Ludwig van Beethoven was the oldest surviving child in the family. Their mother, Maria Magdalena, gave birth to eight children, but only three of them lived through infancy.
Ludwig, by his late teenage years, in the absence of a living mother and a dependable father, became the guardian of his siblings. This duty he carried on all his life and practiced in overdrive mode, often being intrusive and over-protective. Their relationship was difficult sometimes, but time and again they enjoyed some fun together and jokes were cracked.
|Related: The siblings of Ludwig van Beethoven
Nikolaus Johann, the youngest sibling, was a pharmacist, something he had learned in Bonn and first practiced in Vienna, as an assistant. Later he moved to Linz (a small city in Austria) and opened his own pharmacy.
Napoleonic wars made Nikolaus a rich person, as the French army based a military hospital near Linz, where Nikolaus became a medicine supplier. This made him less than popular among the locals…
In 1819 he purchased an estate in Gneixendorf, something he was proud of and this he reported to his oldest brother in a letter, that he signed as Johann, land owner. Ludwig van Beethoven, his famous composer brother, who was an expert in calling people names, something he practiced daily with his friends and even foreigners on the street, replied to his sibling in a letter, closing with the signature: Ludwig v. Beethoven, brain owner.
