Theresa Winslow - 02/07/10

Helen Brockmeyer just got out of a 20-year relationship, so it’s understandable that she’s been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster lately. But at least she’s got a lot to show for it.

The Annapolis resident’s relationship, or maybe a better word would be obsession, was with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - and it ended in December when she released her exhaustive book about the Austrian composer. Specifically, about his death in 1791.

Brockmeyer spent two decades and tens of thousands of dollars investigating her theory that Mozart was murdered. She even learned German and worked as an au pair in Germany so she could personally visit the composer’s stomping grounds.

The 55-year-old spurns accepted dogma about an illness claiming Mozart’s life, and instead believes his throat was slashed by Freemasons as retribution for insulting an Austrian prince. Mozart and the prince were both Freemasons, but the prince’s aristocratic standing spelled disaster for the composer when the complaint was aired, she said. Her exact reasoning is spelled out in great detail in the 452-page, textbook-size “Echoes of a Distant Crime: Resolving the Mozart Cold Case File.”

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Interesting stuff. I, for one, will surely pick up a copy.

Through a bit of poking around at the Mozart forum and at Brockmeyer’s site, the main culprit in the alleged murder seems to be Illuminatus Prince Christian Karl von Lichnowsky. Here’s a short bio on him from my book Perfectibilists (p. 349):