*** This is now superceded by a reviewed & revised Edition *** A thoughtful and comprehensive weighing up of all the arguments presented by his friend Solomon in favor of Antonie Brentano, followed by a detailed presentation of and then a synoptic comparison with the evidence supporting Josephine Brunsvik. The latter the clear winner. Harry Goldschmidt, Beethoven scholar of international repute, made the hunt for the Immortal Beloved to the focus of an unorthodox and precisely drawn Beethoven portrait. His sovereign style is based on many years of meticulous research. With annotations and amendments by translator John E Klapproth. *** See the latest book on this subject: The 2nd Edition, Revised and Enhanced, of the "The Immortal Beloved Compendium: All About the Only Woman Beethoven Ever Loved (Comprehensive Edition)". ***
About the Author: Harry Goldschmidt was a Swiss musicologist. He was born on 17 June 1910 in Basel, as the son of a banker, who came from Frankfurt am Main. He studied musicology, anthropology and philosophy in Königsberg and Basel. From 1933 to 1939, he worked as a music critic for the "Basler National Zeitung" and as a presenter at the People's Symphony concerts in Basel. Formative experiences with the music of non-European peoples he found on trips to West Africa and China. In 1949, Goldschmidt began a new life in East Berlin and became head of the music department at the Berlin Radio. However, he was accused of bourgeois tendencies that eventually led to his dismissal. In 1951 he accepted an appointment as professor of music history at the newly founded German Academy of Music in Berlin, the former rector was the Austrian musicologist Georg Knepler. In addition to lecturing Goldschmidt, he organized several exhibitions and congresses, including the Beethoven Congress of the Anniversary Year 1977 in Berlin, which met with international interest. In the period 1960 to 1965, Goldschmidt was the director of the Central Institute for Music Research, which coordinated the musicological research in the GDR. He wrote authoritative contributions to the aesthetics of music, which aimed at a comprehensive understanding of music in the context of language and historical reality. Harry Goldschmidt presented numerous publications on the relationship between the work and biography of Beethoven and Schubert. Among his most famous works is the book "Um die Unsterbliche Geliebte" (Leipzig 1977), in which he precisely traced the search for that unknown lady who played a special role in the life of Beethoven because of a mysterious letter from 1812. Similarly, Goldschmidt published in seven editions the biography "Schubert - a picture of his life" (1954), which attracted worldwide attention. Under the pseudonym Titus Oliva he wrote a reader to an imaginary Beethoven movie titled "It must be" (Leipzig, 1982). Harry Goldschmidt died on 19 November 1986 in Dresden during a congress about Carl Maria von Weber, where he had presented a paper titled "The Wolf's Glen - a Black Mass?".