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The Life, Death and Life of Wolfgang Mozart |
This is Constanza Mozart, in 1802
This is Constanza's first husband, Wolfgang Mozart, in 1782
This is Constanza's second husband, Georg Nikolaus Nissen, in 1809
It is commonly believed that Mozart died, in Vienna, on December 5, 1791, a few weeks shy of his 36th birthday. In support of this are the following facts:
But not so. Mozart had that year alone (1791) staged two successful operas & given numerous other concerts. Imagine Andrew Lloyd Weber opening not one, but two new musicals in London's West End in the same year. Or Stephen Sondheim doing the same on Broadway in New York. At his death, Mozart was neither obscure, nor broke. He very likely died with receipts still owed him.
Vienna's medical examiner said Mozart died of "acute miliary fever", and further stated that he had examined the body itself. Acute miliary fever is tuberculosis. This contradicts all first-hand accounts and so is ignored or fudged by Mozart scholars. They pretend that we can no longer know what was meant by "acute" "miliary" "fever", that medicine was primitive & its terms vague.
To the contrary. Acute can have only limited meaning: Rapid, or intense. Miliary is that which is similar to millet, which is a tiny brown seed. Fever is an elevated body temperature. Miliary is specifically applied to tubercular-type diseases, of which tuberculosis of the lungs is by far the most common. There is no ambiguity. Galen would have understood perfectly. Moreover, every sniffle & sneeze of the infant Mozart has been brought out of the dark ages of medical superstition into the bright light of modern medicine, and this often from mere casual reports. Mozart's biographers have willfully ignored his final medical report.
When discrepancies exist between the medical examiner's report and those of eyewitnesses, when those eyewitnesses are themselves inconsistent, when no independent medical records survive, and finally, when the body itself disappears, we have a case of SUSPICIOUS DEATH.
It is my contention that Wolfgang Mozart did not die on December 5, 1791. I believe he faked his death & fled the city. As all previous discussions of his death have led us nowhere, let us see where my idea may take us:
In cases of suspicious death, historical researchers study the subsequent actions of friends & family, to see what develops.
In Mozart's case, after his disappearance, friends set about completing his Requiem. After that, musical scholars pretty much stopped looking for him. They believed what they had been told. Amazingly, they still do.
In Mozart's case, re-emergence did not take long.
Constanze Mozart lost four of her six children. She herself had nearly died in childbirth a few years before. Now, with the loss of her husband, Wolfgang, she had only two sons left of her family. They must have been the most precious things to her in all the world.
This is why, in 1792, she sent her eldest son, Carl, to stay with a friend of her late husband's in Prague. That man was Franz Xaver Niemetscheck, a censor. He was 26, ten year's Mozart's junior. Prague is 200 miles from Vienna, which at the time would have been about a week's journey. A week's journey is nothing terribly much. Salzburg is only two days from Vienna, and it was in Salzburg a few years earlier where Wolfgang & Constanze had received news from Vienna of the unexpected death of one of their children. While there is no known response to this death, Mozart did not compose for several months thereafter.
Niemetscheck had embarked on an early biography of the late Mozart. Nevermind his youthfulness, nor his probable lack of the resources necessary to undertake such a project. What was his secret, why did Constanze lavish one of her two remaining sons on him?
Almost certainly because Mozart himself had taken refuge in his house. Prague liked Mozart. He had many friends there. It was nearby & would be a logical place to seek shelter. But separation from one's family is hard on any man. In the first months after his death, Mozart did not know when he would see his wife or children. The solution was to send one of them to be with his father. Nothing unusual about this, except that Mozart was supposed to be dead and Constanze was supposed to be a grieving widow clutching desperately to the remnants of her family. Supposedly Niemetscheck was a baby sitter, supposedly Carl was attending boarding school, but Constanze had plenty of friends & family in Vienna, which itself has plenty of schools.
