Franz Schubert and His World
Page 12
But the circle never quite regained its former importance in the lives of its principal members. They had changed. For one thing they had grown older. No longer were they an idealistic and impressionable group of young men, discovering and inventing a new world together. Not only Schubert and Kupelwieser, but now also Schwind and Bauernfeld had established a record of promising success in his chosen field, and each was extremely involved in his own work.42 Schober’s idleness and lack of focus made for a glaring contrast, and though his friends (especially Schubert) remained loyal to him, his personality and his opinions began to be treated less reverently.43 Immediately after returning from Rome, Kupelwieser had lived with Schober for three months (August–October 1825), but soon distanced himself from the circle; by November, Schubert and Schwind were complaining that they hardly ever saw him. Anton Ottenwalt’s letter to his brother-in-law Josef von Spaun leaves no doubt that the health of the old circle had not been restored:
There is no circle around him [Schober]; Schwind follows him with slavish devotion, and Schubert too still likes his company, and a certain Bauernfeld is his roommate…. He [Kupelwieser] is … keeping to himself, so that Schubert and Schwind complain about their faithful old companion, and indeed about the decay of the old fraternity.44
The meetings of the reading group (Lesegesellschaft) were held every Saturday at Schober’s house, with a few new, eager young disciples in attendance; presumably Schubert participated, since he once again lived with Schober.45 Schober also presided with dependable regularity over the gatherings at the Stammlokal, but Schwind and Bauernfeld now frequently found these occasions of insufficient importance to keep them from their work.46 Consequently a full quorum of friends was rarely present: usually it was just Schober, Schubert, Spaun, and two new drinking companions, Fritz and Franz von Hartmann.
During the early months of 1825 regular weekly Schubertiades had been revived, but on a new basis. They were now held in the home of Josef Witteczek (b. 1787) and his wife, which they shared for a time with Karl Ritter von Enderes (b. 1787). These men had both been introduced to Schubert by Spaun, were both Spaun’s age (approximately ten years older than Schubert and Schober), and like Spaun they were art-loving career civil-service bureaucrats.47 For the rest of Schubert’s life either Enderes, Witteczek, or Spaun hosted the Schubertiades in Vienna.48 They and the colleagues from the civil service they invited, along with wives and other family members, now set the tone on these occasions.49 The musical evenings were no longer just another activity of the Schobert circle, but became a salon for an older group of bureaucrats and their wives, albeit a salon for which Schubert, Vogl, and the pianist Josef von Gahy (b. 1793) provided the entertainment.
The diffuse group of participants in the Schubertiades, Stammlokale, and the Lesegesellschaft after the fall of 1825 can be called a revived Schubert circle, but for the most important members of the erstwhile circle this loose agglomeration of activities and personalities was a pale continuation, honoring the vivid memories they cherished of the constitutive role the circle had once played in their lives, without replacing it. The friendships formed between Schubert, Schober, Bruchmann, Kupelwieser, and Schwind from 1820 to 1823, and between Schubert, Schwind, and Bauernfeld in the spring of 1825, had been more passionate, and remained more important, than any subsequent attachments to new members of the circle. Moreover, the ideology and practices of the circle during those years had formed a cohesive whole, had given a meaning and a direction to their lives to which all except Bruchmann remained dedicated. And so it is the friendships among these six men that we must investigate if we wish to understand the significance of the Schobert circle.
Egalitarianism and a Communitarian Ethic
The letters between Schubert, Schober, Kupelwieser, and Schwind, as well as Schubert’s “Kann er was?” testify to a fellowship based to a large extent on artistic compatibility and achievement. Implicit in such a (qualified) meritocracy is a refusal to observe the class divisions that governed social relations in the larger society.
Schubert came from a family of schoolteachers, a profession that was respectable but did not pay well.50 The first summer Schubert spent as a music tutor with the Esterházy family in Zseliz, for example, he earned almost as much each month as he had earned during the whole previous year of teaching for his father (75 florins CM/month as opposed to 80 florins CM/year).51 Whatever its dignified pretensions to culture and learning, in its economic standard Schubert’s family ranked near the bottom of that small minority of Viennese who earned their living through mental instead of physical labor. And, unlike Beethoven, Schubert never made a splash as a virtuoso in the salons of the high nobility, never secured highly aristocratic patrons willing to guarantee him a handsome yearly stipend merely to remain in Vienna, never taught the Archduke, and never cultivated the friendship of the wealthiest nobles in the land.
