Maria Anna Mozart

Maria Anna Mozart is often left out of brief accounts of her brother’s life. But his sister was sharing the bench with him and was also considered an impressive and accomplished musician. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson, and today
we're going to talk about Maria Anna Mozart, who went
by the neural Marianna Mariandel within the family, but she

(00:24):
has often kind of left out of if you read
a brief account of her brother's life, every biographical sketch
of Wolfgang Mozart mentions that he was a touring musician
when he was still a child. A lot of those
neglect to mention that his sister was literally sitting on
the bench with him and was also considered an accomplished
musician and uh, you know, a genius of her age.

(00:49):
Her biography kind of gets pieced together by looking at
the documentation of Wolfgang's life. She left some diaries, but
not really anything that's like a comprehensive account of either
are the events of her life or her thoughts and
feelings about them. We'll talk about several points in the
show where there are big things that happen that we
don't really understand what the logic was or the discussion

(01:10):
that led to them. Um there are some letters also
written by a number of family members, including her brother
and father, both too and mentioning Maria Anna. And some
records also remain, like public records, birth records, etcetera, as
well as mentions in papers of the day or diaries
of people who saw her perform as a girl. And
I want to make one note on her name because

(01:30):
you will often see her referred to by her nickname
of Nenural when people are talking about her life story.
But that was really a name that was reserved for
family and close friends. So Tracy and I decided we
are not going that route. We are going to be
sticking with calling her Maria Anna for today's show. So
Maria Anna was born Maria Anna Valpurga Ignacia Mozart on

(01:52):
July thirty one of seventeen fifty one in Salzburg and
her mother on A. Maria had grown up in pretty
Her father, Leopold Mozart, was a musician. That was not
what his family had wanted him to do. They had
wanted him to enter the priesthood, and when Marianna was born,
he was still estranged from his mother over his choice.

(02:15):
In this. Leopold and Anna Maria had a total of
seven children, including Maria Anna and her very famous brother Wolfgang,
but the other five children all died when they were
still babies. When Maria was eight, Leopold started giving her
harpsichord lessons, and she was really good. She developed what
was called a perfect technique, and her brother Wolfgang would

(02:37):
have been about three at this point. He often sat
next to her and watched and listened as she was
learning and playing. The two of them were very close,
and they're said to have invented kind of an imaginary
kingdom for themselves. Yeah, there's a whole story there about
their imaginative life that is largely extrapolation because they were children,

(02:58):
not recording this in any sort of formal way, but
people love to talk about it. And once Maria Anna
started taking harp score lessons from her father, little brother Wolfgang,
who adored his sister and sat next to her on
the bench, as Tracy just said, while she took these lessons,
soon started playing as well to emulate her. And there's

(03:18):
a music book where their father, Leopold had been keeping
notes on Maria Anna's progress, and he started including in
that notebook mentions of his son's aptitude as well as
Maria Anna's progress. That notebook, Incidentally, at least what is
left of it, is a museum piece today, known colloquially
as than a neural not in book. It's more accurate

(03:39):
to describe it as museum pieces plural, as there are
pages from it in museums around the globe, although the
bulk of it is still in Salzburg. The notebook contained
some compositions that were written for Maria Anna's study by
her father, as well as pieces written by a very
young Mozart and pieces written by additional composers that have
not been conclusively identified. Wolfgang was pretty quick at picking

(04:03):
up on his sister's lessons, so Leopold decided to teach
him as well. He started learning through his own formal
lessons at the age of five. This meant that he
was getting lessons from his father and undoubtedly helped from
his sister as well, in effect having a private tutor
in addition to having a teacher. Yeah, one article I
was reading about this was talking about how beneficial this

(04:25):
probably was to his development, because not only did he
have someone who could explain all of the lessons in
kids speak to him, but it was someone he trusted
that had just done those lessons, and it probably really
gave him like an extra boost in terms of learning quickly.
When Maria Anna was eleven and Volfgang was six, the
two children began playing together for audiences. Maximilian the third Joseph,

(04:49):
Elector of Bavaria was one of the first people to
hear this duo play at a private performance in Munich.
Another attendee, Count Karl von Zinzendorff, noted this of in
his diary The Tiny Boy with the Big Personality. He
noted as playing quote marvelous lee, and the Count wrote
that quote his sister's playing is masterly. This was really

