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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2020
It is generally believed that when the Mozart family arrived in Vienna on 6 October 1762, they initially may have spent a night or two in the inn ‘Zum weißen Ochsen’ on Fleischmarkt, then moved for the remainder of their stay to lodgings on Tiefer Graben, either in a house belonging to Johann Heinrich Ditscher (Otto Erich Deutsch, 1961) or one belonging to Gottlieb Friedrich Fischer (Walter Brauneis, 1991). All modern Mozart biographies transmit either Deutsch's claim or Brauneis's, and many continue to state that the Mozarts stayed at ‘Zum weißen Ochsen’. We have been able to show that none of these claims has any merit, and no primary evidence supports them. The notion that the Mozarts stayed at ‘Zum weißen Ochsen’ can be traced back to an article published in 1860, where it is asserted without evidence; the idea was then popularized in a children's story about Wolfgang. The claim that the Mozarts lodged on Tiefer Graben is based on a fanciful interpretation of a mistranscribed street name in Schiedermair's 1914 edition of Leopold Mozart's letter of 19 October 1762.
Leopold actually wrote that the family lodged in ‘Fierberggaßl’. We argue that this refers to the still-existing Färbergasse, and that the Mozarts may have stayed in a house on that street (today the site of Färbergasse 3), with a long narrow wing fitting Leopold's description of their cramped quarters. We present other new details about this episode in Wolfgang's early life, including the identity of a customs official to whom he played a minuet on the violin, and the literary source of Leopold's remark that their lodgings were ‘1000 Schritt lang und 1. Schritt breit’. We also discuss the history of the house name ‘Zum rothen Säbel’, which is used incorrectly in the Mozart literature; at the time of the Mozarts’ visit in 1762, it referred to the house on Färbergasse in which – we argue – they actually stayed.
We would like to thank Susanne Pils of the Stadt- und Landesarchiv in Vienna for her help in acquiring images of items from this collection; Ulrich Leisinger, Waltraud Winkelbauer and Andreas Krexhammer for their quick and helpful answers to queries; and David Black, Steven Whiting, Janet Page and two anonymous readers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. We are especially grateful to Catherine Sprague: it was discussions with Sprague that first made us aware of the serious problems with accepted claims about the Mozarts’ lodgings in Vienna in 1762.
1 von Berchtold, Maria Anna, ‘Data zur Biographie des Verstorbenen Tonn-Künstlers Wolfgang Mozart’, in Deutsch, Otto Erich, Mozart: Die Dokumente seines Lebens (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1961), 399Google Scholar.
2 ‘Und dafür bekam er einen ganzen Dukaten’. Leopold Mozart, letter of 3 October 1762, in Wilhelm A. Bauer, Otto Erich Deutsch and Joseph Heinz Eibl, eds, Mozart: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen (hereafter MBA), seven volumes (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1962–1975), volume 1, 49.
3 MBA, volume 1, 50. An ‘Ordinari Schiff’ was a regularly scheduled boat taking passengers downstream on the Danube; it was considerably faster than travelling by coach.
4 Leopold's autograph letter of 16 October 1762 is in the Bibliotheca Mozartiana in Salzburg. The manuscript copies of his letters of 3 and 19 October 1762 are in ‘Abschrift von den Original=Briefen des Leopold Mozarts . . . ’, Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Mus.ep. Mozart, L. Varia 1. Scans of this volume are available online at http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB000217D700000000 (15 March 2020).
5 von Nissen, Georg Nikolaus, Biographie W. A. Mozart's (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1828)Google Scholar. The edited version of Leopold's letter of 16 October 1762 is on pages 21–24, and the extract from the letter of 19 October 1762 is on pages 24–25.
6 Ludwig Schiedermair, Die Briefe W. A. Mozarts und seiner Familie, five volumes (Munich and Leipzig: Georg Müller, 1914), volume 4, Die Briefe Leopold Mozarts und der übrigen Familie. The letter of 16 October 1762 is on pages 186–189, and the letter of 19 October 1762 is on pages 190–192.
7 MBA, volume 1, 51. Nissen's adulterated version of this letter omits the passage about Gilowsky and their quarters, as well as the sentence about the custom official's request to visit. The rest differs in many details from the version in MBA.
8 All translations are our own.
9 ‘Schanzel’, Wien Geschichte Wiki, https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Schanzel (15 March 2020).
