The House where Raimund Leopold Mozart died

Mozart's first child Raimund Leopold died on 19 August 1783 in the house Oberneustift No. 250 while his parents were still in Salzburg.

The entry in ther municipal death register concerning the death of Raimund Leopold Mozart on 19 August 1783 (A-Wsa, Totenbeschreibamt 82, M, fol. 30r). This entry was first published (without the coroner's name) by Emil Karl Blümml in the Mozarteums-Mitteilungen I. 3 (Salzburg 1919). The name Mozart is written in Latin script, because Johann Michael Ankherl, the scribe of the Totenbeschreibamt, did not consider it a German name.

This entry reads as follows:

Mozart H[errn] N: [sic] Musiko, sein Kind Reimund, ist
zum rothen Pfauen N° 250 am ober Neu=
stift an d[er] Gedärmfrais beschaut word[en]
alt 9 Wochen       L: Z:

Herr N. Mozart, musician, his child Raimund, aged 9 weeks, was inspected at the Red Peacock, No. 250 in Ober Neustift, [as having died] from intestinal spasms.       L[aurenz] Z[einer]

The entry in the records of the parish church of St. Ulrich concerning the child's burial on 21 August 1783 looks as follows.

The entry concerning the burial of Raimund Leopold Mozart on 21 August 1783 in the cemetery of St. Ulrich (St. Ulrich, Tom. 23, fol. 83r). It is not clear when exactly Mozart's first name was added. This entry was also published by Blümml in 1919, albeit not completely correct.

             Eodem [Augustus den 21.]
St:[arb] dem H.[errn] N: [sic] Wolfgang v Mozart, Musico s:[ein] K:[ind] Reÿmund, in rothen Pfauen Ob:[er]
N:[eu] s:[tift] alt 9. Wochen.         Orth –– 30 x.

           On the same day [21 August]
Herr N. Wolfgang v Mozart, musician, his child Reymund, died at the Red Peacock in Ober Neustift, aged 9 weeks.
[and was buried in the] village [cemetery for a fee of] 30 kreuzer   

If we want to find out where exactly the house Oberneustift No. 250, "Zum rothen Pfauen" ("The Red Peacock") was located, we are faced with a number of choices in the Mozart literature. On p. 193 of his 1961 edition of the Dokumente, Otto Erich Deutsch presents us with the address "heute VII. Lerchenfeldstr. 65". This is doubly false, because a) the correct name of this street is Lerchenfelderstraße, and b) in 1783, this house was not built yet. In 1783, the area south of the Rofranogasse, (today's Lerchenfelderstraße) in the district, which  in the 1790s was to become Neubau (meaning "new buildings"), was still an empty field. On p. 222 of his 2004 book Mozarts Reisen in Europa 1762-1791, Rudolph Angermüller writes: "[...] in der Vorstadt Ober-Neustift Nr. 250, heute: Wien VII. Neustiftgasse 104". This address, which Heinz Schöny repeated in his genealogical article in the catalog of the 1991 Zaubertöne exhibition, is wrong as well, because this house also did not exist yet in 1783. It was built between 1786 and 1788 in the Stadelgasse in Oberneustift and was later named "Zum schönen Ungar" (The Handsome Hungarian). But there is hope, because the correct address Mariahilferstraße 94 has been published 90 years ago. In a short response to Otto Erich Deutsch's 1923 article about Mozart's children in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt (see below), which was published in the Wiener Abendblatt on 6 November 1923 in the same newspaper, the Viennese amateur historian Hans Rotter (1868–1945) pointed out Blümml's and Deutsch's mistake and published the correct modern address of the house Oberneustift No. 250.

The earliest known publication of the correct modern address of the house Oberneustift 250 in the Wiener Abendblatt of 6 November 1923. O. E. Deutsch never became aware of this correction and therefore his wrong address eventually made its way into the Dokumente and the commentary of MBA.

Hans Rotter's 1925 book Neubau Ein Heimatbuch des 7. Wiener Gemeindebezirkes (p. 84) contains the following information.

[Mariahilfer Straße] Nr. 94, Zum roten Pfau, jetzt Rudolfshof. In diesem Hause starb am 19. August 1783 der erstgeborene Sohn Mozarts, Raimund, geb. 18. Juni 1783.

It is quite intriguing to figure out the origin of Deutsch's and Angermüller's errors. In general (with a number of exceptions) Viennese houses had three different Konskriptionsnummern which were assigned in three numberings in 1770, 1795, and 1821. But the numberings of houses in certain Viennese suburbs show puzzling irregularities and the district of Oberneustift is such a case. Because in the early eighteenth century parts of Oberneustift were merged into the districts of Schottenfeld and Neubau, Otto Erich Deutsch chose the house in Schottenfeld which in 1795 bore No. 250 (i.e. Lerchenfelderstraße 65). This is the address that he published in his article "Wieviel Kinder hatte Mozart?" (Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 2 November 1923, p. 8). Following a similar logic, Angermüller picked the house which in 1795 was Neubau No. 250 (i.e. Neustiftgasse 104). Both Deutsch and Angermüller were unaware of the fact that some houses in Oberneustift were already renumbered before 1795. Between 1786 and 1788, the house Oberneustift No. 250, "Zum roten Pfau" (in the street which at that time was named "Penzingergasse"), was assigned the new number 120.

