Karl Lichnowsky

Prince Karl Lichnowsky

Prince Karl Alois Johann Nepomuk Vinzenz Leonhard Lichnowsky, noble lord von Woschütz (born June 21, 1761 in Vienna ; †  April 15, 1814 ibid) was the second Prince Lichnowsky and chamberlain at the imperial court in Vienna. He is best known as a music patron and because of his relationships with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven .

biography

Karl Lichnowsky was the earl's eldest son and Friedrich Carl Johann Amadeus Lichnowsky (1720–1788) and his wife, Countess Carolina, born in 1773, were raised to the rank of prince by Friedrich II. King of Prussia. Countess of Althann. Although he spent most of his life in Vienna, he and his family had the majority of their property in Grätz in Habsburg Moravia and in Silesia, which had been Prussian and previously Habsburg for several decades.

From 1776 to 1782 he studied law in Leipzig and Göttingen . In Göttingen he had contact with Johann Nikolaus Forkel , who later became known as Johann Sebastian Bach's first biographer . Lichnowsky himself began to collect manuscripts with Bach compositions during this time. He also worked as a musician.

His last apartment was at 60 Hinteren Schenkenstrasse, where he died of a stroke on April 15, 1814. He found his final resting place in the family crypt in the Podolí cemetery near Grätz.

Relationship with Mozart

Lichnowsky was a Freemason and belonged to the same lodge as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. When he set out on a trip to Berlin in 1789, he offered his lodge brother to accompany him at his (Lichnowsky's) expense. They set out from Vienna on the morning of April 8, 1789 and reached Potsdam on April 25, where Mozart was received by King Friedrich Wilhelm.

Lichnowsky also lent money to Mozart, which he was unable to repay, so Lichnowsky sued him. On November 9, 1791, a few weeks before Mozart's death, the lawsuit was decided in favor of Lichnowsky, who according to the judgment was entitled to a sum of 1,435 guilders and 32 kreuzers - the court ordered the treasurer of the imperial court as Mozart's employer, half of Mozart's salary to seize 800 guilders annually.

Relationship with Beethoven

Shortly after Mozart's death, Lichnowsky became one of Ludwig van Beethoven's most important supporters. In 1796 the composer accompanied the prince on a trip to Prague , from where Beethoven went on to Berlin . In 1800, Lichnowsky granted Beethoven a grant of 600 guilders a year, which was to be paid until Beethoven got a permanent position as a musician - which never happened. In a letter from 1805, Beethoven named him one of his most loyal friends and supporters of his art. Lichnowsky's payments ended as a result of a serious rift when Beethoven was a guest at Grätz Castle in the autumn of 1806 or 1807 and refused to make music for French officers who were visiting the Prince. As Ferdinand Ries reported, Beethoven “had already picked up the chair in order to break it on the prince's head in his own house after the prince had kicked the room door, which B. did not want to open, when Oppersdorf did not fall into his arms would be " . On his return to Vienna, Beethoven then destroyed a bust of the prince.

Beethoven's dedications

Beethoven dedicated seven compositions to Lichnowsky:

• The three piano trios op.1 (1793)
• The piano variations to Quant'è più bello from Giovanni Paisiello's opera La Molinara WoO 69 (1795)
• The Piano Sonata in C minor op. 13 "Pathétique" (1798)
• The Piano Sonata in A flat major, Op. 26 (1801)
• The 2nd Symphony in D major, Op. 36 (1802)

family

Karl Alois Fürst Lichnowsky married on November 25, 1788 in Vienna Wilhelmina Christina Countess of Thun and Hohenstein (* July 25, 1765 in Vienna; † April 11, 1841), daughter of Franz de Paula Johann Joseph Count of Thun and Hohenstein . and by Maria Wilhelmina Anna Josefa, geb. Imperial Countess of Uhlfeld (Ulfeld, Uhlfeldt). Even this countess was a patroness of Mozart and Beethoven in Vienna. They frequented the countess's musical salon, which was located in her husband's palace. The only child of the Lichnowsky / Thun-Hohenstein marriage was their son Eduard (1789–1845), who inherited the title of prince after the death of his father.

In some genealogies it is mentioned that Prince Karl Lichnowsky entered into a second marriage with Katharina Leinböck (born May 27, 1793 in Vienna; † June 23, 1840 ibid). It was not a marriage, however, but an extramarital liaison.

