V. Les Adieux, l’Absence et le Retour. Sonate pour le Pianoforte composée et dédiée à son Altesse Impériale l’Archiduc Rodolphe, etc. Op. 81. E-flat. Breitkopf and Härtel, July.
VI. Three Songs by Goethe with Pianoforte accompaniment. Dedicated to Princess Kinsky. (“Trocknet nicht,” “Was zieht mir das Herz,” “Kleine Blumen, kleine Blätter.”) Op. 83. Breitkopf and Härtel, October.
VII. “Christus am Ölberg.” Oratorio. Op. 85. Score. Breitkopf and Härtel, October.
Chapter XII
The Year 1812—Beethoven’s Finances—The Austrian “Finanzpatent”—Beethoven and Graz—Second Sojourn in Teplitz—Beethoven and Goethe—Amalie Sebald—Beethoven in Linz—Meddles with his Brother’s Domestic Affairs—Rode and the Sonata, Op. 96—Spohr—Mälzel and his Metronome—The Canon to Mälzel.
Beethoven must again, for the present, be made his own biographer. The selections from his correspondence taken for this purpose will all gain in interest and perspicuity by first giving the notes to Zmeskall and the Archduke so as to afford a sort of background for the more important ones, and by introducing here the explanations which numerous allusions demand in a short series of observations. Schindler writes in 1840:
In 1811, the Austrian Finanzpatent reduced these 4000 florins to one-fifth [the reference being to Beethoven’s annuity]; [and in 1860]: How severely our composer was hit by it is seen in the circumstance that also all contracts which had to do with paper money were reduced to one-fifth of the specified sum. In accordance with this Beethoven’s annuity of 4000 florins in bank-notes became subject to reduction. It was reduced to 800 florins in paper money.
An error of some kind must be here involved. This seems so obvious and palpable, as to render it hardly credible that, in all the long years since 1840, it has not caught the attention of some one writer on Beethoven and induced him to cast his eye for a moment upon the Patent itself. The depreciation of a national paper currency to null and its subsequent repudiation by the Government that emitted it is, in effect, a domestic forced loan equal in amount to the sum issued; and the more gradual its depreciation, so much the more likely is the public burden to be general and in some degree equalized. Such a forced loan was the “Continental Currency” issued by the American Congress to sustain the war against England in 1775-83; and such were the French “Assignats” a few years later; and such, to the amount of 80 per centum of all the paper in circulation, was the substitution of notes of redemption for the bank-notes at the rate of one for five, by the Austrian Finanz-Patent, promulgated February 20th, and put in force March 15th, 1811. But if Schindler be correct, the Imperial Royal Government went farther and committed the folly and injustice—with little or no advantage to itself—of issuing and enforcing a decree which, in its effect, simply confiscated 80 per centum of all domestic indebtedness—where the payment in specie or its equivalent was not stipulated—to the gain of the debtor and the loss of the creditor! According to more modern ideas of national economy, those ordinances of the Finanz-Patent of February 20, which relate to “continuing, periodically recurring payments of interest, incomes, farm-rents, pensions, maintenance moneys, annuities, etc.,” were certainly unwise and uncalled-for; but they involved no such blunder as that. The Government assumed that every contract of pecuniary obligation between Austrian subjects, wherein special payment or its equivalent was not stipulated, was payable in bank-notes; and that the real indebtedness under any such contract was in justice and equity to be determined and measured by the value in silver of the bank-notes at the date of the instrument. This second proposition is fallacious and deceptive, because such contracts rested upon the necessary presumptions that the faith and honor of the supreme authority were pledged to the future redemption of its paper at par and that the pledge would be redeemed. But this was not seen or was not regarded. Consequently, there was annexed to the Finanz-Patent a table showing decimally the average equivalent of the silver florin in the bank-notes, month by month, from January, 1799 to March, 1811. This table was made a “Scala über den Cours der Bancozettel nach welchem die Zahlungen zufolge des Paragraphs 13 und 14 des Patents vom 20 Hornung, 1811, zu leisten sind.” (“Scale of the rate of exchange according to which payments are to be made in accordance with paragraphs 13 and 14 of the Patent of February 20, 1811.”) We copy two of the months as examples: