Tens of thousands in the streets

The ordinary apartment block in front of you dates from around 1900, and only the plaque on the facade gives away that this was the site of the house where Ludwig van Beethoven died on the twenty-sixth of March 1827, fifty-six years old, after months of illness during which doctors drained fluid from him four times.

 

Three days later the whole city turned out. Estimates run from ten thousand to far higher, the street had to be kept clear, and the procession struggled to reach the church. Among the torchbearers walked a thirty-one-year-old composer who had lived his whole life in this city and never quite found solid ground here.

 

That man, Franz Schubert, died twenty months later of typhoid, and he asked to be buried beside Beethoven, which is exactly what happened. When he died, his possessions amounted to a few pieces of clothing and some bedding, plus a stack of manuscripts that nobody dared put a price on.

 

And with that the circle closes, because he is the same boy from the first stop, the choirboy who was always hungry.

 

From the Universität, two streets back, the tram carries you into the city centre in a few minutes.