Interestingly, a few years later censor Niemetscheck ran afoul of the authorities & lost his job. Hosting a radical like Mozart is one way that can happen.
Around 1793 - if my Danish is any good - one Georg Nikolaus Nissen arrives in Vienna. I believe him to be, in reality, none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself. He is the new first consul of the Danish government, ie, its ambassador to the Hapsburg court. As you can see from the portrait above, he is the virtual double of Wolfgang Mozart. Portraits of these two men make for an interesting discussion, which I will get to below.
Constanze & Georg are said to have met when they accidentally discovered they lived in the same apartment building. This story has holes in it.
Ambassadors, then as well as now, are not given leave to rent where they may. Their persons, their papers, demand security. Additionally, they may be recalled or asked to leave at any moment, thus necessitating a quick replacement, as well as security during the process. For these reasons, ambassadors have established quarters, owned & usually furnished by their government. It is a small expense that avoids a great many problems.
There is, in addition, the female problem. No one much cares if ambassadors or heads of state pursue females, as it is presumed the male is the dominant partner in the relationship & the female simply his amusement. But when an ambassador takes up with the "wrong" native woman, such as a powerful widow - and Constanze was certainly powerful - questions of espionage are immediately raised. For this reason, single men are rarely tapped to the highest levels of representation, and, regardless of marital status, an ambassador's extra-curricular activities are carefully monitored, both by his fellow countrymen, as well as the local police. Ambassadors have privileges. Privileges are power, power can be abused, so careful watch is kept.
So why would the Danes choose Mozart as their representative? Knowing, as they did, who he really was? For many good reasons, among them:
As ambassador, did Mozart need to speak Danish? No. In fact, the Danes would probably have preferred he did not. Anything Copenhagen needs to tell him can be translated. If Mozart cannot read the Danish cables & briefs that cross his desk, so much the better. He is easier to control that way.
And you may never have thought it could happen, but countries sometimes employ natives of other countries to be their ambassadors. I once met an English family, firmly settled in the English Midlands, whose father was the Norwegian ambassador to some African country. As far as Africa was concerned, the English & the French had colonized the place, so when the colonies became independent & the rest of the world needed representation, they initially turned to those two countries to supply the demand. As Norway has stronger ties to England than to France, an Englishman was their natural choice.
So it seems to me that Georg & Constanze were caught red handed one afternoon in her flat by someone who didn't know what the game was. And so they invented the excuse that Georg lived nearby. Perhaps after that, he really did. Ambassadors who are trusted have been known to have their own private quarters.
Death is something that overwhelms us, we do not need a why to explain it. Faked death is another matter.
The London-based researcher, Robert Newman, has found evidence of a secret tribunal against Mozart during the final year of his life. The subject of the tribunal may have been The Marriage of Figaro, and for all I know the proceedings may have been instigated by a jealous husband, the fall-out from one of Mozart's casual affairs. If this speculation is true, the consequences for Mozart would not have been pleasant, and may have given rise to the temptation of flight.
Otherwise, we should step back a moment & consider what Mozart's life had been like, from his perspective. Why would Mozart fake death and in the process, give up his splendid career for a life of insecurity & obscurity?
Because in reality, Mozart had been ground down, first by the unrealistic, unstoppable demands of his father, then by the necessity of going on with it as a young adult. Mozart is described as a child prodigy, but that no longer means a lot to us. In modern terms, Mozart was a child star. A mega-star. In fact, like many such children, he was often little more than a trained monkey, running endlessly in a cage. When I first saw the movie, Amadeus, I was repulsed by Tom Hulce's characterization of Mozart: Brash, vulgar and cheap. Now I think differently. Now I think of all the child stars who cracked under the pressure, acted out, went into drugs & died. Again & again. It is a horrible life that few survive.
One of the few ways to avoid the burnout trap is to find a mate. Someone who loves you despite yourself, someone stable & with brains. Mozart was lucky. He found Constanze.
