It is a well-known fact about Beethoven that he was an emotional, erratic man. Many times he made his decisions that way. What did it take, however, for Beethoven to make an extraordinary and radical decision about his father: to exile him from Bonn!
Johann van Beethoven was not a good father. As we have written in many other articles, including Ludwig’s biography, his father was an exploitative, oppressive, aggressive and alcoholic man. Initially, he manifested his frustrations and aggression in his son’s music education during their piano lessons. Later, he tried to imitate the father of another famous musician, Leopold Mozart, to make his son an economic success as well. Beethoven thus spent his childhood with a threatening alcoholic father and a loving, but depressed mother. Perhaps because of his father’s tyranny the composer rebelled against authority and oppression throughout his life.
In 1787, his mother Mary Magdalena Keverich, died at the age of 49. The tragic news hit Beethoven in Vienna, who soon returned home to Bonn on hearing of his mother’s illness, but did not get home in time.
After the death of his mother he remained in Bonn and tried to take care of his brothers and his sinking father. This was an extremely dark era in the life of the then 17-year-old Beethoven. After returning home he failed to bounce back into the local music scene, the family was deprived. In addition to the grief he felt after his mother’s death, the burden of caring for the little brothers also weighted on his shoulders, just as he had to endure their father’s shameful behavior on daily basis.
If all that hadn’t been enough, another tragedy happened to the family! Margaret, the one-and-a-half-year-old sister at the time, died.
After the death of their mother, the family hired a housekeeper, Frau Karth, who helped keeping the household together. The family still lived on Wenzel Street. The younger children slowly began to orientate towards a profession. Carl was destined for a musical career by his father and directed Johann towards the pharmacy profession.
During this period all of Beethoven’s remaining hopes evaporated. His father sinking into even more severe depression and alcoholism, day by day ruining their family reputation built up by his late grandfather. It was then that 19-year-old Beethoven decided to take a radical step. He made a written request to the Elector asking him to exile his father from Bonn to a surrounding village, and he himself would take over the role of head of the family; for which he asks that half of his father’s court salary be given to him from then on.
“His Electoral Highness having graciously granted the prayer of the petitioner and dispensed henceforth wholly with the services of his father, who is to withdraw to a village in the electorate, it is graciously commanded that he be paid in accordance with his wish only 100 rthr. of the annual salary which he has had heretofore, beginning with the approaching new year, and that the other 100 thlr. be paid to the suppliant’s son besides the salary which he now draws and the three measures of grain for the support of his brothers.”
We do not know with absolute certainty whether this exile has actually taken place or not. According to Frau Karth’s recollection, their father still lived with the family, but he really only received half his salary.
His father, Johann van Beethoven, died on 18 December 1792. By this time Ludwig was already living in Vienna, where the news of his death reached him. The young composer did not travel home for his father’s funeral.
