Note 162 — Chapter X

He did not live to see this wish fulfilled; but it was in the end. Therese van Beethoven, Johann’s wife, died on November 20, 1828, at Wasserhof; Johann died in Vienna on January 12, 1848, and though one of Beethoven’s sensation-mongering biographers at one time printed the monstrous falsehood that he had married his wife’s illegitimate daughter in order to keep the family possessions in his hands, and at another that he had invested his money so that he might use it up during his life and leave nothing to his heirs, the fact is that Johann made Karl his sole heir and that under the will, after paying the costs of probate and administration and a legacy to his housekeeper, over 42,000 florins passed into his nephew’s hands.