Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [344]
ANOTHER DISTRACTION, the most welcome, arrived in May: Brahms had been given his hometown’s highest honor, the Freedom of Hamburg. He was greatly touched. The Freedom not only represented the highest accolade his native city could bestow on him, it was also a rare one—only twelve people had ever received the Freedom, the last two being Bismarck and Prussian general Helmut von Moltke.51 The idea of making Brahms an honorary citizen had been promoted by new Hamburg resident Hans von Bülow, with the cooperation of Bürgermeister Carl Petersen.
In the first flush of excitement Brahms drafted a telegram to Mayor Petersen: “Gratefully honor your news, as the most beautiful honor and greatest joy that mankind can bestow on me.” Brahms often sent follow-up letters to people, sometimes on the same day, correcting a hasty first thought. This time, dismayed at having expressed his feelings so nakedly, he sent a quick correction by post to the Bürgermeister:
I feel with my whole heart the need to add a few words to my hasty, short telegram.… As the artist is rejoiced by such a distinguished token of recognition, so also is the man by the glorious feeling of knowing himself so highly esteemed and loved in his native city.… The precious gift of my citizen’s letter … becomes more precious and clear to me as I place it by the side of my father’s citizenship document.… My father was, indeed, my first thought in connection with the pleasant event, and one wish only remains, that he were here to rejoice with me.”52
There is no record that Brahms had dwelled on his father’s memory since Johann Jakob died in 1872. Now with this accolade, the son’s first thought was of his father—and apparently none for his mother. For Johannes son of Johann, the Freedom of Hamburg not only elevated him and his labors, it also redeemed Johann Jakob Brahms the peasant and buffoon, and his long struggle that had borne such unexpected fruit. At last the name of Brahms, plain as the broom plant it came from, had found glory on native soil. It was a profound moment in Johannes’s life, maybe the highest of all the tributes among his long row of them. Yet he was still embarrassed at himself when he wrote Hanslick that summer,
My Honorary Citizen adventure was too lovely and agreeable.… However, I am alarmed to see my telegram to the mayor in print! It sounds altogether idiotic, ‘the greatest beauty, which can come from human beings’—as if apart from that I had been thinking of eternal salvation! But our dear Lord did not occur to me at all in that connection, I was only thinking in passing about the so-called gods and the fact that when a pretty melody occurs to me it is far preferable in my mind than an Order of Leopold, and if they should grant me a successful symphony, it is dearer to me than all honorary citizenships.53
The Order of Leopold he mentions was another decoration he acquired in the same summer. This award, one of Austria’s highest, had been Hanslick’s doing. Grimly, Brahms set to the drudgery of answering a mountain of congratulatory letters and telegrams. More were required when he was named an honorary member of the Beethovenhaus Society in Bonn and a foreign member of the Académie Française. In his letter to the Académie he tried to resurrect his childhood French, but finally gave up and thanked them in German. The accumulation of ribbons and medals on Brahms’s coat at formal occasions was becoming formidable. It was in connection with the Leopold Order that he told Richard Specht, “I don’t care a rap for decorations,