Maria Anna Mozart
Maria Anna Walburga Ignatia Mozart, better known as Nannerl, was the sister of famed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and like her brother, an accomplished musician in her own right. She was born on July 30 (though some historians say July 31st) 1751 in Salzburg, Austria to parents Leopold Mozart, a composer and violinist, and his wife Anna Maria.
Maria Anna’s musical education began at age seven when her father started to teach the young Anna Maria how to play the harpsichord. Under their fathers tutelage the siblings became skilled in improvisation and composition, while Maria Anna was exceptional with at the keyboard she was forced to take the backseat to her younger brother Wolfgang. This is said to be due to a few reasons.: Wolfgang was younger and Anna Maria was to old to be seen as a child prodigy. Or another possibility was there were social rules to follow during her time and Maria Anna was almost of marriageable age. Either way, Maria Anna glimpse at the spotlight became just that, she was to stay at home in Salzburg while Wolfgang traveled the European landscape with either their father or mother.
While Wolfgang while was granted freedom, his relationship with her did not suffer. As children Maria Anna and Wolfgang were very close. Wolfgang idolized Maria Anna, they even had a secret language between the two of them. It is also said that Wolfgang would write entries in her private journal. Wolfgang thought highly of his sisters musical skills and accomplishments, encouraging her to travel to places such as Vienna to play private concerts and giving lessons and praising her compositions. During this time, Maria Anna found herself highly controlled by her father and his wishes for her life. While Wolfgang was rebelled and quarreled with their father, Maria Anna was denied her choice of suitors, all who were turned down by Leopold. One such suitor, a Armand d’Ippold, Maria Anna fell madly in love with but was forced to turn down his proposal of marriage because of her father. Her heartbreak was so evident that even her bother encouraged her to stand up to their father for the right to choose who she wanted to marry. This was in vain, for on August 23, 1783 at the age of 33 Maria Anna married a wealthy magistrate, Johann Baptist Franz von Berchtold zu Sonnenburg.
After her marriage, Maria Anna and her husband moved the village of St. Gilgen just east of the Mozart home. Unfortunately her husband came with a load of baggage. Johann was not only twice widowed, but he also had five children from these two marriages, all which Maria Anna helped raise. Addition to these adopted children, in 1785 Maria Anna gave birth to her first child, a son by the name of Leopold Alois Pantale, who was her only child to survive adulthood. For the birth of her first child, she traveled back to her family home in Salzburg, where after the birth of young Leopold she left the baby to be raised by her father for the first few months of the child’s life. While she saw her son occasionally, her father was the one involved in her sons care until Leopold died on May 28, 1787.
Why was this odd arrangement made? According to the wiki article on Maria Anna there are a few arguments to this. One argument was that young Leopold was a ill infant and needed special care, so he was left with his grandfather. But this argument doesn’t explain why the child was kept there after he was considered recovered. Another argument is that Maria Anna herself was in ill health and with the care of her stepchildren needed, caring for a infant just wasn’t something she could do at the time. The last argument stated was that her father wanted to create another musical genius as he had done with Wolfgang, and Maria Anna letting her father raise her son was another demonstration of his controlling hold on his daughter.
Maria Anna would give birth to two more children after Leopold, Jeanette born in 1789 and Maria Babette born in 1790 (who only lived about a year). It is said in these years Maria Anna and her brother Wolfgang drifted apart, especially after Wolfgang married Constanze Weber. While some say they remained close it is the popular belief that after a brief meeting in Salzburg after their fathers death in 1787 it is said the siblings never visited each other again and their correspondences decreased and finally ended all together in 1788.
Maria Anna became a widow in 1801, with her husbands death she moved back to Salzburg with her two living children and four of her step children where she worked at a music teach and eventually had a run in with her brothers widow Constanze Weber, now Constanze Nissen. The meeting was diplomatic, so much so Maria Anna eventually gave the Nissen’s corrisondences of Wolfgang’s for a biography that they were working on. But Mr. Nissen died before its completion. During her last nine years Maria Anne was in poor health, though one bright light was her brother son Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart while he was visiting Sulzburg to conduct a performance for the late Mr. Nissen.
In 1825 Maria Anna went blind and her health declined further, she was said to be fatigued and almost speechless, along with lonely. On October 29 1829, Maria Anna took her last breath and was laid to rest in the St. Peter abby churchyard.
It was hard to write this and not think, what could have Maria Anna become if she wasn’t held back in life. Could she have reached Wolfgang’s success? Or perhaps ever surpass him? For such a talented young woman, she really did seem to live a very ordinary life. Between her gender and her fathers strict overbearing ways, Maria Anna was stuck in the life she was born into, even though she was truly a musical genius in her own right.