ABSTRACT
These pages purposely concern themselves with Beethoven’s brothers only so far as they materially affect the tenor of his life. One unhappy episode in which Beethoven came into conflict with his brother Johann occurred at this time, and has to be recorded, if only for the light it throws on the composer’s blundering way of carrying out good intentions. Johann had contracted an irregular union with one Therese Obermeyer, and Beethoven, instead of being content with putting his objections as one brother might to another, must needs descend on their home at Linz, and try to bully them into separating. Of course he stormed in vain, Johann naturally telling him in effect to mind his own business. Whereupon Beethoven may be said literally to have moved heaven and earth to gain his ends, for he applied both to the Bishop and the civil authorities for support. He got it, too, in the shape of an order to the police to remove Therese to Vienna if she did not leave Linz by a specified date. The 104result was a scene between the brothers on which biographers have agreed to draw a veil. All that need be said is that Johann won by promptly doing what anybody less obtuse than Beethoven in such matters would have foreseen: he married the girl, and so gave Beethoven a sister-in-law whom he cordially detested.
