Bonn Court Administration Files

The administrative archives of the Bonn Electoral Court, preserved today in the Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen in Duisburg, Germany (D-DGla), reach back to at least the tenth century. Extensive documentation of the court's operations, however, only really exists since the late seventeenth century — after the city of Bonn was besieged during the Nine Years' War and largely destroyed in 1689. As the eighteenth century progressed, the court's bookkeeping became increasingly thorough and transparent, or at least these documents are better preserved.

The Beethoven-related files in the court archives were surveyed by Hermann Deiters for the first volume of Alexander Wheelock Thayer's monumental biography, Ludwig van Beethovens Leben, whose first edition appeared in 1866. Deiters cast his net wide and swept up an impressive array of materials pertaining both to the Beethoven family and some of their colleagues. His transcriptions, typically unabridged, were a model of accuracy for their time. They are in fact so good and so seemingly comprehensive that no later Beethoven biographer has felt the need to consult the original sources. This has one unfortunate consequence: after the archive's multiple reorganizations and one change of location (from Düsseldorf to Duisburg in 2014), even most Beethoven scholars would be hard-pressed to locate the modern shelf-mark of any document quoted by Thayer, making it difficult to retrace his footsteps to search for something Deiters might have missed or to seek broader context.

Around a century later, Max Braubach systematically reviewed the files on court musicians alongside Bonn parish records, resulting in a lexicon article which includes basic biographical information on all known musicians who worked at court under the last four electors, one that still provides a useful reference work even though he does not cite individual sources.^[1] More recently, over the course of the two research projects "The Music Library of Elector Maximilian Franz," the research team consulted the music- and musician-related files, with a special focus on opera and sacred music between 1784 and 1794. A brief overview of the Kurköln files is presented as an appendix to Volume 2 of the series "Musik am Bonner kurfürstlichen Hof."

The Bonn court administrative files here represent a curated collection of not only those documents that mention Beethoven's family, but also ones that illustrate the immediate context in which four generations of them worked. In so doing, they offer an overview of the entire court musical establishment since the late seventeenth century. Each document's contents are given a summary, and a large number are presented in a new or revised transcription and a new English translation. The transcriptions, as with all other primary texts on this website, are diplomatic, preserving the orthography, line breaks, differences in Kurrent or Latin script, cancellations, emendations, and layout of the original pages; they also attempt to convey the structure of multi-document sequences, since this frequently affects their interpretation. In 2022, the Landesarchiv placed digital scans of the entire sub-collection "Kurköln II" freely available online. In the transcriptions, the folio designations in square brackets function as hyperlinks to the relevant scans. The account books, located in Kurköln IV, have not been digitized, but their presentation here has been optimized for easy reference.

As might be expected, the process of reviewing archival sources that were last systematically checked over half a century ago has turned up no small number of documents that have previously escaped notice. Indeed, several of these overlooked files pertain directly to Ludwig van Beethoven and his family. More broadly, the act of preparing a large cross-section of these documents for an interlinked web publication has offered a better understanding of how the files in different collections relate to one another, and ultimately of how they encapsulate decision-making processes of the court. For the reconstruction of events is often not possible through a single source in isolation. On its own, a petition or decree can often seem ambiguous, since it must be understood as both the written starting point and lasting documentation of a primarily oral deliberation. In a certain sense, digital presentation of the written records is the most appropriate existing method of re-tying the cognitive threads that once linked them.

Finally, while the administrative archives in Duisburg are startlingly extensive, other sources must be considered alongside them. For the reign of Maximilian Franz (1784–1794), his own personal papers in Vienna's Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv contain many documents of relevance to court music and the court theater, as do some of his letters to Spiegel von Diesenberg in the Stadtarchiv Bonn. Finally, the lists of musicians in the court calendar (Hofkalender) often diverge from the payment records in interesting ways.

