Maleta:Das blaue Klavier

The blue piano is a family story with historical and cultural roots in Vienna, Moravia, Scheibbs, Grado, and Gmunden. A few years ago, when the author unexpectedly came across old documents, photos, letters, and a wonderful guestbook from the family villa, he became curious. Suddenly, the time around 1900 came alive – through the world of Martha Scheid and Victor Thonet, through Josef Maria Auchentaller, the Art Nouveau painter, and Georg Adam Scheid, the international jewelry producer from Vienna, all of whom were related. In the Scheid villa, there is a Beethoven music room with the blue piano, designed by Josef Maria Auchentaller, a member of the Secession and a colleague of Gustav Klimt. Everything began with Martha Scheid, the daughter of the villa owner, who played Beethoven's VI Symphony, the Pastoral, on the blue piano. Martha meets the furniture manufacturer Victor Thonet. The two marry in 1903 and have a wonderful relationship. Martha evolves into a grande dame. Victor runs the largest Thonet furniture factory in Bistritz, Moravia, and in 1911 participates in the Alpine Rally with Ferdinand Porsche, August Horch, and the Skoda designers. Victor attracts new designers for a more modern furniture line for Thonet: Otto Wagner, Marcel Kammerer, Otto Prutscher. By 1923, everything is lost, and the Thonets sell their global company. Martha and Victor move to Scheibbs, Lower Austria, to the Lehenhof. While Martha's sister, Emma Auchentaller, the artist's wife, turns her pension Fortino in Grado into an institution, the Lehenhof, under Martha's management, becomes a magnet for music lovers and a paradise for culturally and culinarily starved city dwellers from nearby Vienna. Featuring previously unpublished, partly colored illustrations from the Victor Thonet and Scheid archive.