The building in which Schubert died at Kettenbrückengasse 6 in Vienna

November 19 is a sad day for us all. On November 19, 1828 – 190 years ago today – Franz Schubert died in Vienna at his brother Ferdinand’s third floor flat at Kettenbrückengasse 6 (in Schubert’s day, the address was Firmiansgasse 694). The building looks almost exactly the same today as it did when Schubert died there; the red and white flags in front of the building today surround a tablet that reads “Schubert Gedenktafel”: “Schubert Memorial Plaque.”

The memorial at Schubert’s original grave at the Währing Cemetery

On the facing directly below the bust at Schubert’s original grave in Vienna’s Währing Cemetery (what is now called “Schubert Park”) is an inscription written by the Viennese dramatist Franz Grillparzer:

“The art of music here interred a rich possession/But still far fairer hopes.”

Ain’t that the truth. In the last sixteen years of his brief life, this composer of really unparalleled lyric gifts composed, among other works: 8 finished and “unfinished” symphonies (not 9, which is the number typically bandied about); 10 orchestral overtures; 22 piano sonatas; 6 masses; 17 operas; over 1000 works for solo piano and piano four-hands; around 145 choral works; 45 chamber works, including some drop dead string quartets, and 637 songs. But in fact, the 31 year, 9 month, and 19 days-old Schubert was just a kid when he died, someone who should have had the vast majority of his creative life still in front of him. His grave did indeed contain a “rich possession”, but it also contained, sadly “still fairer hopes.”

Schubert’s Health

Franz von Schober

Sometime in the late summer of 1822, the 25 year-old Schubert contracted syphilis during a nocturnal pleasure jaunt with his friend and partner-in-sexual-crime, Franz von Schober. While it is not known for sure whether the prostitute that infected Schubert was male or female, recent scholarship suggests that not only was it a male prostitute but perhaps even an underage male prostitute.

The primary symptoms of Schubert’s syphilis appeared in December of 1822. If Schubert’s case was typical, he suffered from painful lymphatic swelling, pustules, rashes, hair loss, lesions in his mouth and throat, and debilitating muscle aches. For Schubert, depression and despair accompanied the diagnosis and the symptoms. On March 31, 1824, a despondent Schubert wrote his friend Leopold Kupelweiser:

Leopold Kupelweiser

“I feel myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, a man whose most brilliant hopes have perished, to whom love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain, whose enthusiasm for all things beautiful is gone, and I ask you, is he not a miserable, unhappy being? Each night, on retiring to bed, I hope I may not wake again, and each morning but recalls yesterday’s grief.” 

This was Schubert’s state of mind for a year-and-a-half,