Schubert’s humble background has often been invoked to explain his comparative dearth of hobnobbing with the high nobility. In fact, from his schooldays at the Stadtkonvikt, Schubert was used to socializing with the sons of the nobility, and as an adult many, if not most, of Schubert’s friends belonged to the minor nobility. In the inner circle were Ritter von Bruchmann, Ritter von Schober, von Schwind, Edler von Spaun, and later von Bauernfeld; only Schubert, Mayrhofer, and Kupelwieser did not sport the telltale “von.”52 In the circle of next proximate circumference were Baron von Schönstein, Freiherr von Doblhoff, and Freiherr von Grünbühel (Ferdinand Mayerhofer) from the higher aristocracy; Ritter von Uysdael (Walcher), Ritter von Enderes, Edler von Sonnleithner (father and son got their titles in 1828), von Gahy, von Bocklet, von Streinsberg, von Smetana, and the various members of the von Hartmann family. Schubert was used to being treated as an equal by all these people.
In Schubert’s fellowship with members of his circle (of whatever circumference), there seems to have reigned a social egalitarianism. This was a prerequisite for the straightforward candor and complete lack of pretense that by all accounts were central to Schubert’s character, and that he treasured in his friends. Bauernfeld later wrote about the kind of socializing Schubert disliked:
His favorite companions were artists and people with artistic affinities. On the other hand he suffered from a genuine dread of commonplace and boring people, of philistines, whether from the upper or middle classes, of the people, that is, who are usually known as “educated”; and Goethe’s outcry: “I would rather become worse than be bored,” was and remained his motto, as it did ours. Among commonplace people he felt lonely and depressed, was generally silent and apt to become ill-humored as well, no matter how much attention was paid to this man of rising fame.53
Just as Schubert did not hold aristocratic titles in awe, neither did formal education in the absence of artistic talent or achievement make someone a desirable companion. Everyone in the group except for Schubert had a background of studies in the Gymnasium, and all except Schubert had at least some university education. Spaun, Mayrhofer, Bruchmann, Bauernfeld, and Schober had all at least begun law studies, and Mayrhofer studied theology as well.54 Schwind and Kupelwieser studied art at the university, and both later became professors. Schubert knew that his relative lack of formal education was a difference of choice rather than ability; when his voice changed in 1812 he could have chosen to continue his studies at state expense, after which one more year of humanities studies, and two more years of studies in philosophy would have prepared him for university.55 The Schobert circle certainly did not lack for intellectual acumen or confidence, yet Schubert, despite his lack of formal education, held his own at its center. From the letter Anton Ottenwalt sent to Spaun (27 July 1825) we see that his friends deferred to Schubert not only because of his musical achievements, but also because of the force and persuasiveness with which he could articulate his convictions when he felt at ease:
We sat together until not far from midnight, and I have never seen him like this, nor heard: serious, profound, and as though inspi
red. How he talked of art, of poetry, of his youth, of friends and other people who matter, of the relationship of ideals to life, etc.! I was more and more amazed at such a mind, of which it has been said that its artistic achievement is so unconscious, hardly revealed to and understood by himself, and so on. Yet how simple all this was!— I cannot tell you of the extent and unity of his convictions—but there were glimpses of a worldview that is not merely acquired, and the share that worthy friends may have in it by no means detracts from the individuality shown by all this. (SDB, 442)
Schubert’s egalitarianism was much more than a mere character trait. It formed an explicit part of his ideology, part of what he had in mind when he harshly criticized Bruchmann for “conforming to worldly conventions.”
