Liechtensteinstraße 68/70, Vienna, 9th district
13 October 1903 – 24 January 1910
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"Now I must tell you something: I am remaining once again in Vienna." (Letter to Richard Strauss from 10 September 1903) In the summer of 1903, after a compositionally productive but professionally somewhat disappointing year-and-a-half in Berlin, Schönberg returned to Austria with his wife and daughter Gertrude (born on 1 August 1902). In October 1903, having spent the summer holidays in Payerbach at Semmering, Schönberg moved with his family to an apartment neighboring Zemlinsky’s at Liechtensteinstraße 68/70. In a "Questionnaire for the Purpose of Establishing Lack of Means" from 21 March 1904 Arnold Schönberg described his quarters thus: "The apartment consists of: 3 rooms, 1 antechamber, 1 kitchen/The rent amounts to: 250 Kr quarterly/The household help consists of: 1 servant girl/paid: 24 Kronen monthly." In the winter semester of 1904/1905 Schönberg taught harmony and counterpoint classes at the |
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| "Schwarzwald Schools" at Wallnerstraße. From the fall of 1904 Alban Berg and Anton Webern were among his pupils. On 22 June 1906 Schönberg’s son Georg was born. For Arnold Schönberg the years on Liechtensteinstraße proved to be a period of fundamental artistic change, yet they were marred by serious personal crisis. His family life was grievously disturbed by Mathilde’s intimate relationship with the painter Richard Gerstl. Gerstl had set up his atelier in the same house, where he not only instructed both of the Schönbergs, but also painted their portraits. In 1907 Schönberg himself took an active interest in painting, and through the following year compensated for his private misery (accentuated by Gustav Mahler’s departure for America) by revolting against musical-historical tradition, in turn igniting the compositional development of our century. In January 1909 Paul Wilhelm published a description of the Schönbergian setting in the magazine "Neues Wiener Journal": "Friendly rooms of unpretentious simplicity distinguished by taste […] In the corner a characteristic bust of Schönberg by the master Josef Scheu. Above his desk hang two pictures of Gustav Mahler, dedicated with sincerest wishes, and a portrait of Zemlinsky greets one from the middle door-post. That is the modest, nobtrusive decor of his room, his small world shaped of his own sensibility." | ||
