Leseprobe_Three Men of Letters

The Letters
formal address with their wives (though after the years covered here she seems to
have had a less formal relationship with Helene Berg). There is one letter from the
Bergs to Mathilde, written on 22 April 1922 after learning of her sister’s death,
signed ‘Helene and Alban Berg’. Schönberg included Helene Nahowski (‘Ihre
Braut’) in his best wishes to Berg on 24 July 1910, nearly ten months before their
marriage. In a total of 169 surviving letters and cards to Berg in the years 1911 to
1921 (many of the cards being from a group of people) Schönberg sent his greetings
to Berg’s wife only 30 times, first as ‘Ihre Frau’, changing to ‘Deine Frau’ in
1920 when he had offered Berg the ‘Du’, and on a card from Schönberg and several
others on 7 August 1921, he wrote ‘Viele Grüße an Helene’. 34
In the letters of all three men children or other family members were either
mentioned by name or simply referred to as ‘die Deinen’, ‘die Kinder’ or ‘die
Familie’.
34 Briefwechsel II, p. 140. From a personal letter to Helene, we gather that they addressed each other
with the familiar ‘Du’ around the beginning of November 1920. (See Schönberg’s letter to Helene
of 3 November, 1920. Ibid., p. 70.)
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