Mahler was born on , in Bohemia, then part of the Austrian Empire, now in the western Czech Republic. His family was Jewish, and Jews at the time suffered from legal and social prejudice in the empire. His parents were poor: the village where Gustav was born consisted only of a scattering of rough peasant huts—and his parents' marriage seems to have been an unhappy one. Gustav's father, Bernard Mahler, had some good qualities: he was energetic and...