The large family could afford few luxuries, but Philipp Meitner’s law practice did provide the middle-class essentials: books, a few summer weeks in the mountains, and—virtually a necessity in Vienna—music lessons.  […] Lise played the piano too; all her life music would be a passion for her, as necessary as food.

Lise lived frugally, renting single rooms from a succession of landladies, never with a private bath, occasionally with a piano she could use, or a telephone.  […] By eating very little she had enough for cigarettes, a daily newspaper, and concerts, where she could be found high up in the cheapest seats—the section students called 'Olympus'—often following the music with a full score.