Lorenzo Da Ponte's Viennese Residence in 1788

In the book about the 2006 exhibition Lorenzo Da Ponte Aufbruch in die Neue Welt at Vienna's Jewish Museum, Werner Hanak writes:

In 1787, Da Ponte is at the peak of his librettist career. And yet he is going to rise and take an even more important role in the world of theater. But before we reach that point in the exhibition, let us interject a question: Where did Da Ponte actually live in Vienna? Contrary to Mozart, whose letters tell us about his numerous addresses during his Viennese years, and different from Da Ponte in New York, where he is documented as established businessman or teacher in many address books, none of the librettist's addresses in Vienna could so far be identified.

Two of Da Ponte's addresses in Vienna can very roughly be located based on the information given in two passages of his memoirs to which Hanak duly refers in his article. After his arrival in Vienna, Da Ponte seems to have lived in the inner city which turned out to be too expensive for him:

Instead of keeping my apartment in the city, which cost me very dearly, I took a small chamber in the house of a tailor in the suburb of Wieden.

A clip from the 1829 edition of Da Ponte's Memorie describing his move to the sobborgo di Vidden.

In a later passage in his memoirs, Da Ponte describes how he dreamed that he ran into Casanova on the Graben, one of the streets of Vienna where he lived at that time ("una cioè delle strade di Vienna, dove io allora abitava"). And at some time before February 1785 (at which time Casanova left Vienna), Da Ponte's dream came true:

Salieri, who used to visit me every day, arrived at the usual hour to take me for a walk in a public garden. When I arrived at the Graben, I noticed an old man in some distance who was watching me attentively and didn't seem unfamiliar to me. Suddenly I saw him leaving his spot, he approached me, embraced me with great vivacity and exclaimed: "Da Ponte, dear Da Ponte, what joy to find you here!" And those were the very same words that he had said to me in my dream.

 Da Ponte describing his dream and his 1784/85 encounter with Casanova on Vienna's Graben

In September 2011, in the course of a complete reading of the 1787/88 Josephinische Steuerfassion, I located Da Ponte's name in these tax records (an inventory of all Viennese houses subjected to taxation, their main tenants and their leasing rates). It turns out that in 1788 Lorenzo Da Ponte lived in the "Heiligengeist Haus" ("Holy Ghost House") No. 316, at the upper end of the Tiefer Graben, opposite the the so-called Heidenschuß, between the squares Am Hof and Freyung. There, for an annual rent of 200 Gulden, Da Ponte lived in an apartment on the fourth floor that consisted of three rooms, a kitchen, and a firewood vault.

The second page of the list of tenants in the house Stadt 316 in the Steuerfassion with Da Ponte listed as no. 15 (A-Wsa, Steueramt B34/1, fol. 470)

3ter Stock
15.        Rechter Hand 3 Zimmer, 1 Küche, 1 Holz

                   gewölb L'Abbe da Ponte                     200 [fl]

L'Abbe da Ponte listed in the 1788 tax register (A-Wsa, Steueramt B34/1, fol. 470)

Unfortunately, the bishopric's general ledger preserved in Vienna's Diözesanarchiv does not list the individual tenants and only gives a general summary of the house's annual rental yield (amounting to 3431 gulden in 1788/89). The name "Holy Ghost House" originated from a hospital foundation of the Order of the Holy Ghost which was established in Vienna on 27 May 1211, by Duke Leopold VI and his personal physician. The Holy Ghost Hospital proper, which was located on the Wieden, ran into hard times and was eventually destroyed by the Turks in 1529, during the Siege of Vienna. The last head of the Viennese branch of the Holy Ghost foundation, Dr. Jacob Nagl, went to great efforts to at least preserve the two houses in the city at the corner of Tiefer Graben and Heidenschuß for the foundation. For financial reasons the foundation eventually had to be disbanded, and in 1579, the two houses were taken over by the bishop Johann Caspar Neubeck for the bishopric of Vienna. The two old small houses were torn down in 1639, and, for reasons of maximization of rental yield, replaced with one six-storied house whose broadsides faced the Heidenschuß and the Tiefer Graben. The entrance of the house was located on the southwest side and was decorated with a huge stone coat of arms of the house's builder Philipp Friedrich Count Breuner, similar to the one that today is on display near the main altar of St. Stephen's Cathedral.

