Antonie Brentano

She had three siblings, two of whom died in infancy: Her father was an Imperial advisor to Empress Maria Theresa and the reformist Emperor Joseph II.

Ten days before her eighth birthday, Antonie lost her mother to an epidemic and was sent to school at the Ursuline convent in Pressburg.

Here I live in the house of the deceased Birkenstock, in the midst of two thousand engravings, as many drawings, as many hundred antique urns, and Etrurian lamps, marble vases, antique remains of hands and feet, pictures, Chinese dresses, coins, collections of minerals, sea-insects, telescopes, countless maps, plans of ancient buried kingdoms and cities, skilfully carved sticks, valuable documents, and lastly the sword of the Emperor Carolus.

All these surround us in gay confusion, and are just about being brought into order, so there is nothing to be touched or understood, and with the chesnut-alley in full blossom, and the rushing Danube, which bears us over on his back, there is no enduring the Gallery of Art.

He later dedicated one of his most accomplished works, the Diabelli Variations, to Antonie and two more, including his antepenultimate piano sonata, to her daughter Maximiliane.

Leaving open the possibility that contradictory evidence may surface in the future, Solomon, refuted by some scholars[7][8] and still supported by others,[9] maintains that after 42 years of intervening research the most likely candidate for Beethoven's Immortal Beloved remains Antonie Brentano.

[10] His detractors are content to note that Antonie was not only married but most likely pregnant at the time of the alleged 1812 Karlsbad assignation, and Beethoven, by his own admission, faithful friend of herself, her children and her husband, was an entirely honourable man.