Tragedy of Raimund Leopold Mozart: Impact of Infant Mortality on Mozart Family

On 19/08/1783, Raimund Leopold Mozart, the first child of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Constanze Mozart, died in Vienna at the age of about two months. He had been born on 17/06/1783, less than a year after the couple’s marriage in August 1782. Parish records from Vienna document both the birth and death of the infant. The loss occurred while Mozart was active as a composer and performer in the city and shortly before he and Constanze traveled to Salzburg later in 1783. The death of Raimund Leopold marked the first child loss for the Mozarts. During the eighteenth century, infant mortality rates were high, and several of the couple’s later children also died in infancy. Of their six children, only two survived into adulthood: Karl Thomas Mozart, born in 1784, and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, born in 1791. The early death of their first child took place during a period of transition in Mozart’s life, shortly after his move to Vienna and the start of his independent career following his break with the Salzburg court. The event in August 1783 preceded the births of additional children in subsequent years, including Theresia Constanzia Adelheid Friederike Maria Anna in 1785, Anna Maria in 1789, and Johann Georg in 1786, all of whom died young. The loss of Raimund Leopold therefore began a sequence of family bereavements documented in correspondence and parish records during Mozart’s Viennese years.