10 On the Gilowskys see principally Martin, Franz, ‘Beiträge zur Salzburger Familiengeschichte. 50. Gilowsky von Urazowa’, Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskunde 78 (1938), 146–148Google Scholar, and Schuler, Heinz, ‘Die Salzburger Familie Gilowsky von Urazowa und ihre Beziehungen zu den Mozarts’, Wiener Figaro 46 (1979), 27–35Google Scholar. The Gilowskys styled themselves ‘Gilowsky von Urazowa’, but their patent of nobility is unconfirmed; according to Martin, ‘Franz Anton G. († 1770) besaß laut Verlaßinventar einen Wappenbrief, angeblich von Kaiser Rudolf II. d. dto. “auf unserm kgl. Prager Schloß am Samstag nach der Vigil s. Jacobi apostoli anno 1604” für Matthias Gilowsky von Urazowa. Im Jahre 1813 konnte die Familie den Nachweis ihres Adels nicht erbringen’ (According to his estate inventory, Franz Anton Gilowsky († 1770) possessed a letter granting a coat of arms, allegedly from Emperor Rudolf II, which was presented to Matthias Gilowsky von Urazowa ‘in our royal castle in Prague on Saturday after the vigil of St James the Apostle in the year 1604’. In 1813 the family could not produce proof of their nobility). Martin, ‘Beiträge zur Salzburger Familiengeschichte’, 146.
11 According to the commentary to Leopold's letter to Hagenauer of 30 October 1762 in the MBA, volume 5, 36, Leopold is ‘wahrscheinlich’ (probably) referring to Johann Joseph Anton Ernst Gilowsky. On the other hand, Heinz Schuler writes that ‘mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit’ (with great probability) Leopold was referring to Franz Anton Gilowsky, and ‘mit etwas geringerer Wahrscheinlichkeit’ (with somewhat less probability) Johann Joseph Anton Ernst. Schuler, Heinz, ‘Mozarts Konzertreisen 1762’, Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum 41/1–2 (1993), 33Google Scholar. No evidence or argument is offered in either case.
12 The probable identity of Leopold's ‘H: Mauthner’ has not previously been noted in the Mozart literature.
13 Kayserlich- und Königlicher, wie auch Erz-herzoglicher, dann dero Haupt- und Residenz-Stadt Wien Staats- und Standes-Calender . . . mit einem Schematismo gezieret (Vienna: Kaliwoda, 1760), 67.
14 Kayserlich- und Königlicher, wie auch Römisch-Königlicher, und Erz-Herzoglicher, dann dero Haupt- und Residenz-Stadt Wien Staats- und Standes-Calender . . . mit einem Schematismo (Vienna: Kaliwoda, 1765), 108.
15 Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Vienna, Totenbeschreibamt, Totenbeschauprotokoll 56, fol. 34r.
16 Unsere Liebe Frau zu den Schotten, Vienna, Trauungsbuch 02-31, fol. 148v. ‘[margin:] N. 126. / Copulati / ab R[everendissimo] P[atre] / Cœlestino / O[rdine] S[ancti] B[enedicti] / prof[esso] nostri / Monasterij / 15 Aug[usti] / [1]762. [main entry:] Der ehrsame H. Johann Lampl L[edigen] St[andes] ein K. K. Mauth / Collectant, allhier gebürtig, wohnhaft zu Mölckh in V[order] O[esterreich] / Nimbt zur Ehee die Ehr, und Tugendsame Frau Mariam / Annam Gräfin, v[on] Welß in O[ber] O[esterreich] gebürtig, wohnhaft / beÿm Schäntzl: Waÿl[and] H. Maximilian Graf eines g[e]westen / K. K. Mauth Einnehmer[s] beÿn Schäntzl seel[ig] hinterlassene / Wüttib [ . . . ]’
17 Schuler, ‘Mozarts Konzertreisen’, 34, notes that the Mozarts’ accommodation had probably been arranged ahead of time.
18 Wiener Theaterzeitung 54/22 (Friday, 27 January 1860), 86.
19 Bermann, Moriz, ‘Mozart und Erzherzogin Maria Antoinette als Brautleute’, Illustrirtes Haus- und Familien-Buch (Vienna: Verlag der typografisch-literarisch-artistischen Anstalt, 1862), 129–130Google Scholar; Moriz Bermann, ‘Berühmte Kinder der alten und neuen Zeit: Mozart’, Illustrirte Jugend-Zeitung 1/1 (Saturday, 10 December 1864), [6–7]. Bermann sets the story in September 1762. The Mozarts did not arrive in Vienna until 6 October.
20 Wiener Theaterzeitung 54/5 (Friday, 6 January 1860), 17.
21 Constant von Wurzbach, ‘Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus’, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich, sixty volumes, volume 19 (Vienna: k. k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1868), 236; Constant von Wurzbach, Mozart-Buch (Vienna: Wallishausser, 1869), 142.
22 See Schöny, Heinz, ‘Mozarts Wiener Wohnungen’, Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 11/4 (April 1956), 138Google Scholar, repeated in Helmut Kretschmer, Mozarts Spuren in Wien (Vienna: J & V Edition, 1990), 7.
