Siegfried Lipiner

Background

Lipiner was born in Jarosław.

Education

A prodigious talent, he produced a well-regarded treatment of "Prometheus Unbound" at the age of seventeen, He attended the University of Leipzig as a student of philosophy, literature and natural science. One of his teachers was Gustav Fechner.

Career

Lipiner was 24 when he met the 20-year-old Mahler, and his views on various subjects (including the "redemptive" qualities of artistic creation) came to influence the young composer to a considerable extent. Lipiner features in the "Recollections of Gustav Mahler" assembled by Natalie Bauer-Lechner — who seems also to have kept a similar record of his actions and conversations, though this is now lost. Mahler"s marriage to Alma Schindler in 1902 was followed by the composer"s breaking with Lipiner for several years: the man whom Friedrich Eckstein described as "that shy, melancholy, sensitive poet" and whom Mahler usually addressed as "dearest Siegfried" was for Alma the object of a venomous dislike: "a bogus Goethe in his writing and a haggling Jew in his talk".

By the end of Mahler"s life, however, the two men had resumed their friendship.

Lipiner died in Vienna a few months after Mahler"s death.

Connections

Acquaintance:

Adam Mickiewicz

Friend:

Arthur Schopenhauer