A propos Grillparzer's Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg : "One of the poets seems so fairy-tale like an enchanted Habsburg prince, condemned by day to be the archives director of the Court Chamber and at night writing down memories of his glorious past".Speaking of Anton Bruckner: "Mesner figure with the emperor's skull".a far too worldly-wise, ironic nature, which looks far too deeply into people to care about their current applause." A propos Johannes Brahms: "An excellent composer, one of the brightest lights of contemporary German music.A propos Ludwig Anzengruber: "As long as Anzengruber wrote, no other German poet has put more solid content into dramatic forms.".
His brother was the composer Wilhelm Speidel (1826-1899) Speidel was highly regarded as a theatre critic, in 1887 he was even offered the direction of the Burgtheater, but he refused.Ībout his own work, he once said: "I have never proofread a work and never looked at a printed feuilleton again." His wife Leontine ( née Ziegelmayer † 6 January 1903) collected the newspaper clippings which later formed the basis of his collected works published in 1910. He had a very negative attitude towards the works of Richard Wagner, which often brought him into sharp contrast with his admirers.
He was one of the first to recognise the importance of Johann Nestroy, Adalbert Stifter and Anton Bruckner and paid tribute to the operettas of Johann Strauss II. Speidel became the most important Viennese critic and feature writer of his time and was known and befriended with many of the greats of Viennese music and theatre life of his time, among others Josef Bayer, Ludwig Bösendorfer, Johann von Herbeck, Martin Greif, Ludwig Hevesi, Max Kalbeck, Martin Gustav Nottebohm, Ludwig Porges, Johann Vesque von Püttlingen and Hugo Wittmann. In addition, he used numerous other ciphers: "§" (also as art consultant of the Neue Freie Presse) in the ( Wiener Zeitung), "-l", "□", "X", "*" among others.
He only drew his articles with his full name in very special cases, otherwise only with the soon known abbreviation "L. While he wrote for the Presse rather in a chosen language, he used a very popular way of expression in the Fremden-Blatt, which could remind one of joke magazines. Around the same time, he was also the music critic of the Fremden-Blatt. With the foundation of Neuen Freie Presse in 1864, Speidel became its first feature editor for four decades. He wrote about many topics: Theatre, music, art, chats, humoresques, travel letters, genre pictures among others 1860-1864 he worked for the newspaper Vaterlan. He became friends with Carl Rahl and remained in Vienna, where he subsequently worked for numerous newspapers and magazines, including Pester Lloyd (1854), the Danube (1855-1863), the Österreichische Zeitung (1855-1858), the Jagdzeitung and the Morgenpost (1858), the Neuste Nachrichten (1859) and the Wiener Zeitung (1858/59). In 1853, Speidel came to Vienna, allegedly to report on the marriage of Empress Elisabeth of Austria to Franz Joseph I. Among his circle of acquaintances in Munich were Friedrich Kaulbach, Ernst Förster, Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer, Justus von Liebig, Ludwig Steub and Adolf Bayersdorfer. Besides, he gave piano lessons and from 1852 he wrote reviews for the Augsburger Allgemeine his first ('Musikalisches aus München') was published on October 28th. From 1850 until 1853, he studied different subjects only as a guest student at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München due to lack of financial means. Born in Ulm, Speidel received first musical lessons from his father, singer and composer Konrad Speidel (born 16 September 1804 in Söflingen bei Ulm died 6 January 1880 in Ulm married to Anna Steiner) and attended the Gymnasium in Ulm.