23 See Schöny, ‘Mozarts Wiener Wohnungen’, 138; Schöny may have been the source for Walther Brauneis's identical claim in his annotations to Huber's ‘Vogelschauplan’ of Vienna, in Mozart: Bilder und Klänge. 6. Salzburger Landes-Ausstellung, Schloss Klessheim Salzburg, 23. März bis 3. November 1991 (Salzburg: Salzburger Landesausstellungen, 1991), 325.
24 Superscript Roman numerals on house numbers refer to successive numbering schemes used in Vienna: (I) from 1771 until 31 July 1795 (the so-called ‘Konskriptionsnummern’); (II) from 31 July 1795 until 1821; and (III) from 1821 until 1860. At the time of the Mozarts’ visit to Vienna in 1762, houses were not yet numbered.
25 MBA, volume 1, 54–55. Our transcription differs slightly from the one given in MBA: we have given the sentence in underline as it appears in the original, rather than in italics, and we have resolved abbreviations using square brackets (as in ‘zim[m]er’), rather than silently, as in MBA. Otherwise, the transcription of this passage in MBA is correct.
26 In this article, floors are referred to using the European system: ground floor, first floor, second floor.
27 Schiedermair, Briefe, volume 4, 191. Schiedermair's transcription has several other trivial differences from the one that appears in MBA. Schöny, ‘Mozarts Wiener Wohnungen’, 138, has ‘Hierberggaßl’; Emily Anderson and C. B. Oldman, The Letters of Mozart & His Family, three volumes (London: Macmillan, 1938), volume 1, 11, has ‘Hierberggasse’.
28 Paul Harrer-Lucienfeld, ‘Wien, seine Häuser, Menschen und Kultur’, eight volumes (typescript 1951–1958, Wienbibliothek, Vienna), volume 2, part 4, 744. This can be viewed online at https://www.digital.wienbibliothek.at/wbrobv/content/pageview/2282665 (15 March 2020).
29 Deutsch, Mozart: Dokumente, 17.
30 Emily Anderson, The Letters of Mozart and His Family, second edition, prepared by A. Hyatt King and Monica Carolan (London: Macmillan, 1966), volume 1, 8, note 5. Anderson's translation retains ‘carpenter's house’, as in the first edition.
31 The house No. 321I is described in Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Vienna, Steueramt B34/1, fols 478v–479r, reflecting the state of the house and its inhabitants in 1787/1788. It had four floors, with three shops on the ground floor, one apartment with three rooms on the first floor, one apartment with four rooms on the second floor and one apartment with two rooms on the third floor.
32 As described in Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Vienna, Steueramt B34/1, fols 435v–436r, house No. 296I had three floors, with four apartments on the ground floor, one of which had a guest room (‘Gastzimmer’; perhaps the ‘Bierhaus’ in Figure 4); four apartments on the first floor (three with two rooms and one with just a single room); and one apartment on the second floor. The description does not specify which apartments were in the main house and which were in the long and narrow extension. In his letter of 19 October 1762, Leopold Mozart specifies that they are staying ‘im ersten Stock’ (on the first floor). If we are correct in surmising that the Mozarts stayed in the house that became No. 296I, they would have been in one of the two-room apartments on the first floor.
33 The symbols used here are from the International Phonetic Alphabet.
34 For example, in the sixteenth century, the house that came to be No. 296I had been owned by dyers Hanns Lachsendorffer and then Georg Veyal; see Harrer-Lucienfeld, ‘Wien, seine Häuser, Menschen und Kultur’, volume 4, part 2, 499. This is viewable online at https://www.digital.wienbibliothek.at/wbrobv/content/pageview/2281975 (15 March 2020).
35 The earliest instance we have found of ‘rother Säbel’ applied to No. 296I is in the death notice for Juliana Stainer on 30 January 1707, Wienerisches Diarium 365 (1707), [8]. Most eighteenth-century references use this nominative form, or give ‘beym rothen Säbel’. ‘Zum rothen Säbel’ is used here for convenience in an English-language context.
36 Sebastian Erhardt's death is reported in the Wienerisches Diarium 25 (Saturday, 27 March 1762), [6]. For the history of the ownership of No. 296I see Harrer-Lucienfeld, ‘Wien, seine Häuser, Menschen und Kultur’, volume 4, part 2, 498–501. This is viewable online at https://www.digital.wienbibliothek.at/wbrobv/content/pageview/2281974 (15 March 2020).
37 In the second edition of his Mozart biography, Otto Jahn identifies the house on the corner of Wipplingerstraße and Färbergasse (No. 387I in Mozart's time) as ‘zum rothen Säbel’. See the appendix ‘Mozarts Wohnungen in Wien’ in Otto Jahn, W. A. Mozart, second edition (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1867), volume 2, 738. This is probably the root of the error in the subsequent Mozart literature.
