THE PRINCE LICHNOWSKY NEWSLETTER File: An introduction

In July 1991, the world was made aware of an extraordinary event in Mozart´s life: toward the end of his life, he had been sued by his noble acquaintance Prince Karl Lichnowsky for the recovery of a substantial amount of money and a court had found in the Prince´s favor. The Austrian Mozart researcher Walther Brauneis had discovered the documentary evidence (see his article, "...owing to indebtedness of 1,435 Gulden 32 Kreuzer": A New Document on Mozart´s Financial Plight in November 1791, available in the translations group) and his announcement was made in an article published in the journal of the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum.

In the course of translating the Brauneis article, it occurred to me that it would be interesting to review the record (which seems substantially preserved) of Constanze Mozart´s request for a pension. The request was initiated only a week after Mozart had died, i.e., shortly after the Lower Austrian Court had made its decision. I cast my paper in newsletter form to send to those who had received the translation. That was September 1991.

By mid-November 1991, I had begun to hear from people, giving me their comments on the case. In addition, two recipients of the translation had gone public and sent me copies of their articles. To give all of this some distribution, I decided to repeat the newsletter format and sent out Issue No.2 in January 1992.

I continued to research the available record, the object being to look harder at what we knew and to attempt to give context to the fact of the Lichnowsky lawsuit. This grew into a document of some 20 pages, twice the size I had originally intended. Moreover, I finished it on the anniversary of Constanze´s death 150 years before, hence an Anniversary Double Issue Nos. 3 & 4 of 6 March 1992.

More comments were received in the spring of 1992 and reported in Issue No. 5. From that time on, there was relatively little new of relevance. The emergence of a scrap of paper in Mozart´s handwriting, reported in the Mozart-Jahrbuch 1993/94, provided the occasion to recapitulate the status of the Lichnowsky affair. Thus, Issue No. 6 in February 1994.

Since then, nothing more that seemed worthy of reactivating the PL Newsletter has come my way. Nevertheless, Mozart researchers continue to look for evidence that might contribute to an understanding of two facts: 1) a court judgment against Mozart and in favor of Prince Lichnowsky was rendered in November 1791; and 2) this was not previously known to or even suspected by Mozart biographical research until Walther Brauneis turned up the evidence 200 years later. The challenge is this: how to reconcile these two facts. To my knowledge, it has not yet been successfully met.

© Bruce Cooper Clarke, Vienna 2005