Some of Schubert’s friends—Bruchmann, Schober, Spaun—came from relatively well-off families whose money would always provide a cushion if a particular need arose. But other friends—especially Kupelwieser, Schwind, and Bauernfeld—depended like Schubert on their own resources from an early age, and earned their money more or less as freelancers. Kupelwieser began to earn more money at an earlier age than Schubert; by 1815 he was already in a position to support himself largely through the commissions he received.56 But for all four of these self-supporting artists, what income they had arrived in unpredictable and irregular installments, incompatible with any notions of budgeting. They negotiated the vicissitudes of their precarious economic situation by practicing an informal community of goods. When Schubert was flush, they shared in his good fortune for a while; naturally, with such an arrangement, the money never lasted long.57 Bauernfeld later gave a vivid description of the sort of life he, Schwind, and Schubert led together in the spring of 1825 (while Kupelwieser was in Rome):
In the matter of property the communistic viewpoint prevailed; hats, boots, neckerchiefs, even coats and certain other articles of clothing too, if they but chanced to fit, were common property; but gradually, through manifold use, as a result of which a certain partiality for the object always ensues, they passed into undisputed private possession. Whoever was flush at the moment paid for the other, or for the others. Now it happened, from time to time, that two had no money and the third—not a penny! Naturally, among the three of us, it was Schubert who played the part of a Croesus and who, off and on, used to be swimming in money, if he happened to dispose of a few songs or even of a whole cycle, as in the case of the Walter Scott songs for which Artaria or Diabelli paid him f500 WW [fl. 200 CM]—a fee with which he was highly satisfied and which he wanted to use sparingly, though this, as always hitherto, remained merely a good intention. To begin with there would be high living and entertaining, with money being spent right and left—then we were short on commons again! In short, we alternated between want and plenty. To one such time of plenty I am indebted for having heard Paganini.58
The penurious members also relied on the generosity of the families of the well-to-do members of their circle when necessary, in particular the Schober and Bruchmann families. Schubert repeatedly depended on the Schobers, in their successive residences, to put a roof over his head: they enabled him to leave his parental home when they took him in as a guest from the fall of 1816 until August 1817; he also lived with the family for most of 1822 and 1823, and from March 1827 until August 1828, when they made three rooms available to him, the most living space he ever had to himself. Between 1816 and 1828 Schubert lived with the Schobers approximately four years. Although Schubert had the most occasion to take advantage of it, the Schobers’ hospitality also extended to the other members of the inner circle. When Leopold Kupelwieser returned to Vienna in August 1825 from his long trip to Italy, he lived with Schober until he could find other quarters.59 As soon as Kupelwieser moved out, Bauernfeld moved in, and stayed with Schober from October 1825 until February of the next year (SDB, 462). During the spring of 1826, both Schwind and Schubert stayed temporarily with Schober (SDB, 931). And in November of 1828, when Schober was near bankruptcy, he nevertheless sent money to Schwind in Munich, so that he could continue his studies there (SDB, 828, 899). Schober seems to have squandered most of his family’s fortune, assisted by his indulgent mother, but his generosity could always be counted on to help one of his more diligent friends from the inner circle during a cash crisis (SDB, 230–31).
In addition to running a boarding house for destitute friends in Vienna, the Schobers made their summer retreat, Atzenbrugg, available to the Schobert circle. Apparently the Bruchmanns did the same with their summer house, Mutwille, from 1819 to 1823 (SDB, 278–79). Outside of Vienna, during his long trips of 1819, 1823, and 1825, Schubert was able to depend on Vogl’s deep pockets and on the hospitality of the Spaun family and their friends in Linz; his old friend Anton Ottenwalt married Josef von Spaun’s sister Marie in 1819, and Josef introduced Schubert to the Hartmann family in July of 1823 (SDB 284–85). In Graz Schubert could rely on Karl and Marie Pachler and the brothers Anselm and Josef Hüttenbrenner.
The Sexual Mores of the Circle
Twenty-five years after Maynard Solomon first posed the question, Schubert’s homosexuality remains a matter of speculation, unproven and likely unprovable.60 The strongest evidence that Schubert had sex with men is two references to his need for “peacocks,” the first a letter to him from Schwind, the second an entry in Bauernfeld’s diary.61 Bauernfeld explicitly mentions Benvenuto Cellini in this context, while Schwind makes the point that the satisfaction of Schubert’s fleshly needs requires money, which his friends do not have. But even these comments are equivocal, since Benvenuto Cellini was not only one of history’s most flamboyant homosexuals, but also one of history’s best-known syphilitics—and we know that Schubert had syphilis, so the two mentions of Benvenuto Cellini could refer to syphilis without necessarily indicating homosexuality.
