relatives this winter and this spring". In 1838 Léo granted the composer an interest-free loan. In the fall of 1839, Moscheles first met Chopin there. He writes in a letter:

“At Leo's, I prefer to make music, and that's where I first got to know Chopin, who had just returned from the country; I could not wait for it. His looks are completely identified with his music, both delicate and enthusiastic. [...] He played me etudes and his latest work »Preludes« , I played him many of my things. "

An outward sign of long-term friendship is Chopin's Polonaise in A flat major op. 53, composed in 1842/43 , one of his most important piano works, which he dedicated to Léo. From 1843 to 1845 he helped Chopin several times in negotiations with publishers. In her memoirs, Sophie Léo writes of his frequent visits to the Léo family's salon on rue de la Chaussée d'Antin:

“Anyone who did not know Chopin will never be able to imagine a similar being, not be able to think to what enthusiasm the soul can rise even before redemption from earthly shell; whoever has not heard his own compositions play will never get an idea of ​​the way in which the purest inspiration can be carried on the wings of genius, regardless of use, praise or blame. He was just him, certainly the first, probably the only one of his kind forever. "

Heinrich Heine and other artists

Léo invested heavily in the Meudon railway viaduct , when the foundation stone was laid on October 1, 1838, when “Auguste Léo, administrateur-général, directeur banquier” was personally present. The bridge forms part of the railway line from Paris to Versailles, which started operating in 1840. As Heinrich Heine noted, Léo then temporarily ran into financial difficulties "since he suffered such a miserable setback on the Versailles railway de rive gauche". At the same time - on May 5, 1843 in a letter from his Lutezia - he expressed the wish that Léo should remain in Paris society:

“There are also patriotic reasons that make it desirable to keep poor Leo. Suffered self-esteem and the great losses compel, as I hear, the once wealthy man to leave the very expensive Paris and retire to the country, where, like Cincinnatus , he eats his self-planted cabbage or, like Nebuchadnezzar once , on his own Meadows can graze. That would be a big loss for the German country team. For all German travelers of the second and third rank who came here to Paris found a hospitable reception in Herr Leo's house, and some who felt uneasy in the frosty French world were able to flee here with their German hearts and return with like-minded souls feel at home. On cold winter evenings they found a warm cup of tea here, prepared somewhat homeopathically, but not entirely without sugar. You saw Herr von Humboldt here , hanging in effigy on the wall, as a decoy. Here they saw the nose star in person. A German countess was also found here. The most distinguished diplomats from Krähwinkel showed up here, along with their crooked and crooked wives. Here you could sometimes hear very excellent pianists and violinists, newly arrived virtuosos who were recommended to the Leo House by soul sellers and who allowed themselves to be exploited musically in its soirees. It was the lovely sounds of the mother tongue, even the grand mother tongue, which greeted the German here. Here the dialect of the Hamburger Dreckwall was spoken in its purest form, and anyone who heard these classical sounds felt as if he were smelling the Twieten of the Mönckedamm again . But if even the "Adelaide" by Beethoven was sung here flowed the most sentimental tears! Yes, that house was an oasis, a very vicious oasis of German cosiness in the sandy desert of the French intellectual world, it was a Lauberhütte of the most intimate can-can, where you ruffled like on the banks of the Main , where you rang the bell like in the soft picture of the holy city Cologne , where the patriotic gossip was sometimes accompanied by a glass of beer as a refreshment - German heart, what more could you ask for? It would be a shame if this gossip shop were closed. "

In 1844/45 the Berlin musician Julius Stern stayed with the Léo family. “At Leo's Chopin he met the poet Georg Herwegh , and Leo's nephew, the famous painter Heinrich Lehmann , a student of the famous Ingres . Chopin's acquaintance made him very happy. ”On March 2, 1844, under Stern's direction, the Paris premiere of Mendelssohn's music for the drama Antigone op. 55“ took place in front of an invited, brilliant company and was crowned with the greatest success and for Stern's reputation in Paris decisive. "

Other guests at Léos were Charles Hallé , Ferdinand Hiller , Franz Liszt , and Anton Schindler . Heinrich Heine also profited considerably from Léo's generosity: on April 22, 1845, he acknowledged the repayment of a loan of 14,000 francs to the poet.

Léo was the uncle of the painter Henri Lehmann , who created the portrait of Alexander von Humboldt mentioned by Heine around 1835, which hung for many years in the Léo family's salon. In 1842 Lehmann portrayed Léo's daughter Faustina Léo (1832–1865).

Works by Sophie Léo

• Self-sacrifice , Leipzig: Brockhaus 1829 (under the pseudonym "Leontine Romainville")
• The two liberals. From the memoirs of a young Parisian , Roman, Leipzig: Brockhaus 1831 (under the pseudonym "Leontine Romainville")
• Memories from Paris. 1817–1848 , Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz 1851 (published anonymously) (digitized version )
• Persons and conditions from the restoration and the July royalty , Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz 1853 (digitized version)

literature

• From Moscheles' life. Based on letters and diaries , ed. by Charlotte Moscheles, Leipzig 1872
• Richard Stern, souvenir sheets for Julius Stern . Dedicated to his friends and fellow artists , Leipzig 1886
• Anton Schindler , Beethoven's friend . His diary from the years 1841–43 , ed. by Marta Becker, Frankfurt am Main 1939, pp. 78, 82
• Fryderyk Chopin, Letters , ed. by Krystyna Kobylańska , Berlin 1983
• Fanny Hensel, letters from Paris to her family in Berlin , ed. by Hans-Günter Klein, 2007
• Yours forever. Letters from Lea Mendelssohn Bartholdy to Henriette Arnstein , ed. by Wolfgang Dinglinger and Rudolf Elvers , 2 volumes, Hanover 2010
• Correspondence between Robert and Clara Schumann and the Wieck family , ed. by Eberhard Möller (= Schumann Letter Edition , Series I, Volume 2), Cologne 2011

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Life data according to Giacomo Meyerbeer, Correspondence and Diaries , Volume 7, ed. by Sabine Henze-Döhring , Berlin 2004, p. 590 (digitized version)
2. ↑ Cf. Marie de Flavigny, comtesse d'Agoult, Correspondence générale , ed. by Charles Dupêchez, Volume 3, Paris 2005, p. 269
3. ↑ From Moscheles' life. Based on letters and diaries , ed. by Charlotte Moscheles, Leipzig 1872, p. 41 (digitized version)
4. ↑ Ibid., P. 63
5. ↑ Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Complete Letters , Volume 2, ed. by Anja Morgenstern and Uta Wald, Leipzig 2009, p. 444
6. ↑ Clara Schumann, Youth Diaries 1827–1840 , ed. by Gerd Nauhaus and Nancy B. Reich , Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 2019, pp. 109, 323–328
7. ↑ Fryderyk Chopin, Letters , ed. by Krystyna Kobylańska, Berlin 1983, pp. 145f.
8. ↑ From Moscheles' life. Based on letters and diaries , ed. by Charlotte Moscheles, Leipzig 1872, p. 38f. (Digitized version)
9. ^ Sophie Léo, Memories from Paris 1817–1848 , Berlin 1851, p. 192 (digitized version)
10. ^ Louis Eugène Robert, Histoire et description naturelle de la commune de Meudon , Paris 1843, p. 70 (digitized version)
11. ↑ Heinrich Heine, Lutezia , Chapter LVII (text online)
12. ^ Richard Stern, memorial sheets to Julius Stern. Dedicated to his friends and fellow artists , Leipzig 1886, p. 43
13. ↑ Ibid., P. 60
14. ↑ Receipt in the Heine database (online)
15. ↑ Figure