The area between Hof and Freyung on Huber's 1778 Vogelschauplan with the tall "Holy Ghost House" in the center (W-Waw, Sammlung Woldan)

The "Holy Ghost House" seen from the Tiefer Graben. The entrance was located on the other side towards the Heidenschuß. In the foreground is a so-called Fleischbank, a cold storage house for meat (anonymous watercolor).

An especially nice view of the house appears on Bernardo Bellotto's painting Die Freyung in Wien.

Bernardo Bellotto, gen. Canaletto: view of the Freyung from the northwest 1759–1760 (A-Wkhm, Gemäldegalerie, 1652)

 The "Heiligengeisthaus" No. 316 on Bellotto's painting

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, Franz Gerasch (1826–1906) painted a historistic view of the Freyung that also shows the "Heiligengeisthaus". It may have been inspired by Bellotto's painting.

Rudolf von Alt: Die Freyung gegen den Heidenschuß 1849 (Wien Museum, I.N. 17666)

The most intriguing implication of Da Ponte's address is the fact that by living in the "Holy Ghost House", L'Abbe Da Ponte was a tenant of Vienna's archbishop Christoph Anton Cardinal Migazzi (1714–1803). Da Ponte is not the only person of musical interest connected with this house: at the time of his marriage in 1775, Antonio Salieri had been living there for several years and it seems possible that he later recommended this particular residence to his friend Da Ponte.

Da Ponte's landlord: Christoph Cardinal Migazzi Count zu Wall und Sonnenthurm (1714–1803)

Cardinal Migazzi listed as the owner of the house Stadt 316 in the 1787/88 Steuerfassion (A-Wsa, Steueramt B 34/1, fol. 469)

Who else lived at Stadt 316 in 1788? The first floor (in Vienna "Zu ebener Erde") housed a janitor's room, four butcheries, a wine tavern run by the bishopric, and six Auslaggewölbe (shops). Among them, Anton Angermayer's cheese dairy, Johann Michael Geiblinger's Greißlerei (a general store), and the butcheries of Nikolaus Paulus and Joseph Tscherny. The largest and most expensive apartment in the house (nine rooms on the third floor below Da Ponte) was let to the Tridentine capitular Count Wilhelm Triangi von und zu Latsch und Madernburg. The tenant who shared the fourth floor with Da Ponte was possibly Anton Brandt (1752–1822), the official of the Hungarian Court Chancellery, whose name appears in Matthias Raby von Raba und Mura's 1797 book Justizmord und Regierungsgreuel. The fifth floor was leased to the wigmaker Paul Prem (the future father-in-law of the the clarinetist Joseph Bähr) and the Tyrolian Schwertfeger (swordsmith) Alois Walcher. On the highest floors lived Leopold Peidinger, the widow Ursula Kernhofer, and the tailor Joachim Ruckhart, who had moved into the "Heiligengeist Haus" in 1769, after his marriage to Elisabeth Drescher, daughter of a tailor who had also lived there. Of course, the house was also inhabited by countless subtenants whose names do not appear in the tax records.

It is not possible to determine when Da Ponte moved into the "Heiligengeist Haus" and whether he already moved out before leaving Vienna for Trieste in June 1791. Regarding Da Ponte's collaboration with Mozart, it is important to note that the residence on the Heidenschuß was situated relatively close to Mozart's apartment on the Alsergrund where the composer lived at the very same time. This proximity may have been relevant in course of the preparation of the Vienna premiere of Don Giovanni on 7 May 1788. Mozart's next residence in the house "Zum Nikolaus" at Judenplatz 245 was also located relatively close to the Heidenschuß where Da Ponte may still have lived in 1789, when he and Mozart began working on Così fan tutte.

In 1855, the bishopric sold the "Heiligengeist Haus" (by then No. 236) to the newly founded k.k. privilegierte Österreichische Creditanstalt which tore it down to make way for its new headquarters (to be destroyed during WWII). Most of the floor area of the historic building is located today on the street in front of Heidenschuß 2.

The "Heiligengeist Haus" (No. 236) in relation to today's buildings outlined in red (Paul Harrer-Lucienfeld, Wien, seine Häuser, Geschichte und Kultur. Band 2, 1. Teil, Vienna 1952)

The Freyung from the northwest in 2013. The Schottenkirche is on the left.

