Introduction to the correspondence of Hans Werner Henze with Grete Weil and Walter Jockisch

The correspondence between Grete Weil 1, Walter Jockisch and Hans Werner Henze comprises 102 postal documents, of which only eight were written by Grete Weil and the remaining 92 by Henze. Two telegrams from Renate Praetorius to Grete Weil (on behalf of Henze) complete the correspondence. Henze often wrote joint letters to both Weil and Jockisch, but in the early period some letters were specifically addressed to only one of them and occasionally separate letters were sent in one envelope (see, for example, the letters of April 11 and May 12, 1950).

The correspondence covers the years 1948 to 1997, with a focus on the period between 1948-1953 and 1959/1960.

The language of the correspondence is German, but Henze occasionally switched to other languages. He wrote one letter, a card—and sometimes more detailed paragraphs—in French and three letters and a New Year’s greeting in English.

The letters are preserved in the Weil estate of the Monacensia and in the Henze estate of the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. In the Weil estate, the envelopes are kept separately from the letters and cards and therefore had to be reassigned, which was not always easy with postmarks that were difficult to read and/or undated letters.

All but four of Henze’s letters in this correspondence are handwritten and it is very easy to observe the development from an initially very clear, rather narrow script to the later handwriting, in which the individual letters are rather separated and the spaces between the words are very wide.

In the early period, Henze generally uses lower case even after punctuation marks and only capitalizes the words of address (Dich, Dein, Euer etc.). Later, he uses mixed capitalization, in which the names and usually also the beginnings of sentences are capitalized. However, this is not a clear chronological development: Henze repeatedly has phases in which he writes consistently in lower case.

The capital and small “l” cannot be distinguished, which is why this is transcribed according to the overall context. The lowercase “z” is quite individual in the early period, where Henze only very rarely writes a crossbar and which, especially as an initial letter, strongly resembles an “n”.

Henze’s French is easy to understand, but grammatically and orthographically not flawless. Above all, the use of the accent is very “limited” the grave accent is only used for short words such as “très”, “à” and “concrète”, otherwise he always writes the acute accent and does not use the circumflexe at all.

Postal documents from Grete Weil have only been preserved since Walter Jockisch’s death on 22 March 1970 (see the section “Characterization of the relationship”). Of the eight documents, two telegrams and three letters each are handwritten and typewritten. Weil’s handwriting is (and probably always was) difficult to read, as Henze complains in the very first surviving letter (“ta lettre etait prèsque inlisible”), which is why she preferred the typewriter. To get an impression of Weil’s handwriting, see the illustration in Lisbeth Exner’s biography on p. 115.

(The brackets denote the duration of the correspondence on this subject)

• Boulevard Solitude (1948–1952)
• Autobiographies (1993)
  • Grete Weil, Leb ich denn, wenn andere leben (beschreibt nur die Zeit bis 1947)
  • Hans Werner Henze, Reiselieder mit böhmischen Quinten

Hans Werner Henze (ordered chronologically)

• Violin Sonata
• Fünf Madrigale
• Chor gefangener Trojer aus Goethes “Faust”, II. Teil, 3. Akt
• Whispers from Heavenly Death
• Das Wundertheater
• Apollo et Hyazinthus
• Ballett-Variationen
• 2nd Symphony
• Variationen für Klavier op. 13
• Jack Pudding
• 3rd Symphony
• 1st Piano Concerto
• Das Vokaltuch der Kammersängerin Rosa Silber
• Symphonische Variationen
• Labyrinth
• Ein Landarzt
• Incidental Music to “La folle journée”
• Die schlafende Prinzessin
• Der Idiot
• Pas d’action
• Wind Quintet
• 2nd String Quartet
• Tancredi
• Das Ende einer Welt
• Ode an den Westwind
• König Hirsch
• Maratona
• Undine
• Sonata per archi
• Prinz von Homburg
• Piano Sonata
• Antifone
• Elegy for Young Lovers
• Novae de infinito laudes
• 5th Symphony
• Der junge Lord
• Bassarids
• 2nd Piano Concerto
• La Cubana
• Tristan
• We come to the River
• Aria de la folía española
• Orpheus
• Barcarola
• The English Cat
• Requiem
• 8th Symphony

• works not mentioned in the Work Catalogue:
• George Dandin
• trois pièce faciles pour le piano
• Leonce und Lena
• La forza delle circonstanze ovvere Ella non riuscì a convincerlo

• planned works
• Music to Die Kaiserin von Neufundland
• Violin composition for Gerhard Taschner

Grete Weil

• Tramhalte Beethovenstraat
• Meine Schwester Antigone
• Generationen

Walter Jockisch

• Hermann Reutter, Don Juan und Faust
• Carl Orff, Der Mond
• Bedrich Smetana, Die verkaufte Braut
• Wolfgang Fortner, Die Witwe von Ephesus
• Carl Zeller, Der Vogelhändler
• Igor Stravinsky, Histoire du soldat
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Don Giovanni

As already mentioned, the Weil/Jockisch-Henze correspondence is very one-sided, as the reply letters from the intensive period of exchange between 1948 and 1960 have been lost, and only a few of Grete Weil’s letters survived after Walter Jockisch’s death in 1970. In the early period, Henze explains the loss of all letters addressed to him was due to his numerous moves, during which suitcases containing his correspondence were lost. The correspondence ends in Henze’s estate (Paul Sacher Foundation) with Weil’s obituary, in her estate (Monacensia) with the letter of November 30, 1993 with notes on the autobiography, although Grete Weil’s postal documents suggest that Henze must have written again personally at least on her 90th birthday on July 18, 1996.

