Unanswered Questions

[EternaLisa]

Just keep coming back...with a different angle of attack-

it appears to be nothing other than one or more persons seeing a photograph of Josephine's daughter, then seeing facial similarities that could be compared to that of Ludwig Beethoven

http://www.forum-lvbeethoven.com/For...ad.php?3,23965

E

[JohnSpecialK]

Pictures of Minona

There are two photographs allegedly depicting Minona von Stackelberg, as a young and as an older woman, on http://www.lvbeethoven.com/Famille/Minona.html, also on http://brunszvikterez.hu/mas.html. Unfortunately, there is no confirmation that these photographs depict Minona (apart from the obvious fact that they do not look very similar, even taking ageing into account). The younger woman has been identified as a certain Countess Kinsky (who had later befriended Minona). This information (as well as a letter written by Minona and located in the Kinsky estate in Paris) was supplied (to a Viennese scholar) by a descendant of the family, Ornella Kinsky (who lived in London about 10 years ago). (See Steblin, Bonner Beethoven-Studien 6 (2007), p. 180, n. 115.) The two photos supposedly depicting Minona were used by one Chris Stadtlaender in her book „Ewig unbehaust und verliebt …“ Beethoven und die Frauen, Wien 2001. Chris Stadtlaender is an elderly woman who is rather crazy (and certainly not a scholar)! She had bought these photos in the ca. 1970s from a Hungarian aristocrat living in Munich, Count G.L. de Baranyai. He had a large collection of Beethoveniana, and has published several picture books on Beethoven. His scholarship too is unreliable. - Minona possibly being the older woman is not yet confirmed.

There are two more sources quoted in http://www.lvbeethoven.com/Famille/Minona.html (There is also a mention of a tombstone on Minona's grave which however has long since disappeared.): Mariam Tenger, "Beethoven's Unsterbliche Geliebte", Bonn Nusser 1890, and A. Konei, "Beethoven in Martonvàsar", Budapest 1962. At least Tenger's has long been known to be pure fiction. -

Any speculation (even assuming these pictures are authentic) that facial features could reveal who her father was (most likely Beethoven - but for other reasons!), should be avoided (at least, not perpetuated).

[Cetto von Cronstorff]

There are two photographs allegedly depicting Minona von Stackelberg, as a young and as an older woman, on http://www.lvbeethoven.com/Famille/Minona.html, also on http://brunszvikterez.hu/mas.html.

How anyone could ever be fooled by the photograph of "young Minona" is totally beyond me. This picture should be taken at around 1830 - a sensational revolution of the history of photography! And BTW the lady's attire shows that this picture hails from the 1870s.