BEETHOVEN 200 YEARS AGO TODAY: Saturday, September 9, 1826

Beethoven writes to unpaid assistant Karl Holz at his rooms in the Saeurhof hotel in Baden today. “Very worthy one! One can see what better and purer air, as well as the women, do, for in barely 3 days your icy crust has already thawed. I notice this from your letter yesterday, for the one of Sept[ember] 7th is like a dried up fish. I only received it yesterday evening [September 8], as I was in Nussdorf yesterday for the sake of the cooler, more pleasant air. I would also come to Baden. Perhaps I will come tomorrow, regarding the accommodations I should probably go and check, but I must urgently finish the proofreading for His Majesty the King [the Ninth Symphony for King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia].

“C.[arl] definitely wants to join the military. He wrote, and I also spoke to him. It would be better if he were first accommodated in a military institute like [Wiener] Neustadt. If you come there with your party, you would only need to ask Colonel Faber there whether the years [of service] are also calculated in the same way here. I don’t think so, because one pays there, and C.[arl] can leave as an officer just as easily, for I don’t think it’s good for him to be a cadet for long, and if we want him to become an officer, then the officer’s salary must first be paid to him, and something added on so that he can live. He mustn’t be treated as a convict either. Besides, I’m not at all in favor of the military profession.

“If they are there, then everything must now go by extra post. I am weary, and joy will long flee from me. The current and future terrible expenses cannot help but worry me; all hopes of having someone around me, which I hoped would resemble me at least in my better qualities, have vanished.

Enjoy yourself outside, empty the cornucopia of all-enchanting nature and on Monday I hope to see you again [a small amount of text is here lost] certainly and embrace you.

As always, gratefully yours, Beethoven.”

Brandenburg Letter 2197; Anderson Letter 1521. This letter signals Beethoven’s resignation to the idea of Karl becoming a soldier, accompanied by a sense of hopelessness for the future. Field Marshall-Lieutenant Philipp von Faber (1755-1844) was the director of the military academy at Wiener-Neustadt.