Beethoven Museum Heiligenstadt

Historic · Döbling (19th)Vienna,Austria

The village house in Vienna's vineyards where Beethoven wrote his brothers the letter admitting he was going deaf, and never sent it.

The Beethoven Museum Heiligenstadt is the address where Beethoven wrote his brothers a letter admitting he was going deaf and had thought about ending his life. He dated it 6 October 1802, added a postscript four days later, and never sent it. It is called the Heiligenstadt Testament, though it is a letter and not a will, and it lay among his papers until friends found it after his death. He had come out to this wine village that spring on a doctor's advice. The doctor was Johann Adam Schmidt, an eye and ear specialist who hoped the village's mineral bath would help. It did not. The building was a country baker's house around a small courtyard, and the city opened rooms in it as a memorial in 1970. The letter on show is a reproduction, because the original has been in a Hamburg library since 1888. The strongest thing here is a listening station that plays music through Beethoven's hearing as it failed, until almost nothing comes through.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Give the walk more time than the rooms — The exhibition goes quickly. Afterwards head uphill along the stream rather than back to the tram — that path is what people remember.
Look for the blank space — In the letter he left a gap where his younger brother's name should be. Scholars still argue whether he was unsure of the name or angry.
Sit in the courtyard before going in — It is the one part of the site that still works as a house: benches, an apple tree, doors opening straight onto stairs.
Keep the stream path for daylight — It has no lighting and goes muddy in places after rain, and villas now stand behind the trees on both banks.
Count on stairs — The rooms sit on different levels with no lift, the entrance has a raised threshold, and a pushchair or wheelchair will not get past the first room.

Things to do

1
Stand in the courtyard and pick the room
Village talk written down in 1890 described a garden flat reached by a wooden stair from this courtyard. Stand at the bottom and pick the door it must have been — building research points to the upper flat on the right. It is the closest anyone gets to the room.
2
Follow the stream to the first monument they built him
From the museum, head uphill to the Beethovengang and follow the Schreiberbach until the houses thin. In a clearing called the Beethovenruhe, opposite Kahlenberger Strasse 69, an oversized bronze head on a stone block faces back down the valley. It was cast in 1862, the earliest Beethoven monument anywhere near Vienna.