38 Wiener Zeitung 43 (Thursday, 22 February 1821), 339.
39 See, for example, Neues, verbessertes und vermehrtes Häuser-Schema der k. k. Haupt- und Residenzstadt Wien (Vienna: Singer und Goering, 1847), where the house on Färbergasse (No. 333 at that time) is called ‘rothen Säbel’ on page 12, and the house on the corner of Wipplingerstraße (No. 352 at that time) is called ‘z. rothen Säbel’ on page 13.
40 Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Vienna, Unterkammeramt, alte Baukonsense, 5618/1802, 12 July 1802.
41 Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Vienna, Patrimonialherrschaften, Grundbuch B1.25, fol. 79v. The gap between the houses was mandated to be 7 Schuh = 7 Fuß (= 2.21 m or 7.25 ft).
42 On the units of measurement see ‘Klafter’, Wien Geschichte Wiki, https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Klafter (15 March 2020). Conversion factors are rounded to four decimal places; calculations in what follows have been rounded to two decimal places.
43 MBA, volume 1, 55.
44 MBA, volume 1, 54.
45 MBA, volume 3, 252.
46 MBA, volume 5, 41.
47 Ergötzlicher Aber Lehr= und Sittsamer auch von allerhand Unsauberkeiten und überlästigen Infamien rein bewahrter Burger=Lust (Augsburg: Andreas Brinhaußer, 1758), 23–24.
48 A version of the anecdote published in 1663 is transcribed in Elfriede Moser-Rath, “Lustige Gesellschaft”: Schwank und Witz des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts in kultur- und sozialgeschichtlichem Kontext (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984), 372; that version shows only inconsequential differences from the one given here. On page 416 Moser-Rath gives detailed notes on the publication history of the anecdote and its sources. The earliest attested edition of Burger=Lust dates from 1657; see Moser-Rath, “Lustige Gesellschaft”, 463.
49 On Leopold's estate see Rudolph Angermüller, ‘Leopold Mozarts Verlassenschaft’, Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum 41/3–4 (1993), 1–32; the books are discussed on pages 28–29.
50 Unsere Liebe Frau zu den Schotten, Vienna, Taufbuch, 01-36, fol. 17r.
51 Am Hof, Vienna, Taufbuch, 01-02, fol. 96.
52 Brauneis, ‘Vogelschauplan’, Mozart: Bilder und Klänge, 325.
53 Figure 2 shows that the transcription ‘Tischler’ is certainly correct.
54 Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Vienna, Steueramt B34/1, fols 480v–481r.
55 Schuler, ‘Mozarts Konzertreisen 1762’, 35.
56 Kretschmer, Mozarts Spuren in Wien, 8; Helmut Kretschmer, Mozarts Spuren in Wien, Wiener Geschichtsblätter, Beiheft 1 (2006), 3.
57 ‘Leopold Mozart an Johann Lorenz Hagenauer am 19. Oktober 1762: “[ . . . ] im Tischler-Hause [!] im ersten Stock”’. Rudolph Angermüller, Mozarts Reisen in Europa, 1762–1791 (Bad Honnef: K. H. Bock, 2004), 220. Angermüller omits the reference to ‘Fieberggaßl’ and then marks ‘Tischler-Hause’ as an (allegedly) self-evident error.
58 In the tax assessment of 1787/1788, No. 322I (which still belonged to Fischer) is described as having three floors, with three shops on the ground floor, a single two-room apartment on the first floor and a single two-room apartment on the second floor. Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Vienna, Steueramt B34/1, fols 479v–480r.
59 Harrer-Lucienfeld, ‘Wien, seine Häuser, Menschen und Kultur’, volume 4, part 2, 499 https://www.digital.wienbibliothek.at/wbrobv/content/pageview/2281975 (15 March 2020).
60 In his letter to Hagenauer of 24 November 1762, Leopold writes: ‘Gestern haben wir bey dem H: v Wahlau gespeist, und Abends hat uns unser H: Doctor Bernhard in die Opera in eine Loge abgehollet’ (Yesterday we dined with Herr von Wallau, and in the evening Herr Doctor Bernhard took us to a box at the opera). MBA, volume 1, 62. Philipp Gumpenhuber, in his chronicle of the Viennese court theatre in 1762, records that Gluck's Orfeo was performed in the Burgtheater on 23 November (‘Repertoire de tous les Spectacles qui ont été donné au Theatre près de la Cour Comedies Allemandes, Comedies Françoises, Opera italiennes Accademies de Musique &c. depuis le 1.r Janvier jusqu'au 31 Dec[embre] 1762 recueilli par Philippe Gumpenhuber’, Österreischische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Musiksammlung, Mus. Hs. 34580b, fol 118v).
61 See especially the page ‘The Sound of Mozart's Residence’ https://www.hotel-tigra.at/en/mozart/ (15 March 2020). The memorial plaque on the Hotel Tigra mentions only Wolfgang and Leopold's visit of 1773.