December 5, 1791

Death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies in Vienna at age 35

His official cause of death translates as "severe miliary fever" — a bureaucratic label for a rash, not a diagnosis doctors could use today.

About 12:55 a.m., 5 December 1791

Mozart died at his Vienna home at approximately 12:55 a.m. on 5 December 1791, aged 35, after an acute illness of roughly two weeks that had probably begun around 20 November.

The Viennese death record entered the cause as "hitziges Frieselfieber", commonly translated as severe or acute miliary fever. The Mozarteum cautions that this was an administrative description rather than a precise modern diagnosis.

A 2009 epidemiological study found the evidence consistent with a streptococcal infection followed by acute nephritic syndrome, but that remains a retrospective hypothesis. The Mozarteum says researchers agree poison was not the cause.

The Requiem left open

Mozart left the Requiem unfinished. A later account says friends sang portions of it at his bedside on 4 December, hours before his final collapse.

The completion was undertaken principally by Franz Xaver Süssmayr, with earlier contributions by Joseph Eybler. Constanze Mozart was left with two surviving children and responsibility for the estate and the unfinished commission.

The consecration and the shaft grave

On 6 December his coffin was consecrated outside the Crucifix Chapel on the north side of St Stephen's Cathedral and taken that evening toward St Marx Cemetery.

He received a third-class funeral and an unmarked shaft grave of the customary kind, generally holding four or five bodies. The Mozarteum explicitly says this was not a pauper's burial.

Sources differ over whether burial itself occurred late on 6 December or on the 7th, and the familiar list of graveside mourners comes from Otto Jahn in 1856 rather than a contemporary attendance record.

Sources

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What the sources leave uncertain

The death date and approximate time are well supported; the medical cause is not. “Severe miliary fever” was a symptom-based contemporary label, not a modern diagnosis.
A 2009 epidemiological study found the evidence consistent with a streptococcal infection followed by acute nephritic syndrome, but this remains a retrospective hypothesis, not a verified diagnosis.
Sources differ over whether burial itself occurred late on 6 December or on 7 December. The Mozarteum documents the consecration and transport on the 6th; Cliff Eisen's scholarly biography gives burial on the 7th.
The often-repeated list of Salieri, Süssmayr, van Swieten and two musicians at the burial comes from Otto Jahn in 1856, not a contemporary attendance record.