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This discovery was first published on 26 September 2011 in an amended footnote of my article "Mozart's Apartment on the Alsergrund", and again on 2 July 2012, in Wikipedia's Da Ponte article.

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2013. All rights reserved

Updated: 30 March 2023

A Schubert Memorial Vanishes

The first public performance of a secular work by Franz Schubert took place on 1 March 1818, in the hall of the inn and hotel "Zum Römischen Kaiser" at Vienna's Freyung.

The "Hotel zum Römischen Kaiser" at Vienna's Freyung (drawing from 1840)

A concert by the violinist Eduard Jaell included a performance of Schubert's "Ouverture in the Italian Style" D 590. On 14 March 1818, the Wiener allgemeine Theaterzeitung wrote:

On Sunday, March 1st, at 5 p.m., a musical-rhetorical academy for the benefit of Mr. JÄLL took place  in the hall of the Römischer Kaiser [...] The second part began with a wonderfully lovely overture by a young composer, Mr. Franz Schubert. This student of our esteemed Salieri already knows how to touch and move all hearts. Although the theme was strangely simple, an abundance of surprising and pleasant thoughts developed from it, executed with power and elegance. We wish that this artist will soon delight us again with a new offering.

On March 12th, the same overture was performed again in an arrangement for two pianos for four hands each (with the participation of the composer) after which the reviewer Franz von Schlechta praised "the deep mind and the controlled and outright force and appealing loveliness" of Schubert's works.

The program of the concert on 12 March 1818 at the "Römischer Kaiser" (the original document, which was once held by the Wienbibliothek, is now missing)

On 28 February 1819, in the hall on the first floor of the house "Zum römischen Kaiser", music history was made again, when the tenor Franz Jäger performed the song "Schäfers Klagelied" (D 121). This was the first ever public performance of a Schubert song. On March 22nd 1819, the Berlin journal Der Gesellschafter wrote about this concert: "A vocal piece »Schäfers Klage«, composed by the young Schubert and sung by our fine tenor Jäger granted the greatest enjoyment. We are indeed looking forward to the delight provided by an upcoming greater work of this hopeful artist." Five years earlier, another important musical event had taken place in the very same venue: on 11 April 1814, Beethoven's "Archduke Trio" Op. 97 had been performed there for the first time. Until 1887 the house on the Freyung (today Renngasse 1), which after a remodeling in 1834 housed a luxurious hotel, was owned by the Rothschild family. Then it was sold to the Union Bank which in 1927, sold it to the insurance company Österreichische Bundesländer AG.

The right half of the former hotel in 1900 (A-Wn, EP 452 - C)

The former hotel in 1910 (Wien Museum, I.N. 41306)

In the twentieth century, the significance of this building for Schubert's work was not forgotten in his hometown. On 26 May 1929, at the instigation of the Vienna Schubertbund, a plaque on the house Renngasse 1 was unveiled in the presence of the Federal Minister of Education, the Dean of the University, numerous other prominent cultural personalities, and descendants of Franz Schubert's brother Ferdinand. The main part of this memorial had been designed by the sculptor Robert Ullmann (1903–1966). It consisted of a relief of a shepherd with a sheep slung around his neck and a tablet. The inscription on the plaque (whose unveiling seems to have been originally scheduled for the Schubert anniversary of 1928) read as follows.

Franz Schubert trat in diesem Hause als Tondichter zum erstenmal vor die Öffentlichkeit: Am 1. März 1818 mit einer Ouverture im italienischen Stil, am 28. Februar 1819 mit seinem Liede »Schäfers Klagelied«. Wiener Schubertbund 1929.

In this house Franz Schubert went public for the first time as a composer: On 1 March 1818, with an overture in the Italian style, on 28 February 1819, with his song »Schäfers Klagelied«. Wiener Schubertbund 1929.

On the following day, the conservative newspaper Reichspost raved: "On behalf of the insurance company, its general manager Dr. Habich took charge of the monument, a work of art that will tell everybody, who holds precious the cultural heritage of Franz Schubert, about the cradle of fame that spread from the small Old-Vienna-hall of the erstwhile »Römischer Kaiser« all over the world."

A clip from an article in the Reichspost on 27 May 1929

 The report on the front page of  the Neue Zeitung on 27 May 1929

So far, I was unable to locate a really good picture of the memorial. There is none among the holdings of the Wien Museum and I did not want to bother the Magistratsabteilung 7. The only historical photograph I found was taken in 1941, and shows the left wing of the house, with the memorial's relief barely visible between two windows of the first floor.

