Gertrud Bertha Schoenberg
born Karlsbad [Karlovy Vary], July 11, 1898; died February 14, 1967
Documents associated with this person:
Second wife of Arnold Schoenberg.
Gertrud Kolisch was born in Karlsbad [Karlovy Vary] in 1898, daughter of Rudolf Rafael Kolisch, medical doctor, and his wife Henriette. Her brother, the violinist and former Schoenberg pupil Rudolf Kolisch, introduced her to Arnold Schoenberg in 1923, the couple became attached, and they married on August 28, 1924, ten months after the death of Schoenberg's first wife, Mathilde. Gertrud wrote the libretto for his one-act opera Von heute auf morgen in 1928–29. She had three children by Schoenberg: Nuria Dorothea (born 1932), Ronald Rudolf (born 1937), and Lawrence Adam (born 1941). After his death in 1951 she founded Belmont Music Publishers, devoted to publishing Schoenberg's works.