House of the Heiligenstadt Testament

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View of the Heiligenstadt Beethoven House

The House of the Heiligenstadt Testament or Testament House is located at Probusgasse 6 in Heiligenstadt , a district of Vienna in the 19th district of Döbling . The name comes from the fact that Ludwig van Beethoven is said to have written his so-called Heiligenstädter Testament here in 1802 .

The house was bought in 1967 by the City of Vienna, which set up a memorial in it. In 2017 the house was renovated and expanded from a 40 m² memorial to a 265 m² Beethoven Museum operated by the Wien Museum .

background

From May to October 1802 Beethoven went to the mineral-rich spring of the bathing establishment in Heiligenstadt near Vienna (suburb of Vienna until 1892) in order to have gastric complaints treated, from which he often suffered, combined with severe colic. His doctor Johann Adam Schmidt also promised a cure for his progressive hearing impairment . Beethoven lived in a detached farmhouse outside of Heiligenstadt on the way to Nussdorf at Herrengasse 6 (today: Probusgasse 6). There the 32-year-old wrote a letter to his brothers on October 6th, in which he emphatically describes the concern about his deteriorating hearing, his social isolation, the thoughts of suicide that have germinated and overcome, and regulates his estate. Although he wrote a postscript on October 10, folded the sheet of paper and sealed it, he did not send the letter, which was only found in the estate in 1827.

Researches

In 1890 Josef Böck, honorary member of the local men's choir, found the house. After Beethoven's birthplace was founded as a museum in Bonn , research into Beethoven's homes began in Vienna. The house was bought by the City of Vienna in 1967. More recent research by Walther Brauneis has shown that the residential wing, in which there is now a Beethoven memorial of the Wien Museum (supplemented on the street side by that of the Vienna Beethoven Society), was only built in 1807 after a major fire, so it can by no means be authentic. But there are also indications that Beethoven could have stayed in another house in the summer of 1802.

literature

Web links

Commons : House of the Heiligenstädter Testament  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ^ Beethoven apartments in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
  2. ^ Beethoven in Vienna: new museum. In: Wien-Info, accessed on June 23, 2018.
  3. ↑ Noticeable is the incorrect age specification "in my 28th year" in the letter. Beethoven was already 32 years old. He usually kept himself younger for two years, believing he was born in 1772 because his father had made the thirteen-year-old appear as an "eleven year old child prodigy".

Coordinates: 48 ° 15 '17.2 "  N , 16 ° 21' 22.3"  E