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WHERE
MOZART DIED – VIENNA
Mozart - Murder, Mystery and Masons
Where
did Mozart die? The short answer, RauhensteinGasse 4, Vienna. How did
Mozart die? A mystery wrapped in conspiracy theory with a little
soap opera drama thrown in the mix. The most famous composer of the Baroque
era died at the age of 35 in the early morning hours of December 5, 1791.
He had suffered a series of health problems throughout his relatively
short life, including smallpox and typhoid fever. After supervising a
performance
of his new opera La Clamenza di Tito in Prague, he began to feel ill.
He returned to Vienna and grew progressively worse while working on a
commissioned Requem. According to his wife, Constanze, Mozart’s “indisposition
increased visibly and made him gloomily depressed”. He began to
speak of death, was occassionally delusional and declared he was writing
the Requiem for himself adding, “I am sure I have been poisoned.
And cannot rid myself of this idea’" He took to bed on November
20, suffering from swelling, pain and vomiting and virtually never got
up again. His body swelled so much he could no longer sit up in bed,
or even move on his own, until death came with a last explosive wretch
of brown bile at 1 AM on the 5th of December. Mozart was stuggling with
poverty at the time of his death, due mostly to his heavy gambling, and
was buried on December 7 in an unmarked common paupers grave in the St.
Marx Cemetery just outside the walls of Vienna.
Mozart
Murder Theories
Mozart’s
statements about his belief in being poisoned has raised a raging controversy
about how he really died and whether he was murdered.
Many are familiar with the play Amadeus by Peter Shaffer and
the movie verison exploring the long held idea that the genius composer
was poisoned by
royal court chorale master Antonio Salieri. Salieri was indeed demonstrably
close to Mozart. Salieri, three other musicians and Mozart’s
patron Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who’d made the funeral arrangements
were the only attendees at the funeral of the greatest composer of
the time. Salieri was accused of the crime in his lifetime by inuendo
and
suffered under the accusation until his own death. But this is not
the only salacious murder conspiracy thoery.
With
the state of medicine at the time, the true cause of Mozart’s
death is near impossible to determine. The entry in the parish register
states that he died of a "severe milary fever", which descibes
a number of diseases marked by the symptoms of bumps on the skin.
Some blame Mozart’s death on his physician for malpractice,
though in the late 1700s, that was probably more true than not, in
general. One
theory holds that Mozart poisoned himself with a common patent medicine
remedy of the time containing antimony (see Swiss
Pharmacy Museum), a
metallic sulfide now used in car batteries, which was thought to
clear the bowels - or by taking Mercury to cure Syphillus. An experts
panel
recently opined than he simply died of the complications of Rhuematic
Fever. The real cause of Mozart’s death will never be known,
his body cannot be exumed and the hair locks that survive (see Mozarts
Birth
House Salzburg) are from an earlier time in his life.
Freemasons and the Bloody Rough Stone
The
most sensational conpiracy theories about Mozart’s demise was
his connectiion to the Freemasons. Mozart had become a mason in 1784
and at the time of his death was working on one of several music
compositions for the secretive organization. Shortly before his death,
Constanze tried
to cheer her husband of his dark thoughts of impending doom by encouraging
him to put aside the Requem and work instead on a contata, the Freimaurer,
to celebrate the opening a new Masonic Temple for his lodge. One
theory holds that the Freemasons had Mozart killed because his
opera The Magic
Flute drew on secrets of the Masonic Rituals which members
were bound on pain of death not to reveal. And he certainly owed much
of his gambling debts to his masonic brethern. The
other masonic related theory is less conspiratorial, but more human
and salacious than either Salieri’s
professional envy or Freemasonic evil. Mozart was a notorious
womanizer and a rumor was afoot about Vienna that Mozart had a dalience
with the
23 year old wife of a fellow of his own Masonic lodge, Franz Hofdemel.
This was given public credance by contempory and fellow lodge member
Ludwig Von Beethoven (see Schwartzen
Kameel)
who refused to play in the presence of the discredited young woman. The
day
after
Mozart’s
funeral, Hofdemel apprently brutally attacked his wife Magdelena
with a straight razor and then cut is own throat. His wife was found
alive, lying
in pool of blood and 5 months pregnant. She
was revived and gave birth to a boy she named after both her
dead husband
and Mozart, giving life to the whispered thoery that Hofdemel poisoned
Mozart after discovering the affair, before trying to kill his wife
and committing suicide.
Where Mozart Died
The
truth behind the real cause of the death of Mozart will never be known
for sure, and the actual building where he died was torn
down
in 1849. The lodging apartments where Mozart composed and breathed
his last
breath was located in the Rauhensteingasse (which means Rough Stone
Alley), Number 4, a block from the main shopping street of Vienna,
the Neuermarkt,
two blocks from St Stephens Cathedral. At the spot, now stands a
19th Century building which currently houses a leather goods shop
called
The World of Mozart, having little to do with the composer
other than
location and clever marketing. On the wall is a plaque placed in
1927 with the legend in German “An dieser stelle stand bis
1849 das haus im welchem Mozart am 5. Dezember 1791 gestorben ist.” translated “On
this spot until 1849 stood the house where Mozart Died”. And
more curiously, right across the street, not marked by a plaque but
still
standing since that late winter night of 1791 is the real building
where Mozart’s Masonic Lodge met, Rauhensteingasse Number 3,
near the corner of Ballgasse. The building houses another fashion
store
called Alexanders but you
can recognize the historic building by the Masonic symbol of the
hanging rough stone over the arched doorway. © Bargain
Travel Europe
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SEE ALSO:
TRADITIONAL VIENNA CAFÉS & CONFECTION
SACHER TORTE AND THE CAFÉ LIFE
MOZART GRAVES ST SEBASTIEN SALZBURG
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