As to the other men in the Schobert circle: no one over the last twenty-five years has provided grounds for speculation about the homosexuality of Spaun, Kupelwieser, and Bruchmann. The sexual orientation of the singer Johann Michael Vogl, and of Mayrhofer, Schober, Schwind, and Bauernfeld has been the object of some discussion, but a case for homo-sexuality for any of the latter three remains flimsy, based on nothing more than the hoariest stereotypes: Kenner’s description of Schober as “depraved,”62 Bauernfeld’s description of Schwind as “tender, soft, almost feminine,” and Bauernfeld’s bachelorhood.
The evidence we do have concerning the sexual lives of Schober, Schwind, and Bauernfeld is unanimously heterosexual. Schober’s continual involvement with a series of women, including Spaun’s and Bruchmann’s sisters, and references to his unscrupulous sexual behavior with women are well documented.63 Schwind’s stormy courtship of Anna “Netti” Hönig has left a pervasive trail in the Schubert documents from 1824 until after Schubert’s death, and his involvement with other women both before and after Hönig is also documented.64 As for Bauernfeld, when he joined the circle in early 1825 he was in love with “Clotilde,” and had been so for at least four years.65 He eventually decided not to marry her (the affair lasted from 1821 to 1826) “because he could not remain true to one woman alone.”66
Other observations also testify to heterosexual practices: Schwind’s jealousy on Netti’s account could be easily aroused, as for example on one occasion when Bauernfeld walked her home at night.67 On another occasion Schubert wrote to Ferdinand von Mayerhofer, who was on a surveying trip in Carinthia, to advise him to be more aggressive in his courtship of Jeanette von Mitis, because Schwind was “comforting” her.68 Another example: Schober, Schwind, and Bauernfeld “worshipped” a particularly beautiful woman (no matter that she was married), provocatively named Kurzrock.69 And one last example is Schober writing to Bauernfeld in June 1826: “Schwind’s mawkishness also makes him so thankless toward fate that he doesn’t even recognize his good fortune. For example, yesterday I met five young women at his place who were with him half the day, one of whom was gorgeous, yes, alluring, and would rather go to Grinzing [than] into the ruins of
Windsor, but he is a painter, and will no doubt be looking for antiquities.”70
Similar examples could fill many pages. They contradict the notion that the friends were united by secret homosexual affinities, and that homosexuality gave the circle its identity and sense of purpose. For though it makes good sense that the friends would use code to describe Schubert’s sex life, given the political situation and the possibility that letters would be opened, one cannot reasonably suppose that, if homo-sexuality (or homoeroticism) was the affinity that gave their circle its identity, they would pepper their correspondence and their private diaries with references to the physical attractiveness of various women, flirtations with women, minute details of the progress of various courtships of women, and petty jealousies and teasings among themselves concerning all of these. That this was an elaborate design to frustrate prying eyes is not only wholly unbelievable, it would have also debased the very currency of their discourse among themselves, which is everywhere revealed as frank and intimate.
In summary, there is plenty of evidence that the primary sexual orientation of Schober, Bruchmann, Spaun, Schwind, Bauernfeld, and Kupelwieser was heterosexual, and no convincing evidence that any of them was bisexual, much less that the primary sexual orientation of the Schobert circle was a homosexual one, and still less that the cohesion and identity of the group depended on its status as a secret homosexual fraternity.
At the same time there is no doubt that a certain tension existed between the identity of the group, the loyalties of its members to one another, and the loyalties exacted by serious courtship and marriage. The break and subsequent feud between Schober and Bruchmann concerned Schober’s courtship of Bruchmann’s sister, and was the greatest conflagration experienced by the circle, but lesser flare-ups were also due to courtships that called into question the primacy of group loyalties. Sometime between the middle of April and the beginning of July 1825, for example, Schubert took a dislike to Anna Hönig, or at least Schwind felt this to be the case; Schwind remained upset for a time because Schubert seemed to be avoiding his company, and sent him a series of letters, assuring him that Netti had only the highest regard for him and would never have intentionally slighted him.71