(05:11):
the beginning of a career as child performers. For the
next three years, the Mozart siblings and their parents were
on tour and they played in eighty eight different cities.
Considering that this was in the eighteenth century, this involved
just arduous travel. Yeah. This was not like a really glamorous,

(05:31):
sexy music tour where they got to stay at great
places and they were in you know, private, beautiful um
traveling conveyances. This was really hard work. So when you
consider two kids being kind of carted all over Europe
in that way, that's a lot to put children through.
In seventeen sixty four, Leopold Mozart wrote a letter about

(05:53):
his daughter, who was twelve at the time, and after
a long recounting of her various feats that her talent
enabled her to perform as a musician, he summated with quote,
what it all amounts to is this that my little girl,
although she is only twelve years old, is one of
the most skillful players in Europe. It was during this
first multi year tour that Wolfgang wrote his first symphony.

(06:15):
The family was in London at the time. Leopold was
ill and the children were forbidden from playing instruments. Their
mother did not want them to disturb their father, so
they sat down with pen and paper. Maria Anna took
dictation of Symphony number one in E Flatin major, which
is listed in the Colhole catalog as K sixteen. Whether

(06:36):
or not Maria Anna offered any kind of collaboration on
this piece is really not known. Yeah, some speculation happens
around that, but we'll never really know. So the Mozart
kids toured together until seventeen sixty nine, and the end
of their time as a performing duo was brought about
by Maria's eighteenth birthday. She had actually stopped touring when

(06:57):
she was still sixteen because the family was taking a
little bit of break for all of this travel that
we just mentioned was really very taxing. But after reaching
a team, she was considered marriageable. And while it was
fine for a girl to be touring with her brother,
it would have been unseemly for a young woman to
continue doing it, and it may have diminished her chances
to ever get married. So Leopold decided that she should

(07:20):
stay in Salzburg while he continued to tour with Volfgang,
who he famously called quote the miracle which God let
be born in Salzburg. So, to be clear, there was
no groom waiting to marry Maria Anna. She just was
moved out of the spotlight. Regardless of her talent and
her skill, any kind of performing work she might have

(07:42):
been doing would have been a potential scandal that was,
of course, simply not an issue for her male sibling.
There have been some additional theories about Leopold's decision to
send his talented daughter home while continuing to trot his
son around Europe. There's a distinct difference in how Leopold
encouraged people to infantilize his son as part of the

(08:03):
packaging of his talent for the stage. I mean, even
today people think of Mozart as a child prodigy. He
very clearly though, flipped his own mental switch regarding Maria Anna.
She was now an adult. Well, her brother continued to be,
in his mind a child. Yeah, Maria Anna composed music
during this time while she lived at home. Her brother

(08:23):
actually wrote her a letter praising her work and encouraging
her to keep going. But unfortunately we have no surviving
record of her compositions. It's not something that she pursued,
certainly at the level of her brother. And we also
don't know what Leopold thought of the pieces that maria
Anna composed. He did not mention it ever in any
of his writing. Although brother and sister were separated a

(08:45):
lot of the time, they still remained very close. Either
their mother or their father would tour with Wolfgang and
then Maria Anna would stay home with the other parents.
Two siblings wrote letters, and their relationship in these letters
as one of a lot of teasing and Jaz he
likes to call her horse space and tease her about
the young men who were interested in her. He also

(09:06):
talks about her horrible singing, while also praising her as
a queen. The two of them really shared a love
of theater and music, and Wolfgang wrote music that he
dedicated to his sister. In a moment, we're going to
talk about a period of years where a lot of
changes happened for the family. But first we're gonna stop
and we're going to take a quick sponsor break. In

(09:34):
seventy eight, Maria Anna and Wolf's mother, Anna Maria died.
This was a sudden tragedy. She was in Paris with Wolfgang,
who had resigned from his job working as a court
musician in Salzburg was something he had been very unhappy
with for a while, and he was looking for more
lucrative employment. And while he and his mother were in
Paris chasing down possible job leads, Anna Maria became sick

(09:58):
and she died on July third, seventeen seventy eight. Volfgang
stayed in Paris until September and then moved on to
Mannheim and Munich while his father lobbied for him to
be given a better job in court. Back in Salzburg,
Leopold really wanted the family all back together. After Anna
Maria's death, Leopold relied on Maria Anna as the woman

(10:20):
of the household. She took care of the home, managed
his schedule of students at any meetings he had. She
also taught piano lessons herself to bring in some additional
money for the family. She had been doing a lot
of these tasks already whenever Anna Maria would be traveling
with Wolfgang, but they became entirely her responsibility once her
father had been widowed in seventeen eighty one. After moving

