Helene Berg

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Helene Karoline Berg , maiden name Helene Karoline Nahowski (born July 29, 1885 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died August 30, 1976 in Vienna) was the wife of the composer Alban Berg .

Life

Officially, she was the daughter of Franz and Anna Nahowski . It can be assumed, however, that Franz Nahowski was only her nominal father. The biological father is most likely Emperor Franz Joseph I , with whom Helene's mother had a long relationship. Anna Nahowski's published diaries contain no evidence that the Emperor was Helene's father; However, when she received a high severance payment, she had undertaken to keep silent about her relationship with Franz Joseph.

However, personalities such as Alma Mahler-Werfel , Peter Altenberg , Bruno Walter and Soma Morgenstern mentioned Helene Nahowski in various publications as a matter of course as a biological daughter of Emperor Franz Joseph I. Even in Viennese society at that time it was an open secret that Helene had the Daughter of the emperor and not that of Franz Nahowski.

Helene Nahowski grew up in the Maxingstrasse in the Vienna suburb of Hietzing (from 1890 the 13th district of Vienna) and studied singing. In 1906 she met the composer Alban Berg (1885–1935), whom she married in 1911. The marriage remained childless. The couple moved into a rented apartment in the 13th district, Trauttmansdorffgasse 27, which Helene's mother Anna Nahowski furnished. Helene Berg lived there until her death; Today the Alban Berg Foundation is located at this address.

From 1910 Helene and her husband spent their summer holidays in the house of the Nahowski family, the Alban-Berg-Villa, later named after the composer, in Trahütten in Southwest Styria. A number of Alban Berg's works were also created there. In June 1968, on the initiative of the Austrian music researcher Harald Kaufmann, a memorial plaque was unveiled in Trahütten in the presence of Helene Berg.

Helene Berg played a key role in increasing the fame of her late husband, whom she survived by more than 40 years. She was his heir and administrator of the author's rights. To this end, she founded the Alban Berg Foundation in 1968, which serves to maintain the memory of the composer, enables and publishes scientific work and awards grants for music students. Her position on Alban Berg's unfinished opera Lulu was controversial . In her will, she forbade the completion and forbade viewing Berg's sketches of the score. The three-act version of Lulu orchestrated by Friedrich Cerha could only be premiered at the Paris Opera in 1979 through a compromise between the Alban Berg Foundation and the Vienna Universal Edition .

Helene Berg was buried in her husband's grave in the Hietzingen cemetery . The Zurich Central Library maintains a rich correspondence between it and the music writer Willi Reich , who published two important monographs on the composer.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lore Brandl-Berger u. a .: Women in Hietzing , Vienna 2014, documentation on the website of the Vienna City Administration ( Memento from January 11, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ On the works composed by Berg in Trahütten see: Harald Kaufmann, Neue Musik in Steiermark , Graz 1957. pp. 13-16. Kaufmann also corresponded with Helene Berg for his research on Berg's works from Styria. The letters are in the Harald Kaufmann archive of the Akademie der Künste (Berlin) . A letter from Helene Berg to Kaufmann is printed in: Harald Kaufmann, From inside and outside. Writings on music, musical life and aesthetics Ed. Werner Grünzweig and Gottfried Krieger. Wolke, Hofheim 1993, p. 306. ISBN 3-923997-52-3
  3. ↑ See also: Speech in Alban Bergs Landschaft , in Harald Kaufmann: Fingerübungen. Music Society and Valuation Research , Vienna 1970, pp. 66–71
  4. ^ Willi Reich's estate in the Zurich Central Library
personal data
SURNAME Berg, Helene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berg, Helene Karoline (full name); Karoline, Helene (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian wife of the composer Alban Berg
DATE OF BIRTH July 29, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1976
Place of death Vienna