Collected Petitions and Decrees[edit | edit source]

Kurköln II, Nr. 472 (Music Directors)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid

1718–1784

• fol. 5 (26 August 1738): employment decree for Joseph Clemens Dall'Abaco

Kurköln II, Nr. 473 (Konzertmeister)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid 1715–1785

• fols. 10–12 (28 June 1785): Josef Reicha's Employment Decree

Kurköln II, Nr. 474 (Kapellmeister)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid

1695–1783

• fol. 1 (January 1695)
• fol. 2 (30 December 1729)
• fols. 3–4 (29 March 1732): employment decree for Girolamo Donini
• fols. 5–6 (21–29 November 1745): employment decree for Francisco Zoppi
• fol. 7 (3 April 1752): Zoppi resigns
• fol. 8 (24 June 1753): employment decree for Joseph Zudoli
• fols. 9–11 (6 May 1774): employment decree for Andrea Luchesi

Kurköln II, Nr. 475 (Music Librarians and Copyists)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid

1714–1740

Kurköln II, Nr. 476 (Composers)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid

1723–1752

Kurköln II, Nr. 478 (Male singers)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid

1694–1792

Kurköln II, Nr. 479 (Female singers)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid

1730–1790

• fol. 1: Folder fragment
• fols. 2–3 (8 January 1736): Margarete Elisabeth Giesens
• fols. 4–5 (8 January 1736): Margarete Elisabeth Giesens
• fols. 6–7 (3 April 1745): Rosa Costa
• fols. 8–9 (15 July 1749): Rosa Costa
• fols. 10–13 (13 May 1755): Eleonore Walter (Walderin)
• fols. 14–15 (2 June 1758): Maria Eva Elisabeth Ansionin
• fols. 16–19 (9 September 1759): Johanna Antonia Lentner
• fols. 20–23 (24 April 1765): Anna Maria Ries
• fols. 109–112 (19 February 1790): Magdalena Willmann's employment decree

Kurköln II, Nr. 480 (Organists)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid

Decrees and petitions regarding organists (except Ludwig van Beethoven), 1698–1796.

• fols. 1–2 (16 July 1698): Domenikus Alberici
• fol. 3 (23 November 1700): Joseph Zierbst
• fol. 4 (18 February 1727): Ägidius van den Eeden
• fol. 5 (8 June 1728): Ägidius van den Eeden
• fols. 6–7 (undated): Ägidius van den Eeden
• fols. 10–12 (5 July 1729): Ägidius van den Eeden receives a raise
• fols. 13–14 (9 November 1740): Georg Graskampff
• fols. 15–22 (20 July to 14 August 1784): deliberations on purchasing a new organ for palace chapel
• fols. 23–28 (15 February 1781): Christian Gottlob Neefe
• fols. 29–32 (8–15 February 1781): Christian Gottlob Neefe
• fol. 33 (3 October 1796): Christian Gottlob Neefe

Kurköln II, Nr. 481 (Beethoven)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid

This file is a collection of most petitions and decrees that mention members of the Beethoven family.

