Gustav Mahler’s circle of friends and colleagues ran into hundreds. Alongside famous contemporaries such as Richard Strauss and Gerhart Hauptmann, it included many people whose connection to Mahler is well known, but about whom we otherwise know little – from opera singer Rosa Papier, who was instrumental to Mahler’s engagement at the Vienna State Opera; landscape photographer Hugo Henneberg, whose wife Marie became godmother to Mahler’s daughter; to the lawyer Serafin Bondi, a member of the vegetarian association Mahler also belonged to. The book provides seventy fascinating biographies, filling the many gaps in Mahler’s biography.

Life first led Gustav Mahler from Bohemia to Vienna, where he would become one of the most famous composers and conductors of his time. Further stations were Ljubljana, Olomouc, Kassel, Prague, Budapest, Leipzig and Hamburg. Both his working and private life allowed him to travel to Scandinavia, Finland, Germany, the countries of the Danube Monarchy, Russia, Italy, Great Britain and the USA. Based on photographs, sketches, letters, memories and registration documents, the authors were the first to fully reconstruct all the places that marked the life of the musician. This included retracing all of Mahler’s home addresses, all music institutions he played at as well as the places he visited – with friends and family, to compose and be alone. The topography at hand uses texts and images to shed new light on Mahler’s life between the “Gründerzeit” era (Founding Years) and Modernism, in both the Old and New World.