One of music’s greatest ever composers, Frédéric Chopin, was passionately in love with men – despite historians previously dismissing the relationships as mere friendships.
Born in 1810 in Warsaw, the composer became one of the leading musicians of his era. He remains a national hero in Poland – a country sharply divided over LGBT+ equality.
But now music journalist Moritz Weber has claimed that historians and biographers have spent two centuries ignoring and even mistranslating his homoerotic letters to make them conform to Poland’s conservative standards.
In a two-hour radio show on Swiss public broadcaster SRF, Weber says the historians have exaggerated rumors of Chopin’s affairs with women.