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Lichnowsky, Karl Fürst . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 15th part. Imperial and Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1866, p. 76 ( digitized version ).
• Stephan Ley , Grätz Castle near Troppau. Beethoven and the princely Lichnowsky family. In: Atlantis , Vol. 9 (1937), Issue 1, pp. 59-64
• Otto Erich Deutsch , Mozart: A Documentary Biography . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965
• Jan Racek, Beethoven at Schloss Grätz (Hradec) near Troppau in 1806 and 1811. In: Beethoven Symposium Vienna 1970. Report , Vienna: Böhlau 1971, pp. 215–235
• Walther Brauneis , “… because of guilty 1435 f 32 xr” - New archive find on Mozart's financial misery in November 1791. In: Mitteilungen der Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum , Vol. 39, Issue 1–4, July 1991, pp. 159ff
• Maynard Solomon , Mozart: A Life , New York: Harper Collins, 1995
• Klaus Martin Kopitz , Ludwig Tieck's Beethoven Experience and Beethoven's falling out with Prince Lichnowsky. In: Österreichische Musikzeitschrift , vol. 53 (1998), pp. 16–23
• Karel Boženek, Beethoven and the noble Lichnowsky family. In: Beethoven and Böhmen , ed. by Oldřich Pulkert and Hans-Werner Küthen, Prague 2000, pp. 119–170
• Peter Clive, Beethoven and his World: A Biographical Dictionary , Oxford University Press, 2001
• Elliot Forbes , William Meredith, Lichnowsky. In: Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , Oxford University Press, 2007
• Kurt Dorfmüller, Norbert Gertsch and Julia Ronge (eds.), Ludwig van Beethoven. Thematic-bibliographical catalog raisonné , 2 volumes, Munich 2014

Remarks

1. ^ Vienna, parish St. Michael, baptismal register Tom. C, p. 287
2. ↑ ^{a b} Grove
3. ^ Wiener Zeitung , April 20, 1814, p. 444 ( online )
4. ↑ Solomon 1995
5. ↑ A relevant entry in the exhibit protocol of the kk Hofkammer was only discovered in 1991 by Otto Mraz, so that the process is not mentioned in older Mozart biographies.
6. ↑ German
7. ↑ Cf. Beethoven's letter to Carl Amenda of July 1, 1801, in: Ludwig van Beethoven, Briefwechsel , Volume 1, ed. by Sieghard Brandenburg , Munich 1996, p. 85
8. ↑ Klaus Martin Kopitz , Rainer Cadenbach (Ed.) U. a .: Beethoven from the point of view of his contemporaries in diaries, letters, poems and memories. Volume 2: Lachner - Zmeskall. Edited by the Beethoven Research Center at the Berlin University of the Arts. Henle, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-87328-120-2 , pp. 711f.
9. ↑ Klaus Martin Kopitz , Ludwig Tieck's Beethoven Experience and Beethoven's Rift with Prince Lichnowsky. In: Österreichische Musikzeitschrift , vol. 53 (1998), pp. 16–23
10. ↑ Lichnowsky's father-in-law had a sympathy for Friedrich Christoph Oetinger's theosophy and for astromechanics: Count Franz Josef von Thun and Hohenstein was a customer of the mechanic priest and astronomer Philipp Matthäus Hahn . Like his uncle Josef Friedrich Wilhelm, Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen, he ordered an astronomical machine designed by Hahn (former pastor in Onstmettingen near Hechingen ) and manufactured by Philipp Gottfried Schaudt , schoolmaster in Onstmettingen. See Reinhard Breymayer : Erhard Weigel's pupil Detlev Clüver and his influence on Friedrich Christoph Oetinger (1702–1782) […] In: Katharina Habermann, Klaus-Dieter Herbst (ed.): Erhard Weigel (1625–1699) and his pupils . Universitätsverlag Göttingen, Göttingen 2016, p. 269–323, here p. 317–322: Evidence of a connection between Franz Josef Reichsgraf von Thun and Hohenstein, who was familiar with Mozart and Beethoven, the mechanic Philipp Gottfried Schaudt and the pastor Philipp Matthäus Hahn. Is there a trace of Hahn's theology in Schiller's ode " To Joy "?
11. ↑ Compare to this countess the excellent article in the English Wikipedia
    : Maria Wilhelmine von Thun und Hohenstein ("English").