Willi Reich to Frida Semler Seabury
22 June 1936
[Translated from German]

[Letterhead:]
Dr. phil. Willi Reich                                              22 June 1936.
Wien I,
Hohenstaufengasse 10
Tel. U-24-2-85

Most honored Madam,

You will surely be surprised to receive a letter from a stranger, but once I introduce myself to you as a pupil, friend, and biographer of Alban Berg, you will no doubt anticipate the purpose of my writing.

Herr Charley Berg was kind enough to hand over to me, for review, the extraordinarily valuable collection of letters and memorabilia that you made available to him, since I am at present at work on the purely biographical portion of my book devoted to Alban Berg, which is to appear this autumn.

Your materials contained truly precious data and important information, and I should like to thank you most sincerely for the generosity with which you made them available. If you could provide me with any further information on the subject of "Alban Berg and Wedekind," I would be very much obliged to you; in light of the later setting of Lulu to music, this point is of quite particular importance to me.

Finally, I take the liberty of sending you today the latest issue of my small journal "23," which contains a dialogue and a letter by Alban Berg, and I would be very pleased if this were to give you a little pleasure.

With most respectful greetings, I remain

Your most devoted
Willi Reich

P.S. You did, I trust, already receive — through Herr Charley Berg, some time ago — the previous issue of "23," devoted entirely to the memory of Alban Berg?

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Translator's notes:
- "23" (in full, "23 — Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift") was a Vienna-based new-music periodical edited by Willi Reich from 1932 to 1937, closely associated with Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern; it takes its title from an in-joke referencing Berg's fascination with the number 23. An issue devoted to Berg's memory appeared shortly after his death in December 1935.
- The biography Reich mentions — expected "this autumn" — is his Alban Berg: Mit Bergs eigenen Schriften und Beiträgen von Theodor Wiesengrund-Adorno und Ernst Krenek, which was ultimately published in Vienna in 1937.
- "Alban Berg und Wedekind" refers to the influence of playwright Frank Wedekind on Berg — most directly relevant to Berg's opera Lulu, based on Wedekind's Lulu plays, which Reich flags here as a matter of particular importance to his research.

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Translated by Claude Sonnet 5 on July 1, 2026
https://claude.ai/share/b3dba9da-1c07-4cae-b1d6-1894894e9dda