In the Beginning There Was Beethoven
Sam Crooks
In December 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven was born to a family of musicians inside an unassuming house on the Bonngasse, a narrow street then near the edge of the small Rhenish town of Bonn, some fifteen miles south of Cologne. As was typical of those sharing his modest social background, his precise date of birth went unrecorded, and the first written mention of one Ludwig van Beethoven is therefore the record of his baptism on 17th December 1770, although the convention at that time of having a newly born child baptised within a day after birth means it is likely that he was born close to or on this date. Compounding the modest circumstances of his birth is that the young Ludwig’s childhood does not appear to have been a particularly pleasant one. Due to the somewhat precarious state of the family finances, the Beethovens were obliged to move house on several occasions and occupy a variety of addresses (almost all of which have subsequently been demolished – leaving the Bonngasse residence as the only remaining building in Bonn in which Ludwig lived). In keeping with family tradition, Ludwig was to become a musician and was initially taught by his father, himself a minor court musician. Far from being a loving mentor, however, the domineering and abusive figure of the alcoholic Johann van Beethoven, who beat his son severely on an almost daily basis in order to encourage him to practice, saw to it that Ludwig was forced as a young child to adopt a punishing routine of practice and instruction by himself and other musicians in Bonn in order to develop his increasingly clear musical talent. The young Ludwig was also not unfamiliar with being woken during the night to play the piano for his father and even to go for a music lesson at night on at least one occasion.
The Beethoven-Haus, Bonngasse 20
Image: Sam Crooks
What saved Ludwig from this brutal and obscure life was that even as a child, his prodigious musical ability was recognised and promoted by those who taught him, with Ludwig giving his first concert at the tender age of eight and publishing his first compositions when he was twelve. The career of this incredible young musician was further advanced by the Elector of Cologne himself, who brought the teenage Beethoven into his court in Bonn through employment in a variety of posts while also funding the young man’s travel to Vienna for music lessons from another eighteenth-century child prodigy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the years following these lessons, Beethoven also received further instruction in Vienna from Joseph Haydn and Antonio Salieri and settled in the city permanently in 1794 after the French occupation of the Rhineland and the deaths of both his parents. Now based in what was then the musical capital of Europe, Beethoven would become arguably the most dynamic composer of his generation, pioneering the beginnings of the Romantic period, and although his career was now centred around Vienna, the people of Bonn have consistently hailed him as one of their own.
Beethoven Statue on the Münsterplatz
Image: Sam Crooks
Standing in the central Münsterplatz, the imposing statue of the musical titan which this child prodigy from modest origins would ultimately become can not only be regarded as a fitting tribute to Bonn’s most popular resident, but also as a symbol for the city itself as a modest settlement which nevertheless finds itself thrust into the eye of the historical storm. The most striking architectural testament to this talent for unexpected prominence is the magnificent baroque electoral palace in the city centre, which was built from 1697 as the primary residence of the Elector of Cologne. Although Cologne was by far the largest settlement within the Electorate, a past office-holder had decided in 1597 to relocate his residential seat south to the smaller town of Bonn and rule Cologne from a distance. This decision was of historical consequence because the Elector’s influence stretched beyond the physical limits of the municipality, always also being Archbishop of Cologne. Along with his counterparts in Trier and Mainz, he was one of the ecclesiastical electors, men of the cloth who simultaneously wielded considerable earthly power by virtue of their role of electing the Holy Roman Emperor in consultation with four secular rulers, the worldly electors. The arrival of the Elector therefore elevated Bonn to the status of electoral capital and a centre of considerable political influence, its prestige further enhanced on a cultural level by the presence of not just the Elector himself, but also his entire court, which would in subsequent generations provide employment to successive generations of the Beethoven family.
Altes Rathaus on Bonner Marktplatz
Image: Sam Crooks
Many of Bonn’s most prominent buildings date from its almost two centuries as the seat of this ecclesiastical and worldly ruler, the most impressive being the (now former) city hall dating from 1737 and the electoral palace from 1697, with the latter a stunning example of German baroque architecture. Although French occupation brought its initial heyday to an abrupt end in 1794, the palace soon found a new purpose which would also serve to once again rescue Bonn from the spectre of obscurity. As before, it was a somewhat arbitrary decision by a ruler, in this case King Friedrich-Wilhelm III of Prussia, which came to its aid. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Bonn had been included in the newly-created Rhine Province, a large region now within the Kingdom of Prussia. To the King’s considerable dismay, the Rhine Province had no surviving universities following years of destructive conflict and foreign occupation. Having presided over the foundation of the universities of Breslau and Berlin, Friedrich-Wilhelm III was keen to add another institution to his collection, and it was decided in 1818 to found a new university which was to be specifically housed inside the grand former electoral palace in Bonn. Although all three institutions have at some point been named after this monarch, the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn is the only one still to bear his name; the former Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau, now in Poland, is now known as the Uniwersytet Wrocławski and the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin was renamed as Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin after finding itself in communist East Berlin after the Second World War, where having universities named after Prussian monarchs was no longer the done thing.