The Schubert memorial at Renngasse 1 in 1941

The course of history was not kind to the house Renngasse 1. During the great bombing raid of 12 March 1945, it suffered a severe hit that destroyed nearly a third of the building. A five-window section of the right wing collapsed to the level of the first floor. Although the house was restored, the original infrastructure was not preserved and the old structural core of the building has been replaced.

 The house Renngasse 1 in 1965 on a photograph by Otto Simoner (A-Wn, 218.354A(B))

What about the Schubert memorial at the Freyung that was supposed to tell posterity – "that holds precious the cultural heritage of Franz Schubert" – about "the cradle of fame" in times to come? The memorial is gone.

In June 2003, a complete remodeling of the house was begun on behalf of Armisola Immobilien AG. The architect DI Peter Klein completely redesigned  the house into a modern office building for Deloitte Austria, preserving the original façade only above the first floor. Within fourteen months of construction work, the symmetry of the original façade (resembling the old Trattnerhof) was dissolved and the two old entrances were replaced by two entrances on the very left part of the building, at precisely the area where the Schubert memorial had been located. Owing to the company's plate "Deloitte", there was no space anymore for the memorial which was simply removed. The architects, who were involved in the remodeling, did not even think of integrating the sculpture, which had adorned the building for 74 years, into the new entrance area. The companies responsible for this brutal procedure are actually quite proud of their work and particularly boast about "the preservation of the original façade". In a booklet (deloitte: 15 antworten für kids), published for children by the architects, we find the following euphemistic statement: "Da gab es einen Architekten, den Herrn Klein, der hat das Haus gebaut, mit Kränen und starken Maschinen, und so raffiniert, dass aussen[sic] sogar die alte schöne Fassade stehen geblieben ist, obwohl es drinnen ein ganz modernes Haus ist." ("There was an architect, Mr. Klein, who built the house with cranes and heavy machinery in such a sophisticated way that on the outside even the old beautiful façade was preserved, although inside it is a very modern building."). It seems possible, however, that the addressed children might pose the question, if there really were no nicer lights available for the illumination of the "old beautiful façade".

 The new entrance area of Renngasse 1 in 2008 after the ruthless removal of the 1929 Schubert memorial

The remodeling of the building's façade and its merciless stripping of all "historical trinkets" was apparently carried out in full agreement with the City of Vienna and the Bundesdenkmalamt (the Federal Monuments Office), because the responsible building promoter A.C.C. proudly states on its website: "In enger Zusammenarbeit mit den zuständigen Behörden wurde die Fassade den Erfordernissen des Platzes und den umgebenden Gebäude angepasst." ("In close cooperation with the authorities in charge the façade has been adapted according to the requirements of the square and the surrounding buildings."). My search for the missing memorial turned out to be quite fascinating. I got the first hint from the general planning manager of the reconstruction and after an on-site inspection an employee of IFM (Immobilien Facility Management) confirmed my suspicion – heavy blocks of stone rarely travel far – that the Schubert memorial is now located "in safe custody of the property management in the basement of the house".

The ignorance and blindness of local Viennese historians is exemplified by Dr. Herbert Kretschmer, who in the book WIEN Musikgeschichte (Vienna: LIT Verlag, 2011[!]), wrote: "Only a memorial plaque on the house, which since the late 19th century has been used as an office building, is a reminder that an important musical site was once located here."

Of course, we must not always quarrel with aesthetic principles that are uncompromisingly realized by architects. And yet, unfortunately, none of the involved designers hit upon the really not far-fetched idea to integrate this sculpture into the redesigned atrium as a reminder of the fascinating history of the building. (After all this is also the house, where, in 1834, the physician Romeo Seligmann first made the acquaintance of Ottilie von Goethe). The observant city resident is surprised that the Bundesdenkmalamt turned a blind eye to this procedure. He is forced to surmise that Ursula Stenzel, the then Bezirksvorsteherin of Vienna's first district, was prevented from devoting the necessary attention to a radical razing of a historical downtown façade by more important issues, such as the containment of Glühweinhütten and street artists. Should it really be true that in Vienna, the self-proclaimed "City of Culture", a monument to the greatest genius that this city has ever produced, is only an impeding piece of stone in the path of urban progress?

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2013

Updated: 25 November 2023