Dorothea von Ertmann

Dorothea Graumann was born in Frankfurt and married Stephan von Ertmann, an Austrian infantry officer, in 1798.

The couple moved to Vienna, where Dorothea Ertmann began taking lessons with Ludwig van Beethoven; he called her his "Dorothea-Cecilia".

[2] While she was in mourning, Beethoven invited her to his home and improvised on the piano for her for an hour in order to comfort her, saying "We will now talk to each other in tones".

[6] Anton Schindler suggested that "she grasped intuitively even the most hidden subtleties of Beethoven's works with as much certainty as if they had been written out before her eyes".

[7] The German opera singer and teacher Mathilde Marchesi, née Graumann, was her niece.