Eduard Reményis Jugendjahre und seine Beziehungen zu Johannes Brahms — Eine biographische Skizze

Abstract

Available information on the life of Eduard Reményi (c1829–1898) in the Hungarian, most notably, however, in the international literature turns out to be surprisingly poor, contradictory and inaccurate in view of the music-historical relevance of this Hungarian-Jewish violin virtuoso. For the study at hand, numerous original source documents associated with Reményi (baptismal register, police reports and other official documents, autographs, as well as newspaper articles) have been analysed and evaluated, most of them for the first time. This enabled the author to correct a number of common misconceptions concerning the biography of this musician shrouded in legend while still alive, and to verify or reject several previous hypotheses. The main focal points of the study lay on Reményi’s participation in the Hungarian War of Liberation against Austria (1848/49), the first years of his subsequent exile and on the circumstances of his first encounter with the young Johannes Brahms in Hamburg. On grounds of compelling evidence it was possible to narrow down the period in which the two musicians established their personal relations to January, 1853. At the same time, proof of Reményi’s earlier Hamburg sojourns — in the autumn of 1849, in the winter of 1850/51, and then again since November 1852 — has been provided.