(10:43):
to Vienna, Volfgang became involved with Constanza viber and when
rumors arose that the two were going to be married,
Wolfgang initially denied it to his father because he knew
he was going to disapprove, but the two of them
did get married in August of seventeen eighty two, and
Leopold eventually did give his blessing, although apparently the word

(11:04):
that he was okay with the marriage arrived the day
after the weddings, so they were going to do it
either way. The friction over the marriage, as well as
a lot of conflicts that had developed over the choices
of Gang, was making with his career had kind of
taken a toll on the father son relationship. Wolf Gang
and his new wife Constant's, visited Salzburg in seventy three,

(11:25):
and this marks the beginning of a shift in the
sibling relationship that's been characterized really differently by different historians.
It seems that after this time, Wolfgang and Maria Anna
didn't really write to each other as often, they weren't
as actively involved in each other's lives, and in some
cases this has been pointed to as evidence that Maria Anna,

(11:46):
like their father Leopold, was not really enthusiastic about her
brother's new wife. The case can also be made, though,
that they were both reaching turning points in their lives
where their time were just occupied by other things, so
there may have been a rift between them, maybe not,
No evidence really exists. Yeah, it appears that probably something happened,

(12:09):
because it is kind of an abrupt gear shift, but
it's not clear what exactly may have taken place among them.
And we're about to get to Maria Anna's next big
change in life. But it's worth mentioning here that one
of the real tragedies of this drop off in communication
between brother and sister who had been so very very close,
meant that Maria Anna was completely unaware of the darker

(12:32):
periods that were happening in Wolfgang's life after this, several
years after his death, his sister read a biography of
her brother written by Czech music critic franzavereign Nemitic, which
revealed a great deal about her brother's difficulties with finances
and his mental health, and, according to her own account,
reading this for the first time moved her to tears.

(12:54):
While Wolfgang's romance with Constanza had been developing, Maria Anna
had also been folling in love. This was with an
educator named Franz Deepled, and the two of them also
wanted to get married, but as the story goes, Leopold
was not keen on this. This would have been in
part because Wolfgang had already disregarded his father's opinion and

(13:16):
married a woman that didn't come with a great fortune.
So Leopold was allegedly vehement that Maria Anna could not
similarly marry without creating some kind of financial cushion for
the family. Wolf And encouraged his sister to go after
what she wanted and to follow her heart in these matters.
And there's some doubt about this version of the story

(13:37):
because there's also not really any evidence to back it up.
So we don't know with any certainty how or why
the romance between Maria Anna and Franz. Ended. But it did. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Maria Anna did get married, but not to Franz. She
had a lot of admirers, We should be clear. It

(13:57):
wasn't like she was a quiet spinster that no one
paid attention to. A lot of men were very interested
in her. But the man that she married was Johann
Baptiste von Berchtold Dusaunberg in seventeen eighty four. And this
was a marriage that made sense to Maria Anna's father,
Leopold anyway, who chose his daughter's husband for her. Berchtold

(14:18):
was a sensible choice on paper. He was a magistrate
of social standing and he was a widower twice over.
Maria Anna was thirty three at the time and kind
of getting past the age where she would be considered
a good candidate for marriage. Berchtold was forty seven, and
most importantly, he was financially stable. Berchtold had five children already,

(14:39):
and maria Anna took on the task of raising them.
She and Johan had three more children together, Leopold Aloys
Pantaleon born in seve and then two daughters, Jeannette in
seventeen eighty nine and Maria Babette in seventeen ninety, but
Maria Babbett died in infancy. Once Maria Anna became a

(15:00):
if she was occupied entirely as a parent and a homemaker,
she had moved to San Gilgen, where Berkto had lived,
which meant that she had left Salzburg in her entire
life behind. Today you can take a train from Salzburg
to send Gilgan and it only takes about half an
hour to travel the twenty eight point two kilometers or
roughly seventeen miles. But in the seventeen eighties that trip

(15:22):
took like six hours, and to Maria on a it
just seemed like she was stuck in the middle of nowhere.
When Maria Anna was living in Sanden with her husband
and children, Wulfagang sent her all of its piano concertos
and she made copies of them be those they're in
the music archive in St. Peter's Abbey in Salzburg today.
While she wasn't teaching or pursuing a career as a

(15:44):
musician at this time, she still wanted these pieces so
that she could play them at home, which I find
to be very sweet. It is, and thank goodness because
those copies that she made are like some of the
only copies of those pieces that existed for a long time. UH.
And when she turned them over to the St. Peter's
Abbey archive. Uh, they basically have been safeguarding them ever since. UH.

(16:07):
And we need to go back to talking about Maria
Anna's children, specifically her firstborn. So she traveled to Salzburg
for the birth, and on July Leopold's grandson was born,
and of course named after him, and we're calling him
Leopold's grandson. They're quite purposely because when Maria Anna left

(16:28):
Salzburg and returned home six weeks after giving birth, the
baby did not travel with her. Leopold Mozart stated that
he would like the baby to stay with him for
the first few months, so little Leopold lived with his
grandfather and was cared for by him and several maids
who worked in the home. In seventeen eighty six, the

(16:48):
elder Leopold stated that he wanted this arrangement to be indefinite,
and Maria Anna accepted that. The reasons for this arrangement
have really garnered a lot of speculation, but nobody knows
for sure what kind of discussions went on or what
understanding passed between the elder Leopold and his daughter. It's
obvious that Maria Anna was really incredibly obedient to her father,

(17:12):
and that included everything from giving up her musical career
to marrying her father's selected groom, and so do some biographers.
Letting him raise her son just seems like another aspect
of the ways that Leopold was controlling her life. Yeah,
it's a very complicated relationship, and that certainly may have
been an aspect of it, but there are multiple factors

(17:35):
that may have also influenced this situation. For one, Leopold
the elder at this point, was despondent at the loss
of influence over his son's life. He kind of felt
abandoned by Wolfgang, and Maria Anna may have acquiesced to
her father's desire to raise her child as a means
to help him cope with his sadness. Marianna had also

(17:56):
been her father's caretaker after her mother's death, and she
may have seen turning her on over to him as
a way to soothe him, maybe helped smooth over the
rift between father and son with the introduction of a baby,
and also to offer her father someone to keep him
company now that she was also moved out and living
on her own. She also may have just felt that
with five children at home already, her son would be

(18:17):
better off and get more attention with his grandfather. It's
very possible that marian Anna, who found life in San
Gilgan's just be too remote, thought that having a direct
tie to Salzburg would get her to go home more
often than she had been really able to do before
her son was born. Yeah, and uh, little Lampold was
also sick when he was first born, but he did recover.

(18:40):
So there are some theories that like it was because
the baby was sick and she didn't want to take
him home on the trip, but clearly her dad really
wanted to keep this child. But all of these reasons
about it are still speculation that various historians have put
forward over the years. But there is one thing that
is incredibly clear, and that is that Leopold Mozart genuinely

(19:02):
adored his grandson. He wrote Marianna detailed missives describing the
baby's development and gross. He gave her updates on his health,
and he also talked about what a solace this child
was to him. And another aspect of this whole very
unusual situation that has been speculated on was whether or
not Leopold Mozart thought that he could train his grandson

(19:24):
to be another child prodigy like Wolfgang, and he did
start giving the child very early music training before he
was even a toddler. In just a moment, we'll talk
about how the situation ended, but first we'll have a
word from sponsors who keeps stuffy miss and history class going.

(19:48):
Maria Anna's arrangement regarding her father and her son went
on for two years and it ended when her father
Leopold died in and then two year old little Leopold
went to say Gilgen to live with his parents and
step siblings. Leopold's death sparked a minor conflict in the family,
as doth softened do. This has often been characterized as

(20:09):
a fight between the Mozart siblings over how the estate
would be handled. Volfgang asked for an exact copy of
the will. Some people point to that and say because
he didn't trust maria Anna to tell him what was
in it. We don't know, though, and Wolfgang thought that
they were settled on selling the most valuable assets of
their father's estate and splitting the money. But Marie Anna

(20:30):
didn't think that Wolfgang should get any of it. So
for Wolfgang that's really stung. His sister had married a
man of means, she really wanted for nothing. He, on
the other hand, struggled financially to support his family, in
part because he was not great at managing his finances.
But the real friction appears to have been between Wolfgang

(20:51):
and maria Anna's husband. Burke told who took over the
negotiations and then haggled over who got what the correspondence bet.
Wolfgang and maria Anna became really strained after that, and
then it stopped completely. Yeah, there's such a marked difference,
particularly if you watch the progression of their letters. Wolfgang's
letters to his sister, they're so florid when they're younger

