Talk:Nationality of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart/Archive 1

A proposed principle to keep this article on target
I would like to suggest that this article contain no information whatsoever about the feelings of post-1791 Austrians and Germans concerning their nationality (1791 is the year Mozart died.) These feelings are not relevant to issues of Mozart biography. I can easily see such edits spiraling out of control, and I think the right approach is to nip them in the bud. Opus33 (talk) 16:30, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

194.166.18.151 weighs in

 * The usual redundant Opus33 baloney. This article is completely useless ("not relevant to issues of Mozart biography"), underinformed and narcissistic. Its author in no way has the right to judge as to what is the "right control" and neither is it allowed according to Wikipedia regulations to "nip anything in the bud". Furthermore I miss the information in the summary that from a strictly legal point of view Mozart of course had the nationality of his father who was a "Bürger der freien Reichsstadt Augsburg".--194.166.18.151 (talk) 11:38, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
 * So you are suggesting that WAM was in fact Augsburger, a city his father had left for Salzburg when he was 18, 19 years before WAM was born there? Balderdash. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:00, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Hello Michael, you're right to be skeptical about an anon who employs the writing style of a web-ranter. However, the theory that Anon advocates does appear in the published literature, specifically Deutsch (1965). Deutsch notes that Leopold Mozart went to special trouble when he moved to Salzburg to retain his Augsburg citizenship, and says that as a result Nannerl and Wolfgang were legally Augsburgers, too. Unfortunately, Deutsch does not provide any material concerning the laws that applied in Salzburg to children born of alien fathers, which I think would have been helpful. Since no other reference source I could find mentioned the "Mozart as Augsburger" theory, I put it in a footnote. Regards, Opus33 (talk) 16:32, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I also need to mention that ...
...although Salzburg became independent from Bavaria, it still was part of the HRE, and did not belong to Austria till 1805 - Mozart died in 1791, and his father was from Augsburg (Bavaria), while his mother also was from Salzburg, HRE. Salzburg was founded by the Bavarians, and did belong to Bavaria for ca. 1000 years, until it became an independent prince-bishopric of the Holy Roman Empire. Mozart died 14 years before the Austrian Empire annexed Salzburg. If anything, Mozart was Bavarian.

No need to say that, historically, Austrians were regarded as ethnic Germans, since Austria was part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation until its ending and as part of the German Confederation, until the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 which effectively saw Prussia exclude Austria from Germany.

Only following the founding of the nation-state German Empire in 1871 without Austria (Lesser Germany solution), Austrians have developed their own distinct national identity and in the modern day do not consider themselves as "Germans" anymore (the term "Austrian/s" used to refer to citizens of the political entity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire - it was a political term, and certainly not about ethnicity). --IIIraute (talk) 04:54, 30 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, but there is also the question of the 'jus sanguinis'. I believe to remember that the location, where Wolfgang was born, is indifferent, cause according to the 'jus sanguinis' (of this time), he got the citizenship of his father. His father was married to his mother! (important fact) If Wolfgang would have been an illegitimate child, then he would have gotten the citizenship of his mother.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.194.45.3 (talk) 20:57, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

There is no confusion on Mozart's nationality, he was Bavarian, thus German and should be stated as such (in the main article!)
I understand the arguments, but they're redundant. Mozart's father was from Augsburg (Bavaria), his mother from Salzburg (Bavaria) and he was also born there (Bavaria). He died in 1791 and Salzburg only became part of Austria in 1805, before then it had always been part of Bavaria. Bavaria and it's people became part of Germany, thus he as a Bavarian would and should be considered German, ethnically anyhow, since there's no Austrian ethnicity. It's completely irrelevant who owns Salzburg today. Gutenberg isn't considered French because he lived in Strassburg, nor is Kant considered Russian because Koenigsberg is now part of modern day Russia. Why should it make a difference to Mozart? Because Austrians are so un-German that they'll distance themselves at any given opportunity, but kind of fancy him? Seriously, it's not that complicated and while it may be true that many people believe he was Austrian, Wikipedia's job is actually to clarify and rectify such false assumptions, not to (deliberately) further them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.152.93.144 (talk) 17:26, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Mozart's nationality. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20121107141736/http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/11/opinion/l-letter-on-mozart-a-german-not-austrian-composer-878092.html to http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/11/opinion/l-letter-on-mozart-a-german-not-austrian-composer-878092.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 13:46, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Hidden reversion
Opus33, thank you for your hidden reversion and your phony edit summary the content of which is totally fanciful. I consider your behavior quite unethical and deplorable. Just not to waste my time, please tell me if this page is still open to improvement or miserably double-locked. In particular it is difficult for me to accept your "the Holy Roman Empire was largely German", which associates the HRE with an yet nonexistent German nation. Mine "the Holy Roman Empire was largely German speaking" was trying to shift to the blander concept of a commonwealth of mostly German speaking people, which is a more correct depiction of that situation. Carlotm (talk) 03:03, 31 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello, sorry for the rudeness of my edit summary. The substantive point at hand is this: if you will look at the preceding paragraph, you'll see that it describes a variety of ways, in addition to language, that the Holy Roman Empire was German.  When a couple years ago I wrote the paragraph we're discussing, I really did mean "German", not "German-speaking"; I think this is more accurate.  This is why I reverted.  Yours sincerely, Opus33 (talk) 05:12, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

"Residual and moribund"
Perhaps works on Mozart, relying on older or more popular sources, regard the Empire that way, but no modern scholar of the Empire (or 18th-century Germany) does. Also, "Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" was not the official name of the Empire and the Imperial Estates were not "independent" (as in sovereign). The long quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica seems distinctly dated. The language is just too strong. The Reichstag was without authority? The empire a mere residue? The Empire may have been weak and in relative decline—that's why reform was a hot topic—but it was still very much there and a sovereign state. Srnec (talk) 16:49, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Political Germany
The article states: "[...] there being no country of "Germany" of which Mozart could have been a citizen." Unfortunately I'm not an expert in English-language books about the Empire, but original sources such as Johann Jacob Moser's Teutsches Staatsrecht indicate that contemporary's regarded the German realm within the Empire as a state whose inhabitants where citizens thereof although he clearly distinguishes mediate and immediate citizens. This can of course not be compared to modern nationality but should nonetheless be mentioned. -- Orthographicus (talk) 16:15, 16 November 2016 (UTC)