You will not decline to accede to my friendly request if I beg of you to secure my baptismal certificate for me. Whatever expense may attach to the matter, since you have an account with Steffen Breuning, you can recoup yourself at once from that source and I will make it good at once to Steffen here. If you should yourself think it worth while to investigate the matter and make the trip from Coblenz to Bonn, charge everything to me. But one thing must be borne in mind, namely, that ~there was a brother born before~ I was, who was also named Ludwig with the addition Maria, but who died. To fix my age beyond doubt, this brother must first be found, inasmuch as I already know that in this respect a mistake has been made by others, and I have been said to be older than I am. Unfortunately I myself lived for a time without knowing my age. I had a family register but it has been lost heaven knows how. Therefore do not be bored if I urge you to attend to this matter, to find Maria and the present Ludwig who was born after him. The sooner you send me the baptismal certificate the greater will be my obligation. To the “Notizen” (1838) Wegeler published a few pages of appendix on the occasion of the Beethoven festival at Bonn (1845), giving therein a most valuable paragraph explanatory of this important letter: It seems that Beethoven, once in his life, entertained the idea of marrying, after having been in love many times, as is related in the “Notizen” (pp. 40, 42 ~et seq.~ and 117 ~et seq.~). Many persons as well as myself were impressed by the urgency with which in his letter of May 10 [~sic~] he besought me to secure his baptismal certificate for him. He wants to pay all the expenditures, even a journey from Coblenz to Bonn. And then he adds explicit instructions which I was to observe in looking up the certificate in order to get the right one. I found the solution of the riddle in a letter written to me three months later by my brother-in-law St. v. Breuning. In this he says: “Beethoven tells me at least once a week that he intends to write to you; but I believe his marriage project has fallen through, and for this reason he no longer feels the lively desire to thank you for your trouble in getting him the baptismal certificate.” In the thirty-ninth year of his life Beethoven had not given up thoughts of marriage.