Note 20 — Chapter III

Thayer’s characterization of the joyless boyhood of Beethoven may submit to a slight modification, at least so far as his childhood is concerned, without violence to the verities of history. Fischer would have us believe that the lad took part with his brother Carl in boyish capers which were not always of a harmless character. In a letter to Simrock, Court Councillor Krupp relates: “My father, who died in 1847, was a youthful friend and schoolmate of Ludwig and Carl van Beethoven, and distantly related to the godmother of the former. Thursdays were holidays for the schoolboys, and the brothers Beethoven, L. and C., were then wont to come to the house of my grandparents, No. 28 Bonngasse (now belonging to my sister and me), and amuse themselves, among other things, with target shooting. There was a wall between the garden of our house and the gardens of the adjoining houses in the Wenzelgasse against which the target was placed at which the boys shot arrows; a hit in the centre brought forth a Stüber (about 4 pfennigs) for the lucky marksman. Garden and wall are now (1890) in the same condition as then. In the evening the Beethoven brothers went home through the Gudenauergässchen. The family lived at the time in the Wenzelgasse back of our house.” Here is an inaccuracy, for Ludwig van Beethoven no longer went to school when the Beethoven family changed their house in the Rheingasse for that in the Wenzelgasse—which was probably about 1785. The letter continues: “Ludwig’s father treated him harshly, especially when he was intoxicated, and sometimes shut him up in the cellar.”