There was a very serious rumor during his life spreading around Europe about Beethoven being an illegitimate son of the Prussian King. Sounds ridiculous, but even Beethoven was not quick to deny it! Let us find out more on this myth!
Beethoven was well known throughout history for being a revolutionary, someone against classes and birth rights. If nothing else, his famous Third Symphony dedicated to young Napoleon is the testimony to this. Yet, time-to-time he took advantage of being handled as a nobleman. He acted as one, sure, but his van mistaken by the Viennese for von in his name, also helped him in this illusion (a von in a German name was an indication for a noble family). Beethoven’s van was a typical Flemish naming and not meaning nobility.
|Related: Was Beethoven of noble birth?
Beethoven regarded himself as a nobleman by virtue and not by birth. In a conversation book he wrote, “My nature shows that I do not belong among this plebian mass.” In his eyes acting like an aristocrat was not a deceit.
Then, there was this rumor about him being the bastard of the King of Prussia. The myth had gone as far as a printed publication in France, where in a dictionary of musicians Beethoven’s father was named to be Friedrich Wilhelm II. Soon, a German book in Leipzig called The Konversations-Lexikon went one step further, naming the father as Frederick the Great!
This myth was very well known all over Europe and Beethoven did not deny it almost till the very end of his life. His childhood friend Franz Wegeler, who knew and liked Beethoven’s mother, was so upset about floating the rumor that he confronted him in a letter, saying “Why have you not avenged the honor of your mother, when in the Conversations-Lexikon and in France, they make you out to be a love child? . . . If you will inform the world about the facts in this matter, so will I.”
About a year later Beethoven replied to his life long friend asking him to clarify the issue, saying “Make known to the world the integrity of my parents, and especially of my mother.”
Beethoven, despite being a firm believer of equal rights and opportunities, the power of talent and hard work over birthright, sometimes navigated himself as a nobleman among aristocrats. This myth about him, being the illegitimate son of the King of Prussia was one of the tools he used. He had not started it, but never denied it publicly till the end of his life. Nonetheless, this is a myth and not true.
