Outer Vienna

Beethoven died on 26 March 1827 after a long and painful illness. Three days later his coffin was drawn through the streets of Vienna, past a crowd of 20,000 people - more than had ever turned out on the streets of the city - to the village of Währing, west of Vienna.

There he was buried in the Währinger cemetery. Austria's leading playwright of the day, Franz Grillparzer - whom Beethoven had met years before in Heiligenstadt - wrote a funeral oration to be declaimed by Heinrich Anschütz, the leading actor of the day, at the graveside as Beethoven's coffin was lowered.

But strict religious law forbade the declaiming of any words that were not sacred on consecrated ground.

So Anschütz read the oration as Beethoven's coffin was drawn through the gates of the cemetery.

One year and seven months later, on 2 November 1828, the body of Franz Schubert - in accordance with his deathbed wish - was buried alongside Beethoven (actually two graves away) in the Währinger cemetery.

On 13 October 1863 the bodies of Beethoven and Schubert were exhumed, their skeletons examined and reburied in new copper coffins in adjacent graves.

In 1888 it was decided to close down the Währinger cemetery. The bodies of Beethoven and Schubert were again exhumed and on 22 June reburied alongside each other in the recently opened (1874) Zentralfriedhof, the main cemetery south-east of the city, where they lie today.

The Währinger cemetery was grassed over and turned into a small public park, but the original headstones of Beethoven and Schubert were left in place as a mark of respect. Today the park has asphalt tennis courts and is surrounded by apartment blocks, whose residents walk their dogs in the park - generally unaware, it occurred to me when I went there, of the gravestones that stand against the perimeter wall.

The park is set on higher ground than the city, and walking there with my wife Bonnie, up a slow but relentless gradient, brought home to me what an effort it must have been for the horses to draw the bier carrying Beethoven's coffin.

Today's visitors should not be confused by the large Währinger Park shown on the map. The former Währinger cemetery is a little to the south-west, named Schubert Park!

© John Suchet