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We owe to Maynard Solomon the identification of Antonic Brentano as Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved."1 In a later article on "Beethoven and his nephew: a reappraisal," writing of the adoption by Beethoven of his nephew Karl in 1816, Solomon shows that Beethoven believed that he had become a father:
The death of his brother presented Beethoven, perpetually thwarted in his attempts at "normal" object relations, with the opportunity of becoming the head of a family. So deep was Beethoven's desire to accomplish this, so great his need to find a mode of substitute creativity at this difficult moment of his musical evolution, that his perception of reality blurred, and he persuaded himself that he had become a father in fact. On 13th May 1816, he wrote to Countess Erdödy. "I now regard myself as his father."2 "You will regard K. as your own child, " he wrote in his Tagebuch. "Ignore all gossip, all pettiness for the sake of this holy cause. "3 In September, 1816, he wrote to Kanka: "lam now the real physical father [wirklicher leiblicher Vater] of my deceased brother's child. "4 A few weeks later he wrote to Wegeler: "You are a husband and a father. So am I, but without a wife."5
Solomon attributes this belief to a fantasy on Beethoven's part. I hope to show that Beethoven was a father, and that removing this element from the realm of fantasy clarifies much else in Beethoven's life.
Solomon has highlighted in detail the state of the marriage of Franz and Antonie Brentano, pointing up the fact that Antonie at the start of her acquaintance with Beethoven was ready to choose her own beloved after living in a marriage that had been arranged by her father when she was sixteen.6
Antonie Brentano was one month pregnant at the time of her meeting with Beethoven on the last day of his stay in Prague in July, 1812. Since she had already had five children, it seems reasonable to assume that she knew she was pregnant. I find it inconceivable that Beethoven would have considered setting up home with a woman he knew to be already pregnant by another man, the conclusion one has to reach if one follows Maynard Solomon.
I cannot...