Heiligenstadt, Grinzinger Straße 64, Beethoven Houses No. 4, 1902

Carl Moll (1861–1945) used the technique of the woodcut for his series of Beethoven Houses. After a first high point in the Renaissance period, namely, with Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), the technique went all but out of use before it was rediscovered by Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) und Edvard Munch (1863–1944) and saw its bloom in Vienna around 1900. In woodcutting, the artist first transfers a drawing onto a panel of, mostly, nut, peach, or yew wood and then lifts off or carves out the intended white, non-printing areas with a knife or gouge. The resultant raised areas take up the color which is put to paper under the printing press. The house in Grinzinger Strasse represented here was where Beethoven lived at the same time as the then-adolescent playwright Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872). When Beethoven became aware that Grillparzer’s mother liked to listen to him playing the piano, he touched the instrument no more. Moll shows the inner courtyard here from which simple wooden stairs led up the upper floor where Beethoven’s quarters were.

BL, 2021