Natalie Bauer-Lechner

Natalie [Natalia Anna Juliana] Bauer-Lechner (Penzing, Vienna, 9 May 1858 – Vienna, 8 June 1921) was an Austrian violist who is best known to musicology for having been a close and devoted friend of Gustav Mahler in the period between 1890 and the start of Mahler’s engagement to Alma Schindler in December 1901. During this period, she kept a private journal which provides a unique picture of Mahler's personal, professional and creative life during and just after his thirties, including an exclusive preview of the structure, form, and content of his third symphony.

Bauer-Lechner was the eldest child of five children (4 girls and 1 boy) born to the Viennese bookshop owner and publisher Rudolf Lechner (1822-1895) and his wife Julie, née von Winiwarter (1831-1905). She was educated privately, and from 1866-1872 she and her sister Ellen studied at the Vienna Conservatory. Both sisters graduated on 25 July 1872 with a second price (cf. Neue Freie Presse, Vienna, 28.7.1872, p. 7). Natalie was only 14-years-old. In the light of what happened three years later (her sudden marriage and becoming stepmother of three children) it is difficult to see, how she would find time to take part in the orchestral rehearsals at the Conservatoire during Mahler’s student years from 1875-1878, as Bauer-Lechner later claims in her memoirs on Mahler. However, from various press notices in the Viennese dailies it was clearly her sister Ellen (or Helene) that frequently appeared on such occasions, also in chamber music concerts with director Joseph Hellmesberger Sr. In 1910 Ellen Schlenk-Lechner formed her own short-lived string quartet with three males. Already in 1883 she had published a Polonaise in D Major Op. 1, for violin and piano.

Marriage & Divorce

Most surprisingly and inexplicable Natalie, only 16½-years-old, married in Vienna on 27 December 1875 the 39-years-old widower, Professor, Dr. ph. Alexander Bauer (1836-1921), whose first wife (Emilie, born Russell) had died from pneumonia, on 22 March 1874, only one day after she had given birth to her third daughter (cf. Wiener Zeitung, 26.3.1874, p. 8). The two other children were eleven and eight years old, respectively. It has therefore been speculated by Danish Mahler-scholar, Knud Martner, that the last-born daughter, christened Wilhelmina or Minnie, was in fact the illegitimate child of young Natalie. (By comparing photographs of Bauer-Lechner and the young Minnie Bauer their features are looking strikingly alike, and she looks quite different from her two older sisters). Her marriage however, childless as it appers to have been, was dissolved ten years later, on 19 June 1885. Nothing is known about Bauer-Lechner's life between 1885 and 1890. She did not take an active part in the Viennese musical life during this period, at least not according to the daily newspapers. Not even her whereabouts is known.

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