Mozart &
Material Culture

Wife of W. A. Mozart.  Mozart first met Constanze Weber during his visit to Mannheim in 1777-1778, at which time he was infatuated with Constanze’s older sister, Aloysia.  Their relationship blossomed only in 1781, by which time both Mozart and the Webers were living in Vienna; for short spell in the spring and early summer of that year, Mozart was the Webers’ lodger. They married at St Stephen’s Cathedral on 4 August 1782. Following Mozart’s death, Constanze was granted an annual pension of 266 gulden and over the next several years she arranged performances of his works. Towards the end of the decade she arranged for the sale of Mozart’s manuscripts to the Offenbach publisher Johann Anton André; many of her business affairs were handled by Georg Nikolaus Nissen, a Danish diplomat whom she married in 1809.  The couple lived in Copenhagen from 1810 to 1821; after his retirement they settled in Salzburg. Nissen died in 1826 while collecting materials for a biography of Mozart, which Constanze had finished and published in 1828 (Biographie W. A. Mozarts).

Joseph Lange, Constanze Mozart, 1782