A Furtwängler returns to the Berlin Philharmonie

A Furtwängler returns to the Berlin Philharmonie

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norman lebrecht

March 30, 2018

Maria Furtwängler is one of the best known faces on German television. She plays the Hanover detective Charlotte Lindholm in the Tatort series.

She is, additionally, a great-niece of the great conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, a trained physician and a noted philanthropist.

A fluent French speaker, last night she appeared as narrator in Debussy’s Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien with Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle in the Philharmonie.

Interview here.

Comments

  • Caravaggio says:

    Who knew the immortal WF had descendants? Great.

    • Bill says:

      Yes, WF has a number of descendants; his son with his last wife, Andreas, is a classical archaeologist. In addition, there were numerous illegitimate children. However, Maria is the daughter of one of WF’s step-children, and not a biological descendant.

      • Bill says:

        Of course, the title is a bit misleading; WF was dead before the current Philharmonie even started construction, and the current Philharmonie is not on the site of the old one. But I doubt that this was the first time she’d been to the Philharmonie, so it could be true that a person bearing the Furtwängler name was returning to the Philharmonie. Might even be some descendants of concert-goers who saw the Furtwängler we are supposed to think of, conducting at the old Philharmonie before it was destroyed, who now attend concerts at the new Philharmonie. Shocking, simply shocking.

      • Hilary says:

        ‘In addition there were numerous illigitimate children’

        A bit shocking!

  • James says:

    Her mother was WFs wife Elizabeth’s daughter from her first marriage,
    her father was son of WFs brother Walter, the mountineer…thus the surname
    Furtwangler.

  • Urania says:

    The so called elite does stick together…always longing for headlines…she is married to a Burda, an extremely influential family in Germany….circles, circles, circles…though I like her mother who was an actrice too and did not make so much fuss….I do think that she did not use the name FW.

  • Harry Levy says:

    One of the Furtwängler women would strut around Bayreuth like she owned the place.

  • Urania says:

    Well – many think that they own the place….
    I was once chased from my table in a restaurant near the Festspielhaus from Verena Lafferentz (Wagner). She could not even wait till I had paid. Poor peope.

  • Urania says:

    https://www.amazon.it/Wir-Furtw%C3%A4nglers-Elisabeth-Furtw%C3%A4ngler-Ackermann/dp/3784432395

    Here more about the ladies….in Italy one does have to pay Euro 45, in Germany Euro 8,00….Her mother always was known with the name Ackermann.

    Happy Easter!

  • James says:

    Yes, (Kathrin)Ackermann is the name she was born with, her father’s surname,
    just as her daughter (Maria)Furtwangler bears the name she was born with,
    her father’s surname.

    As for strutting about Bayreuth as if one owned the place: isn’t that
    exactly what the Nazis said about the Jews? Be careful, y’all.

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