Note 13 — Chapter III

In one of Beethoven’s conversation books his nephew writes on December 15, 1823: “To-day is the 15th of December, the day of your birth, but I am not sure whether it is the 15th or 17th, inasmuch as we can not depend on the certificate of baptism and I read it only once when I was still with you in January.” The nephew, it will be observed, does not appeal to a family tradition but to the baptismal certificate and the uncertainty, therefore, is with reference to the date of baptism, not of birth. Hence the deduction which Kalischer makes (“Vossische Zeitung,” No. 17, 1891) that Beethoven was born on December 15. Hesse calls to witness a clerk employed in Simrock’s establishment with whom Beethoven had business transactions, and who had written on the back of the announcement of Beethoven’s death, “L. v. Beethoven was born on December 16, 1770.”