(21:13):
and even into their early adulthood, and it's all about
how much he loves her and how great she is.
And after their mother died, he wrote this really beautiful
letter about how much he treasures his sister, and then
they kind of become very like Kurt and you know,
like here here the details you need to know about
what's going on. Thank you Wolfgang. And there's a suggestion

(21:33):
of why she thought that her brother has shouldn't have
any of the inheritance. It's not clear. It seems like
part of it is that she had been taking care
of the house and like managing all of that stuff,
whereas Wolfgang had gone off. Also, remember they weren't as close,
so I don't think she really realized how dire his
finances were. So it's a I'm telling you, uh will

(21:58):
will break up a family today, just as it did
the But this period was another really where the two
siblings likely had no idea that the other was struggling.
Maria Anna was without her father, who had continued to
be both a support and a controlling influence well into
her adult life and even after she was married, so
this is kind of the first time she's sort of

(22:20):
on her own, even though she has a husband. But really,
like Leopold was handling so much of her life up
to this point, and of course both Gang was nearing
the end of his short, intense life at the time
both gang Amineus Mozart died on December five. This was
after a period where both his physical and mental health

(22:41):
really declined, and his cause of death was recorded as
severe miliary fever. It was a name for a combination
of a high fever and a skin rash that resembled millet.
What he really died from has been hotly debated in
the centuries since then. You do not have to look
very hard to find all kinds of medical papers, all

(23:05):
speculating on various things the actual cause of death might
have been. Yeah. Also, uh, you know, keep in mind,
should you love the play or film on a dais
it's very good, uh, dramatized, just not not a source
of historical back. I was talking to someone about this

(23:27):
and they're like, yeah, the movie this, and I'm like,
I know, but that's in the movie. It's not uh,
this whole soliary thing not quite what that portrays. Makes
though it's a lovely play. Uh. Maria Anna wrote about
her brother in after his death for Frederick schlichtge Grohl,
who became the first biographer of Mozart. With a short
version of the Virtuoso's life story. This is kind of

(23:49):
an indirect assist that she gave. The request for Maria
on his writing had actually been made by Albert von Mulk,
who was a friend of the family. Von Mulk's involvement
in the project caused some confusion as well. What Maria
Anna didn't know was that after she handed her written
memories of her brother over to him, he added to
the work in a way that made it seem like

(24:11):
Maria Anna had a low opinion of her sister in
law Constanza and thought that she was not a suitable
match for her gifted brother. A closer examination years later, though,
revealed that that part was written in von Malk's handwriting. Yeah,
I don't I think it's safe to say that Maria
Anna and Constanza were never close, But I also don't

(24:33):
think she would have publicly said anything negative like that anyway.
But after her brother's death, Maria Anna in many ways
also became a steward of his legacy, and she ended
up working with Constanza in that regard. After Marianna's husband
Johann died in eighteen o one, she moved back to Salzburg,
and one of her occupations during this stage of her

(24:54):
life was actually helping publishers track down works from her
brother that had gone missing, and she also started offering
piano lessons once again. Eighteen years after Wolfgang's death, Constanza
remarried to George Nicolaus van Nissen, who she had known
for more than a decade. In eighteen twenty they moved
to Salzburg. George was planning to write a comprehensive Mozart biography,

(25:18):
and they worked with Maria Anna to get information for this.
She not only shared the writings she had done for
that earlier biography, but also turned over all the family
letters and records she had to assist in this project.
In eighteen twenty one, Maria Anna was visited for the
first time by her nephew, franz Zaver Mozart. This was

(25:38):
an event of complete delight for her, and she later
wrote that despite her advancing years, quote, I still enjoyed
the inexpressible joy of seeing the son of my unforgettable
brother for the first time. And she introduced her nephew
around to all of her friends and like friends of
the family that had known Mozart when he was a
boy in Salzburg. Uh basically just like wanted to tell

(26:01):
him everything about his father. When Maria Anna was seventy,
she was visited by the writer Mary Novello, who noted
that Maria Anna seemed to be in bad straits. She
appeared to be very poor. She had lost her eyesight,
which had happened three years before. Novella wrote that Maria
Anna was quote blind, languid, exhausted, feeble, and nearly speechless.

(26:24):
Novella's assessment about Maria Anna's finances, though, was not correct,
a fact that was made plain when Maria Anna died
later that year and left a fortune behind. The fact
that she took piano students well into her seventies suddenly
was not, as it had appeared to so many people,
something she did to make ends meet. It became evident

(26:44):
on her death that her husband had left her well
set financially. She was taking students simply because she wanted to.
Maria on a mozart known to friends and family as
the Neural, was buried in her hometown of Salzburg at
the Abbey of St. Peter. Sometimes the story of Marianna
and kind of the headline version is opened with this

(27:04):
idea that had she not been moved aside, so Leopold
could promote her brother both gang. She could have been
Mozart's equal, but most historians don't really frame it that way.
She was a very skilled musician, without a doubt, but
she did not, have, for example, the massive output as
a composer that her brother did. She didn't have the

(27:25):
range he did in terms of picking things up really quickly.
He outpaced her in their learning. It's one of those
things where, if you know when they were children, he
pretty quickly like got to her level and then kept
moving on. But even so, uh, it comes up people
like to speculate about just what her impact on her
little brother was, particularly in his formative years. So she

(27:46):
becomes a really important part of the Mozart story. Do
you have some listener mail for us? I actually have
a couple of pieces of listener mail, and they're about Poppy. Uh.
We had a couple of people write us, particularly about
our our Friday behind the Scenes minis episode that we

(28:06):
did right after the Hellhounds Halloween episode, because we talked
about black dogs specifically on that one. And so I
have two pieces of adorable male. One is from Brianna
or Brianna. I don't know how she pronounces it. She
writes high Holly and Tracy. I was excited to hear you,
maybe Holly point out that black dogs and cats often
aren't adopted at shelters. I initially thought, oh, I should

(28:26):
write in to tell you about my black dog, Bob,
a Rott Wilder mix, who I adopted in as a
senior pet and who was the very best boy until
last June when we lost him to kidney disease. I
was hesitating, though, until yesterday, when my husband and I
found a wonderful dog at the local Humane Society. When
you know he is also black, his name is Roger Daltery.
He came with Roger, we added the adultery, and he

(28:48):
is a very sweet senior dog. I work from home
all my husband works with the post office, so Roger
and I are enjoying our first day together. I attached
two photos, one of us the day we adopted Bob
and one from yesterday with Roger. You can tell which
one is from yesterday because of our masks. I just
wanted to thank you for the reminder that black dogs
are great. Senior dogs are also great. Shelter dogs are

(29:08):
great too, I hope you're doing well and staying well.
Um Bob was beautiful. I love Rottweiler's and Roger Daltry
is the cutest dog maybe ever. I'm gonna say that,
but I say that about all the dogs. Uh there,
He's so cute and they look so happy together. So
thank you for adopting him, because now I know he's
got a loving home and I love it. And then

(29:29):
we have another cute black dog email. This is from
our listener Kathy, who writes, Hello, Tracy and Holly. Thanks
for such a fun and informative podcast. I've learned so
much I never knew. I never knew. I listened to
all of your Halloween week episodes today, and I loved
when you talked about adopting black dogs and cats in
the Friday piece. I have had only two dogs in
my life, but both of them have been black. Black

(29:50):
dogs hold a special place in my heart. But especially
fitting as I listened to your Tarot Card episodes was
my current puppy dog's costume. He dressed up as a
jester today or a fool. So here's a picture of
my adopted baby, DJ Dark Jedi. Okay, like everything about
this is stuff. I love. It's a dog in a
costume and his name is dark Jedillo. Um also adorable.

(30:11):
Thank you, thank you, thank you for sending us your
dog pictures, Kathy and Brianna. I love it and I
it is one of those things where people that love
to adopt black animals really love to adopt black animals. Um,
I'm one of them. You, as we talked about, have too,
so clearly you're kind of one of them as well. Uh,
those are not your first black cats, I will disclose

(30:32):
they're not. Uh So. Yeah. I love seeing these and
thank you guys for giving them great homes and also
just sharing your stories with us. I'm glad you enjoyed
our hellhound and black dog discussions. I will follow up
and say my Ruegaru Fest t shirt and poster came
yesterday and they are awesome. I'm so ready. H come

(30:52):
on next year. Let it be safe. Uh. If you
would like to write to us, you should absolutely do that.
You can do that at History Podcast at i heeart
radio dot com. You can also find us on the
internet on social media at missed in History, pretty much everywhere.
If you would like to subscribe to the podcast, we
would like for you to do that as well. You
can do that on the I heart Radio app, on
Apple podcasts, or wherever it is you listen to your

(31:14):
favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.