Career
Fatal Links draws exclusively on source evidence of letters and eye-witness reports and, while she was not privy to subsequent medical analysis of Beethoven"s hair, her conclusions - that he showed symptoms of lead or arsenic poisoning - accord well with the result of the chemical analysis. In her second, and more substantial, biographical study of the composer, Altman investigates and refutes the claims of Maynard Solomon for the identification of the woman who Beethoven, in an undated letter found among his effects, referred to as his "Immortal Beloved" (Unsterbliche Geliebte), while building a thorough case—using Solomon"s own criteria—for Anna-Marie Erdödy as the putative recipient of the letter. She also challenges Solomon"s attribution of the place-initial "K", in the Immortal Beloved letter, to Karlsbad, offering in its place the hypothesis that "K" might instead refer to Klosterneuburg (misspelled Klosterneuberg in Altman"s book), the closest post-stop to Anna-Marie Erdödy"s estate at Jedlesee (also spelled Jedlersee).
Both Klosterneuburg and Jedlesee are near Vienna, where Beethoven lived in 1812.
On geographical and historical grounds Altman"s hypothesis however is absolutely unfounded, because since Klosterneuburg could only be reached from Jedlesee via Vienna and Kahlenbergerdorf (there was no bridge across the Danube between Korneuburg and Klosterneuburg), the next post-stop to Jedlesee was of course the so-called "Hauptmaut" in Vienna"s northern suburb Leopoldstadt.
