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It hardly seems worthwhile to mention this, because a lie goes around the world three times before the truth has pulled its boots on . . . but this entire thing is a fabrication, only loosely if at all based upon the facts. Different versions are going around the net, with the added "facts" that the mother was unmarried or illegitimate, that the father was insane, that both were unemployed or the mother was a "servant girl", etc. etc.

Here are the facts: Maria Magdelena Keverich Laym was a widow when she married Johann van Beethoven. Her husband and infant had both died, but nobody knows why (lots of possibilities in those days). In 1796 she gave birth to her first child with Johann, a son, but he died shortly after birth. (Again, nobody knows why, but lots of babies died.) Beethoven was born next - therefore he was his mother's third child, not the 9th. His brother Kaspar was next, who died in 1815 of tuberculosis. Next Nikolaus Johann, who died in 1848 of old age. Three more children were born but all died very young, causes unknown.

Beethoven's mother died of tuberculosis (in 1787), Beethoven's father probably of a heart attack complicated by alcoholism (in 1792). Chemical tests on Beethoven's hair have shown no mercury, therefore he probably did not have syphilis as has been rumored (mercury being the standard treatment in those days.) He was just a grouch (which is O.K. - he was an immensely talented grouch).

Beethoven's father WAS an alcoholic, and went downhill steadily after his wife's death, but at the time of Beethoven's birth he was gainfully employed as a court musician for the Electors of Cologne in Bonn, as his father had been before him. Johann's wife was the daughter of the overseer of the kitchens for the Elector of Treves at Ehrenbreitstein, which is probably the basis for the dismissive comment of Ludwig v. Beethoven (sr.), her prospective father-in-law, that she was a "chambermaid" (he was opposed to the marriage). Of course this was not true & sprang more from spite than anything else - her family were well-to-do bourgeois and no more "servants" than Ludwig Beethoven Sr. was because he was Kapellmeister to the Elector.

For further reading:

Schmidt-Görg, J. Beethoven und die Geschichte seiner Familie (J. Beethoven & the History of his Family) (Bonn, 1964).

Probably more than you ever wanted to know about L.v.B.'s family, but I finally got annoyed enough to say something about this travesty. As if there weren't enough people in history with REAL family and medical problems . . .