Johann Ludwig Gebhard von Alvensleben

Gebhard von Alvensleben (1816–1895)

Johann Ludwig Gebhard von Alvensleben (born September 7, 1816 in Calbe an der Milde ; † April 26, 1895 in Kassel ) was a German squire and musician.

family

He came from the Low German noble family von Alvensleben and was born as the eighth child of Wilhelm von Alvensleben (1779–1838) from Kalbe (Milde) and his wife Sophie Günther (1784–1847) in Kalbe (Milde). He had eleven siblings, including the landowner Udo III. von Alvensleben (1823–1910) and the landscape painter Oskar von Alvensleben (1831–1903). On July 17, 1850, he married Anette Sellier (1826–1897) from a well-known Leipzig family in Leipzig. The marriage had four children.

Life

After attending the education department in Halle, he went to Berlin in 1836, where he a. a. studied music with Adolf Bernhard Marx , was a member of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin and frequented the houses of Alexander von Humboldt , Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Bettina von Arnim . He accompanied the Arnims on various trips and was in frequent correspondence with them. 1841/42 he was also one of the staff of the New Journal of Music of Robert Schumann , with whom he personally met in Leipzig.

In 1844 he went to Paris for some time for linguistic and further musical training. After his mother's death in 1847, he took over his father's estate Gohlis near Leipzig, which he sold again in 1863. He then lived initially in Dresden and in 1872 acquired the Falkenberg manor near Kassel, which he managed until his old age. His old age was overshadowed by a hearing problem.

power

Gebhard von Alvensleben was musically educated, art-minded and artistically talented. He wrote, composed, sang with a “beautiful bass voice” and conducted. In Berlin he composed a cantata and songs based on texts by the Romantics. They were performed again on September 12, 2006 as part of a reading and song evening in the Gohliser Schlösschen together with a reading of his letters to the Arnims. In 1843 he conducted the concerts of the 20th season of the music club "Euterpe" (1824–1874) in Leipzig. During this time he was also in contact with Robert Schumann . A French music lexicon from 1860 recognized his achievements. His letters to Bettina von Arnim and her daughters are - as beautiful testimonies of romanticism - kept in the Goethe Museum in Frankfurt / Main . He was an honorary knight of the Order of St. John .

literature

• François-Joseph Fétis , Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie génèrale de la musique , Volume 1, Paris 1860, p. 79 (digitized version )
• Johannes Werner: Letters from the Gohliser Schlösschen to Bettina von Arnim , in: Leipziger Latest Nachrichten , No. 786 of July 5, 1929, p. 2
• Hellmut Kretzschmar , Geschichtliche Nachrichten von dem Geschlechte von Alvensleben since 1800 , Burg 1930, p. 88
• Johannes Werner, Maxe von Arnim. A picture of life and time from old sources , Leipzig 1937, p. 92
• Sabine Hocquel-Schneider, Alberto Schwarz and Brunhild Complete, Das Gohliser Schlösschen zu Leipzig , Edition Leipzig 2000, pp. 87–89
• Robert and Clara Schumann's correspondence with correspondents in Berlin 1832 to 1883 , ed. by Klaus Martin Kopitz , Eva Katharina Klein and Thomas Synofzik (=  Schumann-Briefedition , Series II, Volume 17), Cologne: Dohr 2015, pp. 35–51, ISBN 978-3-86846-028-5

Web links

• familie-von-alvensleben.de