Friendship album of the "Princess of Brijuni"
Autograph album of Marie-Louise Schenker-Angerer with entries by Pablo Casals, George Gershwin, Sergei Rachmaninov, and G. B. Shaw.
8vo (120 x 180 mm). 62 entries on 88 ff. Contemporary green cloth with brocade covers. Several addenda.
€ 12,500.00
The present album was owned by Marie-Louise Schenker-Angerer ("Mausi", 1905-73), daughter of Leopold ("Lony") Kupelwieser and granddaughter of the industrialist Paul Kupelwieser, who had purchased the malaria-infested Brijuni archipelago in 1893. Early in the 20th century, Robert Koch succeeded in eradicating the disease-bearing mosquitos, and the islands off the Istrian coast quickly turned into a resort popular with the European aristocracy and wealthy bourgeoisie, with artists and businessmen. One of the latter was August Schenker-Angerer, a scion of the Schenker shipping dynasty. His son Gottfried was Mausi's brother-in-law, and Gottfried's wife, the soprano Margit ("Manci") (née Rupp), was her sister-in-law. On 10 July 1924 Marie-Louise married Gottfried's younger brother August ("Guggi", 1897-1979).
The album at hand reaches back as far as the 1920s; the earliest contribution, by Alfred Arbter, was entered on the day of Marie-Louise's wedding. Some entries are from Brijuni; many more undated ones were probably written in Vienna, where the family resided in Strohgasse. The latest entries, from the 1940s and beyond, are written in Paris. Among the most famous contributors are Wilhelm Backhaus (2), Alfred Brendel (2), Pablo Casals (autograph musical quotation signed), Jörg Demus (autograph musical quotation signed), George Gershwin (autograph musical quotation signed and 2 photographs), Friedrich Gulda (autograph musical quotation signed), Bronislaw Huberman (autograph entry signed with a photograph pasted in), Wilhelm Kempff (autograph musical quotation signed), Jan Kiepura (signature on a picture postcard), Guglielmo Marconi (2, one a signature on a picture postcard of his yacht "Elettra"), Sergei Rachmaninoff (eh. U.), Vladimir Sokoloff (autograph entry signed), and Paul Wittgenstein (autograph entry signed). Further, G. B. Shaw contributed a loosly inserted signature leaf (dated Brijuni, May 1929), a picture postcard (annoted on the verso"G. B. Shaws Ankunft in Brioni"), and two original photographs, one of which shows him with the heavyweight champion (1926-28) Gene Tunney, who popularised golfing on the islands in 1928/29. Additional entries are by Claude Anet, Mattia Battistini, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Richard Buhlig (2), Winifred Christie, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, Otto Erich Deutsch, Severin Eisenberger, Fred Freed (2), Ignaz Friedman, Hedi Gigler-Dongas, Jan Kiepura, Germaine Leroux, Therese Leschetizky, Emanuel Moór, Boyd Neel, Max Reinhardt, Emil Sauer v. Aichried, Wilson Vance (2), Peter Wallfisch, Paul Weingarten, and Earl Wild.
The loosely inserted addenda include letters by Alfred Arbter, Alfred Brendel, Carl Goldmark, Hedwig Kanner-Rosenthal, Luzi Korngold, and Richards Strauss's son Franz, as well as two letters by Vladimir Sokoloff, who gives an enthusiastic report of Max Reinhardt's visit to New York in late 1927.
Little is known about Marie-Louise's later life other than that she published two books under the name "Marie-Louise Kupelwieser de Brioni" (cited below); a poignant account by Pierre Le-Tan suggests that she lost her family fortune and may have died in poverty.
Marie-Louise Kupelwieser de Brioni, Une Grande amitié: F. Schubert et L. Kupelwieser (Paris, L'Étrave, 1968). The same, Der heitere Beethoven: Eine Briefauswahl (München, Piper, 1969). Pierre Le-Tan, "La princesse de Brioni", in: Quelques collectionneurs (Paris, Flammarion, 2013).
