When Beethoven was a child The Enlightenment was in full swing. Bonn, the home city of the Beethoven family, was chief among the German cities advancing the cultural revolution. In 1773 the Pope dissolved the Jesuits that ended their traditional monopoly in education. Accordingly, in Bonn the Jesuit school was turned into a new state school, called Academy. All over Germany drama, fiction and philosophy was awakening. Many call this era the Goethezeit, Goethe’s time – who in that period was the most dominant writer on the rise.
At the age of 5 or 6 (exact time is unknown) young Ludwig van Beethoven started his primary education in a school called Tirocinium. By this time the progressive education approach was dominant in schools and after the Jesuits it was more secular and enlightened.
Young Beethoven did not make lasting impression in his teachers or classmates. He learned a little French, Latin, writing and adding. He never fully understood how to divide or multiply. Even as a grown up he would write down the numbers as many times he needed and added them up, instead of multiplying.
A schoolmate called Wurzer remembered “One of my schoolmates under Krengel was Luis van Beethoven, whose father held an appointment as court singer under the Elector. Apparently his mother was already dead at the time, for Luis v. B. was distinguished by uncleanliness, negligence, etc. Not a sign was to be discovered in him of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards. I imagine that he was kept down to his musical studies from an early age by his father.”
At the age of ten his father decided that he no longer gains anything useful from school and was withdrawn from formal education in order to concentrate on his musical development.