The early letters in particular are strongly influenced by Henze’s private and professional development. They are combined with interesting insights into first “Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt” and the reestablishment of theater life after the Second World War, especially at Henze’s places of work in Göttingen, Constance and Wiesbaden, and at Walter Jockisch’s in Stuttgart, Hanover, and Berlin. A particular focus during this period is the description of the German, French and English ballet scene.

In addition, the languages Henze used in his letters provide insight into his personality around 1950. The first surviving letter in the correspondence, as well as a card dated April 21, 1952, are both written in French, and he frequently switched to French for “delicate” topics, for example, in the letter from the beginning of November 1951. Only rarely, as in the letter dated November 17, 1977, can his use of English be given a substantive reason.

The few late letters also include two with decidedly political statements; see the letters April, 8, 1974 and November, 27, 1977.

Grete Weil and Walter Jockisch first met Hans Werner Henze at the “Ferienkurse für Neue Musik”, which had been held annually at Schloss Kranichstein near Darmstadt (later in the city of Darmstadt) since 1946. Walter Jockisch was the director of the Darmstadt Theatre until early 1948 and Grete Weil had moved from Amsterdam to live with him, her childhood friend, at the end of 1947.2 Her husband, Edgar Weil, had been murdered in Mauthausen on September 17, 1941 and she herself had survived the persecution of the Jews in Amsterdam, first by working in the Jewish Council and ultimately by going into hiding.

She wrote about in her answer to the question “Do you love Germany?”:

(Marielouise Janssen-Jureit (Hg.), Lieben Sie Deutschland?, München 1985, S. 54–60, hier: S. 56)

The time of the persecution of the Jews and the cruel loss of her first husband not only shaped Weil’s literary works, but also her life, although this was probably rarely a topic of conversation with Henze, as he wrote on September 28, 1993:

As the Darmstadt courses took place in the summer, the contact must have already been established in the summer of 1947, since Henze’s first surviving letter dated April 9, 1948 already indicates a certain familiarity with Weil and Jockisch. There is documentation of Walter Jockisch’s active participation in the 1947 vacation course: He was artistic director of the world premiere of the new version of Carl Orff’s “Der Mond” (July 20, 1947) and his production of Stravinsky’s “Histoire du soldat” was performed on July 24. On the other hand, works by Henze were performed here for the first time. Henze studied with Wolfgang Fortner in Heidelberg from 1945-1948 and accompanied him to the summer courses from the very beginning. Henze’s “Sonatina for Flute and Piano” and the 2nd movement of his “1st Symphony” had their premiere on July 27, 1947.

There is no evidence that Grete Weil also took part in 1947, but there is mention of her stays in Germany at this time and she also described the initial contact in Darmstadt, but for the year 1948 (vgl. Weil, “Über meine Zusammenarbeit mit Henze” .

Despite the rather large age difference of 20 years between Henze and Weil and Jockisch, they must have understood each other well from the very beginning: Henze’s very first letter to Grete Weil testifies to a fundamental agreement. In his autobiography, Henze describes the relationship as follows:

(see Autobiography, S. 90)

In his letter of condolence on the occasion of Walter Jockisch’s death, however, Henze struck a different tone:

(Letter April, 26, 1970)

And in her last letter, in which she expresses her thanks for the congratulations on her 90th birthday, Grete Weil wrote:

(Letter July, 26, 1996).

Initially, Henze addressed Weil and Jockisch as “Sie” as a matter of course (although in the early letters, especially to Grete Weil, he occasionally used “Du”), but after he visited their vacation home in Egern for the first time in the summer of 1949, the form of address changed to “Du” on both sides. From 1950 onwards, the salutations “Butza” for Weil and “Butzi”" for Jockisch prevailed, and by the time of their collaboration and their joint trip to Italy in 1951 at the latest, the tone became very familiar. Henze even allowed himself salutations such as “dear monkey pack” (Letter after November, 10, 1950) or “dear monkey tail” (Letter August, 12, 1950 ). From this time onwards, he almost always signs his letters with “hänschen”, occasionally also with “häschen” (see the graphic letter May 23, 1950).

The early letters, which were primarily addressed to Jockisch due to the professional nature of the correspondence are strongly influenced by Henze’s first theatre engagements in Constance and Wiesbaden, as well as his experiences with the ballet scene. However, these letters are always interspersed with very private messages (see the letter at the beginning of October 1949), which give a deep insight into Henze’s problems around 1950. His replies reveal how important Jockisch’s answers were to him on a personal level (“it is only in response to your letter that I realize that I simply must have the time to write”, letter from the end of November 1949). This makes it all the more regrettable that all these letters have been lost. These early letters do not reveal the “fear” towards Jockisch that Henze describes after his death in the aforementioned letter of condolence to Grete Weil.

Again and again, the correspondence also alludes to Henze’s precarious financial situation, from which Weil and Jockisch often helped him out, but Henze summarizes the relationship shortly before the premiere of “Boulevard Solitude” as follows::

(Letter February, 9, 1952)

The intensive correspondence and personal contact between Weil/Jockisch and Henze lasted until 1953 (58 postal documents). Perhaps the contact became looser afterwards because Henze moved to Italy. Another frequent exchange took place on the occasion of the performance of “König Hirsch” in Darmstadt and a meeting in Ascona in 1959/1960 (14 postal documents). Subsequently, contact became less frequent, but never broke off entirely (in contrast to the correspondence with Enzensberger , for example). The intensive early period had obviously laid an unbreakable foundation:

(Letter of Grete Weil March, 18, 1974)

further literature:
Autobiographie pp. 71, 84, 89f., 96
Weil: “Über meine Zusammenarbeit mit Henze” (Programmheft München 1974)