Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, Bonngasse, Gartenansicht und Geburtszimmer vor der Restaurierung 1889 - zwei Holzschnitte nach Zeichnungen von Reiner Beißel, Bonn, 1889

The drawing of Reiner Beißel shows the Beethoven-Haus seen from the garden. It shows the building how it looked at the time it was bought by the newly founded Beethoven-Haus Society. The drawing does not show the later constructed outbuilding at the narrow side of the rear building, by which the rooms on the right hand side of the entrance door had been enlarged, and also the roof at this point is shaped the way how it looked in the mid- 19th century. But apparently the painter had problems illustrating some details of the building: the staircase of the front building for example is too big and its proportions seem to be wrong.

After the Beethoven-Haus Society had bought the building, several constructional changes had been done: Walls had been broken down to connect the front building with the rear building, and later on the already mentioned outbuilding at the rear had been constructed. In this part of the building, shown on the right hand side of the painting, the family had lived when Ludwig van Beethoven had been born. As a tradition it is said that the room where the composer had been born was the last room on the second floor (the window on the far right top of the painting).(S.B.)