Georg Nikolaus Von Nissen - Life

Life

Nissen was born in Haderslev, Denmark. He completed his schooling in 1781 and became "authorized agent of the General Post Office" in Copenhagen in 1781. In 1792 he became a diplomat in the Danish foreign service. As of 1793, he worked in Vienna as chargé d'affaires.

In 1797, while serving in this post, Nissen first met Mozart's widow Constanze, whose husband had died six years earlier in 1791. He was initially her tenant. The two began living together in September 1798.

Constanze had been through an arduous period following Mozart's death, trying to ward off poverty for herself and her two sons. In this she was successful, obtaining a pension from the Emperor, and making considerable money from concerts of Mozart's music and sale to publishers of his works in manuscript. Nissen came to participate in these labors, taking over much of the work of negotiating with publishers. He also helped care for the children, eventually taking (in Ruth Halliwell's words) "the role of a caring father" in the family.

Nissen and Constanze were married in 1809. The marriage did not produce any children.

In 1812 the couple moved to Copenhagen, where Nissen took up a post as a censor. They dwelt there until 1820, at Lavendelstræde 1, a street where many houses of the period are still preserved.

In 1820, Nissen retired, and the couple moved to Salzburg. Nissen had long been planning a biography of Mozart, and the work began seriously in 1823. Nissen benefited greatly when Mozart's now-elderly older sister Nannerl gave him and Constanze a collection of about 400 Mozart family letters. He worked assiduously to assemble all the biographical material he could, including interviews with still living people who had known the composer.

Unfortunately, the collection of the material was still in progress when Nissen died, 24 March 1826. Only the incomplete Preface can be fully attributed to Nissen himself. The completion of the work, based on his notes, was left to a medical doctor and Mozart enthusiast living in Pirna, Johann Heinrich Feuerstein (1797–1850). Angermüller and Stafford (cited below) call Feuerstein "unstable," and Halliwell judges his work thus: "the book was cobbled together in a haphazard fashion from the raw material, and the result was disastrous in terms of quality." Angermüller and Stafford similarly call the work "problematic", adding that "large sections are taken from earlier accounts, often of dubious reliability, and it contains contradictions and errors. The letters it quotes were selected and censored." These authors leave open the question of whether it was Nissen or Feuerstein who is to blame.

The biography was published posthumously in 1829, titled Biographie W. A. Mozart's. Nach Originalbriefen, Sammlungen alles über ihn Geschriebenen, mit vielen neuen Beylagen, Steindrücken, Musikblättern und einem Facsimile.

Nissen died, aged 62, in Salzburg, and was buried there. His tombstone, naming him "The husband of Mozart's widow", can still be visited.