Kicked Down the Stairs

In the doorway of this building, at the gate leading into the courtyard of the Teutonic Order, Count Arco planted a kick on his backside and sent him out into the street.

 

Mozart had come to Vienna that year in the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg, who ran his Viennese headquarters here, and he was lodged with the staff. At the dinner table he sat above the cooks and below the valets, performing was only allowed with permission, and the lucrative evenings out in the city passed him by entirely.

 

That summer he handed in his resignation, his employer refused to accept it, and the quarrel dragged on for weeks until it ended right here in this doorway.

 

What followed was more unusual than the row itself, because he stayed on in Vienna with no fixed position, one of the first to attempt such a thing. For ten years it worked out well.

 

We cross the Kärntner Straße toward the Rauhensteingasse, where that same story came to an end.