At first, I imagine it was enough just for her to be there with him, but increasingly over their married life, just being there was not enough. The catalyst may have been the six pregnancies, the four dead children, the two surviving boys, the incredible stress on Constanze herself. By 1791, one way or another, Mozart and family had to get away from life as they knew it. Life as Mozart had always known it.
The belief that Mozart actually died in 1791 is, at bottom, a belief that Mozart was a weak & helpless fool, spinning out of control. For a man of his talent, for a man of his experience, for a man of his intelligence, this is not credible.
It is just as realistic to suggest that, facing crisis, he & Constanze set about to plan a new life, and when their preparations were complete, they put them into effect. This has the additional virtue of putting Mozart at the center of his own world, master of his fate. For those of you who are skeptical, which would you rather have: A weak, helpless Mozart, or one firmly in command of his life?
Flight, which is what a faked death amounts to, was something Mozart could easily do. He grew up on the road. He knows how to travel, he knows where his papers are, he knows where to get more, he knows who has fakes (and how much they cost), he knows how to cross borders & avoid inspection if need be. He knows how to draw attention to himself, he knows how to travel invisibly. Not only could Mozart have faked his death, it would have presented him with few technical challenges.
So far as his future employment prospects are concerned, if we consider Mozart as a child star, we immediately think of other stars who burned out & took up diplomacy. Among them, Shirley Temple, Audrey Hepburn, Bono, and, (a bit further afield) Lady Di & Ronald Reagan. An early stage career seems to be good training for the diplomatic field. Mozart has the additional advantage of his travels. Knowing where faked papers can be had can be very useful to a diplomat.
In all these ways, dear reader, do I establish that Mozart faked his death & fled Vienna, returning a few years later. Later I will show more evidence.
So what does this clone of Mozart do once he takes up with the Widow Mozart? Well, of course. What any second husband would do. He starts the first comprehensive biography of Wolfgang Mozart!
The papers of Georg Nikolaus Nissen say that he was born January 22, 1761 in Haderslev, Denmark, nearly five years to the day after Mozart himself. I have no doubt that a birth certificate / baptismal records for Mr. Nissen exist & can be presented. I also have no doubt he has not one, but two death certificates: The known one, of March 24, 1826, and a much, much earlier one. The rules for faked identity are the same now as then. Find a child's death certificate and then, using the date & place of birth found on it, go to the birth registrar & claim the birth certificate as one's own.
On his arrival in Vienna in 1793, Nissen is 32 years old. By the time he takes up study of the life & works of Mozart, he is presumably in his 40's. Men in their 40's have careers. They have a life. They are generally not available for new, large scale projects. Such men as are available at that age are dandies or fools, and Constanze does not strike me as one to put up with either for very long.
As a non-native, Nissen - the real one, the Dane - has the same disadvantages exploring Mozart's life as he does as the Danish representative at the Habsburg court. He's an outsider. He does not know the lay of the land & presumably gets his diplomatic commission, at age 32, based on status. We might presume he comes from a German-speaking Danish family, it makes things a bit neater. So far as music is concerned, Nissen claimed he knew nothing about it. As is well-known, music is a vast, complex subject. Of the arts, it provides the greatest enjoyment, but is the most difficult of all to master. So why would Nissen - the real one - be anybody's choice for either job? Ambassador or Mozart biographer?
Because, in the real world, ambassadors who are native to the country they serve are long-serving, long-suffering civil servants. Their first postings are as background staff. They slowly rise through the ranks, they slowly accumulate experience, insights & wisdom, until they might finally hope to become the eyes & ears of their king or queen. But as often as not, they are upstaged by cunning interlopers, such as Casanova, or Mozart/Nissen.
In the real world, the study of a musician's life requires the talents of a musician, which neither Constanze nor Georg claimed to have. This is especially true for a study of Mozart & his life. The sheer speed & quantity of his many compositions, as well as the many people, places & events of his short life, demand someone familiar not only with music, but with Europe as a whole.
