Wilhelm Kux
born Trstená, Žilinský kraj, Slovakia, February 14, 1864; died Chur, Switzerland, July 18, 1965
Documents associated with this person:
Austrian banker and collector of musical instruments and autographs.
Career Summary
Wilhelm Kux, one of ten children of Dr. Markus and Charlotte Kux, was a prominent Viennese banker and a keen amateur music enthusiast. He joined the Austrian Provincial Bank in 1889, becoming its director c.1895, then moving to the directorship of the Lower Austrian Discount Bank (Eskompte-Gesellschaft) in 1905 and serving as its vice-president from 1927 to the bank’s closure in 1934.
Kux collected both musical instruments (including a violin by Guarneri and a viola (‘Kux, Castelbarco’) and violin (‘Kux, Rothschild’) by Stradivari) and manuscripts, among them the autograph of Brahms’s Third String Quartet and a sketch leaf for Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata. As a director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, he would have known its chief archivist, Eusebius Mandyczewki, who arranged for a facsimile of the “Moonlight” sketches to be published in the Munich-based journal Der Wächter in 1919. It was Otto Erich Deutsch who learned about the sketch leaf and wrote to Kux for permission to have it reproduced in Schenker’s forthcoming facsimile edition of the “Moonlight” Sonata autograph (Universal Edition, 1921), the first volume of “Musical Rarities” of which Deutsch was the series editor.
When Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany, Kux fled to Chur, Switzerland, and remained there until his death, nearly three decades later, at the age of 101. He was made an honorary member of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in 1947.
Kux and Schenker
Schenker dedicated his Ländler für Pianoforte, Op. 10 (Berlin: N. Simrock, 1899) to “Herrn Wilhelm Kux” (a copy of which – a presentation copy to Jeanette Schenker with autograph inscription “Lie-Liechen” – is preserved at OJ 23/5). Their acquaintance must therefore have preceded 1899.
Kux appears in Schenker’s diary eighteen times between 1906 and 1933. On two occasions, the subject concerned the honesty of his banker brother Moriz (Mozio) (“Floriz ... quotes Kux as saying Mozio is a very rich man but has a bad character”). In March 1933, Schenker tried unsuccessfully to involve Kux in the plight of his friend Moriz Violin, who was facing difficulties with the Nazi authorities in Munich, where he was running a Schenker Institute. But the majority of the references fall between August and November 1920 and concern Kux’s Beethoven sketch leaves.
Correspondence
There are five calling cards from Wilhelm Kux to Schenker, spanning c.1903–10 (OJ 12/28), most inviting Schenker to meet with him. Schenker’s diary gives evidence of letters that he wrote to Kux that do not survive. Kux is also mentioned in six letters and postcards from Otto Erich Deutsch to Schenker, all from 1920, concerning Kux’s Beethoven sketch leaf.
Sources
- Adolph Lehmann’s allgemeiner Wohnungs-Anzeiger [of Vienna]
- Email communication from Rohan Kux, January 21, 2025
Contributors
- William Drabkin and Ian Bent