• fol. 1 (March 1733): Lodewijk van Beethoven's employment decree
• fols. 2–4 (22 August 1746): Confirmation of a raise for Lodewijk van Beethoven
• fols. 5–7 (19–27 March 1756): Decree to hire Johann van Beethoven as an accessist
• fols. 9–12 (27 March 1756): Recommendation letter by Joseph Gottwald on behalf of Johann van Beethoven and Ernst Haveck
• fols. 13–16 (16 July 1761): Lodewijk van Beethoven is elevated to rank of Hofkapellmeister
• fols. 17–18 (27 November 1762): Johann van Beethoven's first, unsuccessful petition for a raise
• fols. 19–20 (undated, c. April 1764): Lodewijk van Beethoven petitions for a raise on behalf of his son
• fol. 21 (24 April 1764): Decree granting Johann van Beethoven a raise of 100 Reichstaler
• fols. 22–25 (27 April 1764): Decree installing Johann van Beethoven and Anna Maria Ries officially as court musicians
• fol. 26–29 (9 May 1764): Dispute regarding debts by court musician Johannes Zdenik (called here "Steneck") owed to Johann Gottlieb Walther
• fol. 30 (8 August 1764): Philippe Salomon petitions for a job
• fol. 31 (31 May 1765): Johannes Zdenik is fired
• fols. 32–36 (26 April 1768): Reports of disciplinary action by Lodewijk against Maximiliane Schwachhover for "impertinence"
• fols. 37–38 (4 February 1793 and 22 October 1792): regarding Ludwig van Beethoven's salary while in Vienna
• fols. 40–43 (26 April 1768): Further documents on the disciplinary action against Schwachhover
• fols. 44–48 (26 April to 11 May 1768): Lodewijk van Beethoven reports on dispute between court musicians Drewer and Willmann
• fols. 49–52 (17 November 1769): Johann van Beethoven receives a raise of 25 fl.
• fols. 53–54 (undated, winter 1773/74): Johann van Beethoven petitions court to be elevated to rank of Kapellmeister after his father's death
• fol. 55–60 (January 1774 to 5 June 1775): After much deliberation, Johann van Beethoven is to receive his mother's pension of 60 Rtlr. after her death as supplement to his salary
• fols. 62–67 (undated, c. June 1784): Evaluation of all court musicians with notes on their abilities, age, deportment, and family situation
• fols. 69–74 (23–29 February 1784): Deliberations around Ludwig van Beethoven's employment as assistant court organist (see also Kurköln II, Nr. 471, fols. 22–24)
• fol. 75 (5 May 1788): Ludwig van Beethoven petitions unsuccessfully for a raise
• fols. 76–77 (20 November 1789): Petition to banish Johann van Beethoven and disperse half his salary to Ludwig
• fol. 78 (11 February 1790): Receipt of Johann van Beethoven's first quarterly salary payment
• fol. 83 (3 May 1793): Ludwig van Beethoven is to receive his deceased father's full salary in Vienna
• fols. 84–85 (undated, after February 1793): Ludwig van Beethoven petitions the court for said salary
• fol. 87 (24 May 1793): Decree by Count Salm for Johann van Beethoven's former salary to be forwarded to Ludwig in Vienna

Kurköln II, Nr. 482 (String Players)[edit | edit source]

Kurköln II, Nr. 483 (Woodwind and Brass Players)[edit | edit source]

Kurköln II, Nr. 484 (Timpanists and Timpani Carriers)[edit | edit source]

Kurköln II, Nr. 485 (Calcants)[edit | edit source]

Miscellaneous Court Music Documents[edit | edit source]

These are music-related files that for various reasons were not included in the other collections. Sometimes it is because they deal with multiple court musicians at once, such as frequently happened after the death of a musician, at which point their colleagues would collectively petition for the now-free funds to be divided among them. Other times the documents appear to have merely been separated by accident from their logical position. Four files in Nr. 471 (fols. 3–5, 22–24, 51–55) directly deal with Ludwig van Beethoven and his family, three of which were previously unknown.

Kurköln II, Nr. 468 (1717–1730)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid

Kurköln II, Nr. 469 (1731–1764)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid

• fol. 1 (25 January 1731): Risack
• fol. 2 (29 January 1735): Johann Joseph Leopoldi
• fol. 3 (4 November 1735): Commans
• fol. 4 (10 September 1736): Anton Raaf
• fols. 5–6 (14 March 1737): Christophorum Holske
• fol. 7 (9 November 1740): Josephum Verita Dubois
• fol. 8 (16 August 1742): Anton Raaf
• fol. 9 (1 September 1743): Risack
• fols. 10–12 (27 November 1744): Peter Joseph Ipp
• fol. 13 (26 May 1746): Joseph Meuris
• fols. 14–16 (26 September 1746): Franz Xaver Haveck
• fols. 17–8 (undated): Henrich Gruhs
• fols. 19–22: Mathias Poletnich
• fol. 23 (4 November 1746): Joseph and Franz Meuris
• fol. 24 (8 November 1748): Johann Anton Schamsdeburg
• fols. 25–30 (1749): accounting records
• fols. 31–32 (25 April 1752): Paul Kicheler
• fol. 33 (11 March 1754): Joseph Touchemoulin
• fol. 34 (4 June 1753): Jacob Tauber
• fols. 35–37 (24 February 1755): Johann Zdenick
• fols. 38–40 (9 February 1756): Mathias Poletnich petitions for a raise
• fols. 41–45 (1 March 1756): Ferdinand Trewes
• fols. 46–50 (27 March 1756): Ernst Haveck as Accessist
• fols. 51–53 (24 March 1757): Philipp Drauste
• fol. 54 (28 March 1758): Ernest Riedel
• fols. 55–59 (2 September 1758): Johann Zdenick petitions for a raise
• fols. 60–62 (30 August 1758): Johann Peter Salomon
• fols. 63–65 (22 August 1759): Franz Gottwald
• fols. 66–68 (27 April 1762): Ernst Riedel
• fols. 69–72 (): Ferdinand Trewer and Lodewijk van Beethoven
• fol. 73 (19 September 1764): Neesen, Feuser, Bodife, Schulter, Zeppenfeld, Mastiaux, Brauman, Kugelgen
• fol. 74 (26 September 1764): Walther
• fol. 75... https://dfg-viewer.de/show?tx_dlf%5Bdouble%5D=0&tx_dlf%5Bid%5D=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.landesarchiv-nrw.de%2Fdigitalisate%2FAbt_Rheinland%2FAA_0007%2F~004%2F00469%2Fmets.xml&tx_dlf%5Bpage%5D=110&cHash=6914342fc95fc8d84d5283d5ee4e306e

Kurköln II, Nr. 470 (1765–1779)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid

Kurköln II, Nr. 471 (1780–1794)[edit | edit source]

Entry in Online Finding Aid

• fols. 1–2 (October 1780): collective petition by nine court musicians
• fols. 3–5 (16 May 1782): collective petition by ten court musicians (including Johann van Beethoven)
• fols. 6–7 (September–October 1780): petition by widow of Tussy
• fols. 8–9 (24 March 1783): petition by Gertrud Poletnich
• fol. 10 (6 October 1783): approval for Drewer, Heller, and Ries to organize a concert
• fols. 11–12 (undated, c. June 1784): recommendations for salary adjustments
• fols. 13–14 (undated, c. 1790): Thomas Pokorny
• fols. 15–16 (undated, c. 1790): Friedrich Müller
• fols. 17–18 (August 1780): collective petition by sixteen musicians
• fols. 19–20 (12 September 1780): Peter Esch petition for raise
• fols. 20–21 (9 November 1783): Joseph Phillipart petition for full employment
• fols. 22–24 (15 February 1784): collective petition by eleven musicians (including Ludwig van Beethoven)
• fols. 25–26 (27 June 1784): final determinations of musician salary adjustments
• fol. 27 (27 June 1784): confusion about Andrea Luchesi's new salary is cleared up
• fols. 28–30 (15 August 1786): Walter
• fols. 31–32 (undated, early eighteenth century): Elenora Walter
• fol. 33 (3 May 1786): Christoph Brandt
• unnumbered (5 September 1787): Veronica Beckenkam petition for raise
• fols. 34–43 (6 October to 15 November 1788): dispute over engagement of several Bonn court musicians in Frankfurt
• fols. 44–45 (2 October 1789): employment decree for Joseph Lux
• fols. 51–55 (8 November 1793): custody of the late Franz Rovantini's children transferred from the Beethovens to Ernst Haveck

Inventories and Lists[edit | edit source]

• Kurköln II, Nr. 340: Inventory of the entire electoral palace upon Maximilian Friedrich's death, May 1784. Includes separate listings of the music collection.

Minutes of the Privy State Council[edit | edit source]

contains summaries of each petition and decree discussed between July 1784 and 1801, including some for which all other documentation is lost

• Kurköln II, Nr. 3016 (1784)
• Kurköln II, Nr. 3017 (1785)
• Kurköln II, Nr. 3018 (1786)
• Kurköln II, Nr. 3019 (1787)
• Kurköln II, Nr. 3020 (1788)
• Kurköln II, Nr. 3021 (1789)
• Kurköln II, Nr. 3022 (1790)
• Kurköln II, Nr. 3033 (1800)

Account Books[edit | edit source]

Notes[edit | edit source]

1. ↑ Max Braubach, "Die Mitglieder der Hofmusik unter den letzten vier Kurfürsten von Köln," in Siegfried Kross and Hans Schmidt (eds.), Colloquium Amicorum. Joseph Schmidt-Görg zum 70. Geburtstag (Bonn: Beethoven-Haus, 1967), 26–63.