The Electoral Palace from the Hofgarten (the view is admittedly somewhat compromised by a spectacularly ill-placed canteen installed for the duration of the pandemic).
Image: Sam Crooks
Although the university at Bonn has counted among its alumni many highly prominent leaders and intellectuals since its foundation in 1818 including Pope Benedict XVI, Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Nietzsche, perhaps the most eventful university career of any student in Bonn has been that of Karl Marx. Born in 1818, the year of the university’s foundation, Marx’ period in Bonn (1835-1836) was anything but mainstream. Although his lecturers recalled him being a hardworking student, Marx frequently dedicated his time to disciplines other than his Law studies, ranging widely from Minerology to History of Art, and outside of academic work he quickly developed a reputation as a hell-raiser. Shortly after beginning his studies in Bonn, Marx joined the Trierer Landsmannschaft, an illegal university society for students from his hometown of Trier whose members were attracted to democratic ideas that the Prussian authorities deemed subversive. Members of the society went on secret excursions to isolated locations around Bonn to practice their sabre-duelling (a skill considered to be of great importance in an upcoming revolution). In a development perhaps indicative of his revolutionary exploits in future years, within months Marx had climbed to the position of chairman of this subversive student society.
Not content with leading an illegal society, Marx also set out to provoke the university authorities in order to honour the tradition at that time among German students of getting oneself arrested. In the 1830s, the university had its own law-enforcement body similar to the still extant Cambridge University Constabulary and posted its officers throughout Bonn in order to ensure that students (regarded as a distinct group from the rest of the population) were apprehended by them and not the mainstream authorities if they happened to do anything illegal. This university force was kept busy by students like Marx, who in summer 1836 was detained “wegen nächtlichen ruhestörenden Lärmens und Trunkenheit” and compelled to spend one day in university prison, and on a separate occasion a complaint was lodged against him for illegal possession of a weapon. It was most likely therefore with more than a hint of relief that the university leadership learned of Marx’s move from Bonn to Berlin to continue his studies in the Prussian capital.
Despite the antics of Marx and many of his contemporaries, in the course of the nineteenth century the university increasingly consolidated itself as a reputable institution for the aristocratic establishment of the German states, nicknamed a Fürstenuniversität (a “prince university”) for the large number of leading aristocrats to grace its lecture theatres, including one Albert von Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha, who would be remembered in British history as Prince Albert, Prince Consort to Queen Victoria. It had after all been founded by the King of Prussia himself and so many members of the Prussian and Imperial German dynasty would attend the university as students, with Wilhelm II, the last to reign as Prussian and Imperial German monarch, studying Law and Politics from 1877 to 1879.
While the success of the university played a significant role in enhancing its own reputation, the political importance of Bonn itself began to wane in the nineteenth century, as the political centre of gravity in the Rhine Province was further south in Koblenz. So although it remained popular as a university city, Bonn no longer had the prestige of being a centre of government. The later collapse of the German Empire and the evils brought by the National Socialist era also took their toll on the city, with the electoral palace and much of the old city centre devastated in a British air raid on 18th October 1944 during the Second World War (a piece of shrapnel lodged in one of the spires of the Bonner Münster has been left unremoved as a small but grim reminder of this destruction). Following the end of the conflict, the monumental task of reconstructing the electoral palace to look at least externally as it had been before the war was carried out from 1948 to 1951, with students often mobilised to help rebuild their own university. While the plight of the ruined city in the immediate post-war years threatened once again to reduce it to obscurity, yet another unexpected intervention from the political world would dramatically change Bonn’s fortunes for the better. Rather than an Elector of Cologne or a Prussian king it was this time a former mayor of Cologne and the first Federal Chancellor of Germany, Dr. Konrad Adenauer, who had greater things in mind for the small city, and in 1949 brought it into a new era of major political significance by making it capital of the new Federal Republic, home not only to the Bundestag and Bundesrat but also to the residences of the Federal Chancellor and Federal President until the 1990s. Despite then losing its status as federal capital to Berlin, around a third of federal ministries remain in Bonn, ensuring its political importance for years to come.
The Bundeshaus, home to the Bundestag and Bundesrat until 1999
Image: Sam Crooks
Considering the events and people which have left their mark there, it would not be inappropriate to characterise Bonn as having an unexpectedly great history for such a small city. It has always been a small settlement on the Rhine watched over by the Siebengebirge, where according to legend Siegfried once slew a dragon, but over the centuries it has consistently appeared predestined to be much more than a quaint provincial town. It has been home to many of the foremost figures in German intellectual, cultural and political life, and has been chosen repeatedly by those in power as a place to leave their mark or even as their political capital. Like its most famous native, Ludwig van Beethoven, Bonn has risen from humble beginnings to being a powerhouse of new ideas and exercising influence extending far beyond its immediate confines with much to hope for from the future.