The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume III

by Alexander Wheelock Thayer

I learned to-day that your nephew intended to shoot himself before next Sunday at the latest. As to the cause I learned only this much, that it was by reason of his debts,—but not of a certainty; he admitted only in part that they were the consequences of former sins. I looked to see if there were signs of preparations. I found a loaded pistol in a chest together with bullets and powder. I tell you this so that you may act in the case as his father. The pistol is in my keeping. Be lenient with him or he will despair.

Holz went at once to the Polytechnic Institute and there found Karl, who agreed to go back with him to Schlemmer’s, but said that he must first go to a friend’s house and get some papers. Holz engaged Dr. Reisser in conversation while he waited for Karl to return. “A pistol!” remarked Reisser, “the young comedy hero!” But Karl had lied; he did not come back to the Institute and Holz returned to Beethoven with his story:

He will not stay here. I could not detain him. He said he would go to Schlemmer’s, but wanted to get his papers from a friend while I talked with Reisser. He would not be gone more than a quarter of an hour.

Beethoven apparently rebukes him for letting his ward out of his sight. Holz:

He would have run away from you just the same. If he has made up his mind to injure himself no one can prevent him. He has till September 3 to make up his examinations.... He said to me: “What good will it do you to detain me? If I do not escape to-day I will at another time.”

Schlemmer reported the finding of another pistol. A new suspicion seized upon the mind of Beethoven. For some reason, though he may also have uttered it orally, he wrote it down in the book: “He will drown himself.” Probably he did not want the bystanders to know his thoughts, and the fear was therefore committed to the written page for the instruction of Holz. What else was said at the time we do not know, for the book here shows a mutilation; some pages are missing. Perhaps Schindler removed them in later years to save the integrity of his account; or they may have been torn out by Beethoven himself when, some weeks later, Holz advised him to look through his books against their possible demand for examination by the police magistrate; they might contain references to affairs which he did not want to bring into public discussion. The missing pages might have helped us in the chronology of the story, but the main facts are before us without them. It was resolved first to go to the house of Niemetz, who it was thought might be privy to Karl’s intentions, and then if necessary, to call in the help of the police.

A Bungling Attempt at Suicide

Meanwhile Karl, having given Holz the slip, went straight to a pawnbroker and pledged his watch. With the money he bought two pistols, powder and balls. He did not dare go to his lodgings for the pistols which he had in readiness for the contemplated deed, and the new ones were therefore necessary. For him the circumstance proved fortunate. He drove out to Baden, and spent the night in writing letters. One was to his uncle, and this he enclosed in one to his friend Niemetz. The next morning, it being a Sunday, he climbed up to the ruins of Rauhenstein, in the lovely Helenenthal which his uncle loved so well, and there discharged both pistols toward his left temple. He was a bungler with firearms. The first bullet flew past harmlessly; the second ripped up the flesh and grazed the bone, but did not penetrate the skull. Holz said afterwards that, had he taken with him the pistols which he was obliged to leave at his lodgings, he would have been a dead man; their barrels were charged with powder and ball to above the middle. A teamster came upon him lying among the ruins and, no doubt at his request, carried him to his mother’s house in the city. There Beethoven found him, whether in a search for him or because of intelligence brought by the teamster is not clear. The uncle is anxious to learn the particulars of the tragedy, but he receives a sullen answer; “It is done. Now, only a surgeon who can hold his tongue. Smetana, if he is here. Do not plague me with reproaches and lamentations; it is past. Later all matters may be adjusted.” “When did it happen?” Beethoven asks and the mother writes the answer: “He has just come. The teamster carried him down from a rock in Baden and has just driven out to you.—I beg of you to tell the surgeon not to make a report or they will take him away from here at once, and we fear the worst. There is a bullet in his head on the left side.”

Smetana was the physician who had treated Karl when he was a boy at Giannatasio’s school. Beethoven knew him as a friend. To him he wrote: