Cream - Strange Brew

The question for Beethoven should have been posed that way. The matter was not even in Johannes premature pregnancy, but in her origin, upbringing and manners. The bride's family was quite wealthy, and, it would seem, this marriage could not be considered unequal in any sense of the word. But the alliance of Karl with the daughter of the upholsterer actually put an end to Ludwig's plans to achieve the hand of Countess Dame. Of course, the titled aristocrat Josephine and the petty bourgeois Johannes Reis could under no circumstances have the same surname and be considered members of the same family. The Countess Dame hosted and even furnished Karl van Beethoven with letters of recommendation, but she would have considered obscene and unacceptable to be close to the newly-born "Mrs. van Beethoven".