Brahms is said to have left, besides his library, which included valuable autograph musical manuscripts, and a very few personal possessions, about £20,000 in investments. In the original will three societies--the Liszt Pensions-Verein of Hamburg, the Czerny Verein and the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde of Vienna--were named as the inheritors, subject to the payment of a legacy to the composer's landlady, Frau Truxa, and of two life-annuities--one to his stepmother, Frau Caroline Brahms, to be continued after her death to her son, Fritz Schnack, for his life; the other to Brahms' sister, Elise Grund. These would practically account for the time being for the income arising from the investments. In the absence of any legally valid document, about twenty cousins of various degrees of kinship came forward, in answer to advertisements in the newspapers, as claimants to the property. Litigation ensued, and was protracted through several years. The original process and the first appeal were determined in favour of the societies; the second appeal reversed these decisions, and declared the blood relations to be the heirs. To prevent the further expense and delay of another appeal, a compromise was now arrived at by the contending parties, and the general results of the will, the law-processes, and the compromise have been that the blood relations have been recognised as the heirs to all but the library, which is now in the possession of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde; that Frau Truxa's legacy has been paid; and that certain sums accepted by the societies, by which they will ultimately benefit, have been invested, and the income arising from them secured for the payment of the life-annuity to Herr Schnack. (Frau Caroline Brahms died in the spring of 1902.) Projects for the erection of memorials to the master in Hamburg, Vienna, and Meiningen, were set on foot soon after his death. The first to be completed has been that now standing in the 'English Garden' at Meiningen, the unveiling of which was made the occasion of a Memorial Festival in October, 1899. The bust of the master which it displays is the work of Professor Hildebrandt. The memorial erected at the grave by the heirs, after the final settlement of the property, designed and executed by Fräulein Ilse Conrat, was unveiled on May 7, 1903, the seventieth anniversary of Brahms' birth. It consists of a marble bust and pedestal in front of a marble headstone, on which are allegorical figures in bas-relief. Memorial tablets have been placed by the respective municipalities on the houses in which Brahms lived in Vienna, Ischl, and Thun, and the garden of the house at Mürz Zuschlag has been bought by the town and made into a music-garden. A bronze bust of the master by Frau Dr. Fellinger stands in the musicians' pavilion.