Ludwig van Beethoven spent all his life among nobles, aristocrats and royalty. Many believed him to be of noble birth, but was he?
Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn in Germany’s Rhine country, but his family on his father’s side was from the town called Malines or Mechelen. This city is in the duchy of Brabant, modern day Belgium.
This information is decisive only because of those three letters in the middle of his name: van. In continental Europe nobility was easily identifiable by the name of a person. If the name contained von, and in Germany often a van, it meant nobility. But it was not the case in Flanders, where his family was from!
Ludwig van Beethoven most certainly was a noble man by character, but not by birth! He was a commoner, who spent most of his life among the nobility, aristocrats and royals pretending to be one. His audience presumed he was a noble (because of the name) and he was not in a hurry to deny or clarify the case.
In fact, for the general public it was not evident until his custody battle (1815-1820) over his nephew Karl, against the boy’s mother. At that point, probably not thinking through the situation, he confessed to the court about his name. As a consequence, his case was moved from the Imperial Royal Landrechete (court for nobles) to the Vienna Magistrat (court for commoners).
The most striking line in this noble pretence was the one he kept alive in public for decades, about himself, being the illegitimate child of Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm II or even of Frederick the Great.
Beethoven despised birth rights, yet he pretended to have them. He looked down on nobles, yet he moved among them and gained his living by them. This inconsistency may be somehow resolved by understanding that he considered himself a noble by character and acts, rather than birth. As he famously wrote to Prince Lichnowsky, “Prince! What you are, you are by circumstance and by birth. What I am, I am through myself. Of princes there have been and will be thousands. Of Beethovens there is only one.”