A part of Ober-Neustift in a 1779 house directory. The "Roter Pfau" is No. 250 (Franz de Ponty, Verzeichniß der in der Kaiserl. Königl. Haupt- und Residenzstadt Wien, sammt dazu gehörigen Vorstädten, und Gründen, befindlichen numerirten Häusern derselben Eigenthümern, und deren Conditionen, Schilderen, Gassen, Grund-Obrigkeiten, Pfarreyen, und derzeit Bezirksaufsehern : auf das genaueste nach denen Grundbüchern entworfen, Vienna 1779, p. 207)

In 1786 Kaspar Mendel's house in the Penzingergasse still bore No. 250 (Joseph Maximilian Fischer, Verzeichniß der in der Kaiserl. Königl. Haupt- und Residenzstadt Wien, sammt dazu gehörigen Vorstädten und Gründen, befindlichen numerirten Häusern, derselben wahrhafte Eigenthümer, und deren Konditionen, nebst Schildern und Plätzen, Vienna 1786, p. 192)

The house No. 120 in the 1787/88 municipal tax register, already bearing the number 120. Here we see that the inn on the ground floor was run by a certain Johann Wolf (A.Wsa, Steueramt B34/23, fol. 236).

The house's number 120 in a 1789 directory. The letter S. means Schild [sign] (Karl Hofer, Verzeichniß der in der k. k. Haupt- und Residenzstadt Wien samt den dazu gehörigen Vorstädten und Gründen befindlichen numerirten Häuser, derselben wahrhaften Eigenthümer, deren Konditionen und Schilder, Vienna 1789, p. 154).

By 1798 the Penzingergasse has been renamed "Mariahilfer Hauptstrasse". Kaspar Mendel's house is still No. 120 (Verzeichniß aller in der k. k. Haupt- und Residenz-Stadt Wien inner denen Linien befindlichen numerirten Häuser : mit alt und neuen Nummern, derselben Eigenthümer, Gassen, Strassen, Plätze und Schilde: mit genauer Anzeige des Grundbuches und der Pfarre, Wien, bey Joseph Gerold, 1798, p. 154)

In the commentary of the paperback edition of Mozart's letters (vol. VI, p. 145), the wrong address "Lerchenfelderstr. 65" appears again, together with hundreds of other mistakes in the commentary of this completely outdated edition that will not be corrected, as long as the Mozarteum will be in charge of the edition of Mozart's letters.

The house Oberneustift 250, "Zum rothen Pfau" on Joseph Daniel von Huber's 1778 Vogelschauplan (W-Waw, Sammlung Woldan)

In his 1919 article "Mozarts Kinder", which in 1923 he republished in his book Aus Mozarts Freundes und Familienkreis, Emil Karl Blümml wrote the following about Raimund Leopold Mozart's place of burial: "[...] dem Tage des Begräbnisses, an dem der kleine Mozart im längst aufgelassenen Friedhof um die St. Ulrichskirche beigesetzt wurde." ("the day of the burial, on which the little Mozart was buried in the long-closed cemetery around the church of St. Ulrich") (Mozarteums Mitteilungen, Mai 1919, Heft 3, p. 4). Blümml's information is wrong. The property records of the Schottenstift show that –  probably due to lack of space and the steep terrain – there was no cemetery around the church of St. Ulrich. The old cemetery of St. Ulrich was located uphill, one block south of the church in the area between today's Siebenstern-, Mondschein-, and Zollergasse.

The quadrangle, located south of the Siebensterngasse in the Viennese district of Neubau, where from 1590 until 1784 the old cemetery of St. Ulrich was located.

The same area, the graveyard of St. Ulrich on Joseph Daniel Huber's 1778 Vogelschauplan. The triangular square at the bottom was the so-called "Holtz-Platzl" (today's Siebensternplatz) (W-Waw, Sammlung Woldan).

Inside the cemetery there were four small chapels of which the biggest was consecrated to St. John of Nepomuk. The others were dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, The Shoulder Wound of Christ, and The Holy Cross. Having the bell of the St. John's chapel rung on the occasion of a funeral, cost 1 fl 30 x extra. After the cemetery had been closed in late 1784, this chapel for a short time was used as a stable.

An overview of the three relevant sites as depicted on Hubers Vogelschauplan: on top is the house Oberneustift No. 250, in the center the cemetery, and on the right the parish church of St. Ulrich. The vertical main street is today's Mariahilfer Straße (W-Waw, Sammlung Woldan).

The "Rudolfshof", the former site of the house "Zum rothen Pfauen", on Mariahilfer Straße 94 today

© Dr. Michael Lorenz 2013. All rights reserved.

Updated: 7 December 2024