Beethoven: a "titan", say his contemporaries. But who was Beethoven really? And how did his posterity continue to spin the myth of the enigmatic genius? Among other things, this book deals with the question of the authenticity of the surviving Beethoven portraits. Can the portraits be trusted? Do you reflect reality or are they alienated, manipulated products of clichés and stereotypes? What is the relationship between the pictorial portraits and the literary descriptions of Beethoven's person and personality?
The catalogue section of the book presents selected exhibits from the Beethoven collection of the city of Überlingen. This extensive collection, some of which has been open to the public since 1832, includes a wide range of music from the 18th century to Beethoven's musical "heirs" Schumann, Brahms, Wagner and Hindemith.

Michael Brunner
The art and cultural historian Dr. Michael Brunner has headed the Department of Culture and the Museum Facilities of the City of Überlingen since 2003. His dissertation on the debate about Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" in the 16th century was awarded science prizes by the University of Freiburg and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte München in 1997. Since 1990, Michael Brunner has written and edited numerous exhibition catalogues, books and essays on a wide range of topics from the Middle Ages to the present.