Earlier Years
She was the daughter of Anton Reiß (Reiss), a prosperous Viennese upholsterer. Her mother was the daughter of a wine merchant and local mayor.
She was accused of theft by her parents in 1804, an event that would later play a role in her lawsuit with Beethoven.
On 25 May 1806 she married Kaspar Anton Karl van Beethoven, younger brother of Ludwig. Their only child, Karl van Beethoven, was born about three months later, on 4 September of the same year.
Read more about this topic: Johanna Van Beethoven
Famous quotes containing the words earlier years, earlier and/or years:
“I had a consuming ambition to possess a miller’s thumb. I believe I have never since wanted anything more desperately than I wanted my right thumb to be flattened as my father’s had become, during his earlier years of a miller’s life.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“In old persons, when thus fully expressed, we often observe a fair, plump, perennial waxen complexion, which indicates that all the ferment of earlier days has subsided into serenity of thought and behavior.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman treads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)