Mozart himself fits both requirements.
If Mozart in fact became Nissen and then returned to the top circles of Vienna & went back to his own wife (a stunning case of hiding in plain sight), we might reasonably expect he would try to suppress evidence that would betray him.
Such as portraits.
There are today only ten portraits of Mozart known to have been painted in his lifetime. You can see them here. All of them either of Mozart as a child, or in a family setting.
My friends, this is no more credible than anything else in Mozart's strange life.
Men in Mozart's position, even when they are standing still, get their portrait painted or sketched at least every year or two. Beethoven is a typical example. His portraits are numerous & surprisingly varied.
Mozart was not sedentary. Mozart was a well-traveled star. A sketch of his face, posted on the theatre door, would almost certainly have preceded many of his concert appearances. His many fans, scattered throughout Europe, would have insisted on his sitting for portraits (as mementos), and would have gladly paid both the artist & Mozart himself. This is especially true of Prague. Even if Mozart were not vain, there should still be dozens of authentic pictures. Yet of the surviving portraits, there is not a single one of the adult Mozart by himself.
Nissen's portrait is equally interesting. On the internet I can find only two: The superb oil (above) and a drawing sketched from it. The oil comes near the end of his ambassadorial tenure in Vienna. In it, he is wearing what I presume is a Danish military uniform. The quality of the work makes me suspect it was by the official painter to the Danish court. If so, it means it was most likely ordered by the Danish government itself, a requirement that Nissen/Mozart could not escape, though he could delay. It might just be me, but he looks worried. I presume it originally hung in the ambassador's official residence, alongside the portraits of his predecessors.
I believe the absence of Mozart's portraits to be the action of Nissen, who I believe collected & destroyed them. If Mozart is, in fact, Georg Nissen, he would have had little choice in the matter. This is further evidence that Mozart survived. The necessity to destroy portraits might have been the impetus behind Nissen's entire Mozart biography project.
So it is quite likely that, in the absence of portraits, Mozart-as-Nissen could have attended Beethoven's many concerts, as the Danish representative, of course. He could even have meet Beethoven, without Beethoven having any idea. While Beethoven may have honored his memory, the two met only once, briefly, when Beethoven himself was still young.
It was suggested that Nissen could be confirmed as Mozart if their handwriting matched. Regrettably, they will not. It might be that Mozart/Nissen took special care not to be caught out in this manner, but the reason for the change is probably more practical.
Nissen needed a way to distinguish between his own undated scribbles, and the many undated scribbles of Mozart. Papers may lay undisturbed in albums for decades and emerge as fresh as the day they were first made. This is true even of cheap newspapers.
I suppose if one worked very hard, and compared very carefully, one might find similarites between the handwriting of the two men. But I doubt many would be convinced on this evidence alone.
1791, the last year of Mozart's short life, was also one of the busiest. With the decision for Mozart to permanently disappear, this was the final opportunity for him to make money as a composer / performer. And he did. Even by his standards, his output was prodigious.
He also made sure everyone knew what was coming. He started his very own requiem mass, claiming it was commissioned, but refusing to say by whom. Then, in a change from his usual work habits, he deliberately dallied in its composition, stringing it along through the summer & fall. Shortly after starting it, he got a rumor going that he had been poisoned & would shortly be on his deathbed. This struck a romantic nerve in the world at large, but it was an absurd claim. Avoiding family doctors, he consulted two others. They promptly diagnosed some form of brain rot, but as they lacked the means to peer into the human skull (which we still lack, for the most part), their opinions could only have been derived from Mozart's own fancies. He, after all, paid for those opinions.
