Living space was at a premium around the turn of the 19th century, particularly in the city centre. In 1805, in his ”Neue Skizze von Wien” (New Sketch of Vienna), the writer Johann Pezzl reported complaints that “one could not find an apartment, even for large sums.” He added that “even wealthy people” were being forced to “move out of the city and into the suburbs.” The situation was further exacerbated by a combination of inflation, the bankruptcy of the Austro-Hungarian state in 1811, and the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
For many tradesmen and (low and middle-ranking) officials, rents in the city became unaffordable and they moved into the suburbs. This meant the suburbs grew especially quickly, as residents moving out of the city proper were joined by migrants moving into greater Vienna from other regions. When Beethoven first moved to Vienna, it was home to about 161,000 people; when he died there, about 35 years later, the population had risen to about 265,000.
Over the last third of the 18th century, this explosive population growth triggered a social and geographical stratification of Vienna that could still be seen into the 19th and 20th centuries. While Viennese high society became clustered primarily in the expensive districts of the city centre, and aristocrats built their summer palaces in the suburbs, middle-class Viennese moved into the suburbs in large numbers, with the lower classes congregating in the outlying districts furthest from the centre. Josefstadt, where Beethoven lived during the winter of 1819/20, developed into a middle-class suburb over the first third of the 19th century, not least because it was home to a large contingent of civil servants.
“The Linie [Line Wall], which runs through all the suburbs, has 11 gates or exits, which are patrolled by police guards and closed at 10 o'clock at night, though they have to be opened for every single oncoming wagon, and indeed every individual pedestrian, on demand and at all hours.”
Johann Pezzl: Beschreibung der Haupt- und Residenz-Stadt Wien (Description of Vienna, Capital and Royal Seat), 1816, p. 67.
Beethoven composed the Credo from the Missa Solemnis at “Zur goldenen Birne”, which was located right on the glacis. “Concerning the mass that is shortly to be performed, the fee is 125 louisdors. It is a great work”, the Bonn-based publisher Peter Joseph Simrock wrote in February 1820. Beethoven completed the mass, which was dedicated to the Archduke Rudolph, in honour of Rudolph's election as Bishop of Olomouc, in 1823.
“There, even further to the left – I continued to explain to Hans – you can see Josephstadt and its beautiful buildings, which are growing steadily more numerous as new constructions are erected. It is one of the most beautiful suburbs [in Vienna], one where you will find a theatre as well as attractive inns and coffee houses.”
Heinrich Walden: Wien und seine Bewohner (Vienna and its Residents), 1834, p. 32.
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