The Case of Franz Liszt's Ennoblement

Cselényi, Máté (2025) The Case of Franz Liszt's Ennoblement. STUDIA MUSICOLOGICA: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY OF THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 66 (1-2). pp. 59-67. ISSN 1788-6244

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Abstract

“Edel werden ist viel mehr, denn edel sein von Eltern her!” reads the sentence attributed to Liszt in Julius Kapp's Liszt-Brevier . The aim of this paper is to detail the first half of the now famous phrase – Liszt's becoming a nobleman. Franz Liszt arrived in his homeland as the “shining star” of the nation during his first visit to Hungary in 1839/1840. As a consequence, Liszt's aristocratic friends, unable to prove his noble birth, wanted to grant him Hungarian nobility. The application was submitted by Leó Festetics to Ferdinand V, but was rejected. Liszt's nobility case was subsequently forgotten, only to be revived in the late 1850s, but then with a different motive and purpose in many aspects. And when in 1859 he was awarded the Third Class of the Austrian Imperial Order of the Iron Crown of Austria by Emperor Franz Joseph for his merits, he could now apply for ennoblement. Now officially Franz Ritter von Liszt eight long years later, in 1867, due to family tragedies and difficulties, bestowed the order on his uncle Dr. Eduard Liszt, a lawyer in Vienna. In my paper, I review the events of the twenty-seven years between 1840 and 1867 in the context of Liszt's ennoblement.

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