What Mozart did not do was try to find his poisoner. Nor was this "real" poison anyway. Real single-dose poisons work in a few hours, or a few days, or a week or two at very latest, depending on what part of the body they affect, which is how they are classed. Based on the part of the body they attack, they have known symptoms, none of which Mozart had. What Mozart was almost certainly referring to was that exotic tropical poison, the one we have all heard of, which, according to how it is prepared, magically kills in an exact number of days, weeks or months after it is administered. I do not know if such a potion actually exists, but I do know the mystery writers of the world would dearly love to discover it. The possibility that some master poisoner secretly lurked in Vienna & super-secretly poisoned Mozart, such as he himself knew, but could not tell us who, is not credible.
That Mozart himself seems to be the source of this story should give us pause.
Consider again the many strange stories of Mozart's death. Why does no one (including me) believe the official report of "acute miliary fever"? Was the examiner bribed, and, if so, was a ludicrous cause of death part of his price? Or was he deliberately misled, perhaps by Constanze feigning hysterics? Or, one way or another, was the actual report one of those heat-of-the-moment blunders, the sort that figure so prominently on TV detective shows? We may never know.
Are the many eyewitness accounts of Mozart's death genuine? Were they set down spontaneously, to be later discovered & offered to early biographers? Or did Constanze and/or Nissen solicit them?
The principal argument in favor of their being solicited is that, collectively, they simply do not add up. Genuine witnesses would tend to agree on enough details for some reasonable guess to be made as to the actual cause of Mozart's demise. Yet this is exactly what is lacking. What we appear to have is a bunch of random statements, put together by people who clearly knew little about medicine. Which, if this is true, is exactly what we would expect of a man (Mozart/Nissen) who was an accomplished composer, performer, traveler and diplomat, but who utterly lacked medical training. That Nissen was uncurious & did not take the various reports to competent medical personnel for their expert opinion is itself a telling omission. (If he had, he might have gotten the stories straight!)
It might be that Mozart/Nissen held doctors in contempt. When four of your children die, when your wife nearly dies, when you can lead doctors around with phony stories of poisoning, one might get the idea Mozart thought the medical profession, as a whole, to be stupid. (There are many of us who still think this is so.) And even if you think the medicine of Mozart's day to be primitive, there are still known ailments & their known symptoms.
A secondary argument against the deathbed accounts being genuine is their very pretentiousness. They are overdrawn, overly emotional, overly dramatic, filled with an overabundance of detail, especially those written more than a decade later. They look like forced creative writing projects.
Georg/Wolfgang & Constanze had a wonderful life together. The first part was wild & chaotic & exciting, the second part frustrating & nerve-wracking, the third part warm & snug, and finally, secure. And through all of it, they were very, very happy together. This is one of history's great love stories. In 1809, the two married for the second time. From 1812 to 1820, they lived in Copenhagen. It's said he "retired", but once he got "back home", it seems he was employed as a mere censor. Would not a diplomat, returning home from nearly 20 years service at one of the world's great courts, have the ear of his king? Unless, of course, he was merely some other country's turncoat in need of refuge. The final six years of their life together were spent in Mozart's native Salzburg. Georg Nikolaus Nissen, born Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, died in 1826, aged 70. He is buried next to his beloved wife (d. 1842), at St. Sebastien Friedhof. Looking at the photos, I can feel the love still pouring out.
Nissen's papers, which I presume are scattered between Denmark & Austria, should be re-catalogued. I would not be surprised if one or more of Beethoven's lost manuscripts were to be found among them, specifically, that of Beethoven's second symphony.
Finally, a note to Robert Newman. Could Nissen be responsible for the mysterious disposition of Bonn's kapelmeister's archives? You've also noted a mysterious "N.N." in Mozart's final letters. "Niemetscheck & Nissen"? Nikolaus Nissen, presumed father or brother or cousin of Georg Nikolaus Nissen?
David R. Roell
My thanks to The Beethoven Reference Site, and especially to Administrators Peter & Chris, and to researcher Robert Newman, for the inspiration, and, most importantly, for their enormous patience.
Copyright 2006. All rights reserved
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