You probably have heard Beethoven’s famous piano piece “For Elise,” but do you know who “Elise” was? 

One story is that Elise was Elisabeth Röckel. She once sang in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio, and the two became very good friends. Beethoven called her “Elise.” When Röckel was leaving the city of Vienna, Beethoven wrote “For Elise” to say goodbye to her. Another story is that Elise was Therese Malfatti. Beethoven was in love with her. He wrote a piece for her and put “For Therese” on the manuscript. Malfatti kept the manuscript and left it to her family when she died. Later, a man copied the manuscript and wrote “For Elise” by mistake. There is another possible Elise: Elise Barensfeld. She learned the piano from Malfatti, the same Malfatti in the second story. To help Malfatti, Beethoven wrote the piece for her to use to teach Barensfeld.

These are just some guesses about who Elise was. We may never know the right answer. No one knew about the piece until 1867, when the manuscript was found. This was 40 years after Beethoven’s death, so he wasn’t around to tell us who Elise was. Only one thing is for sure: “For Elise” will always be enjoyed

       Marie Colvin was a world-famous war reporter. She was born in New York, USA, in 1956 and died in Homs, Syria, in 2012. 

       When she was a student at Yale University, Colvin decided that she wanted to be a reporter in the future. She joined the Sunday Times, a UK newspaper, in 1985 and soon became its Middle East reporter. Besides the Middle East, she also reported from other parts of the world: Chechnya, Kosovo and Sri Lanka, for example. When she was reporting on the war in Sri Lanka, she lost her left eye. But that never stopped her. She still went to dangerous places that few reporters wanted to visit and stayed when others left.

      Colvin showed great empathy in her stories. For her, war reporting was not just some quick interviews and a few photos. She wrote about real people and their real lives. Her writing made you feel so strongly about these people’s stories, just like they were your own. She hoped that through her work the world would understand what really happened in war, and would take action to stop the fighting.  

      On February 22, 2012, the day after she gave her report on the war in Homs, Colvin was killed when the house she was staying in was attacked. She always knew what price a war reporter might have to pay. She already lost an eye before. This time, she gave her life to the work she could not give up—telling the true stories to the world.