Joseph Martin Kraus

Joseph Martin Kraus (20 June 1756 – 15 December 1792), was a composer in the classical era who was born in Miltenberg am Main, Germany. He moved to Sweden at age 21, and died at the age of 36 in Stockholm. He has been referred to as "the Swedish Mozart", and had a life span very similar to Mozart's. Kraus was born in the South German town of Miltenberg in Lower Franconia, the son of Joseph Bernhard Kraus, a county clerk in the Archbishopric of Mainz, and Anna Dorothea née Schmidt. His father's family, originally from Augsburg, had a small restaurant in Weilbach near Amorbach, while his mother was a daughter of the master-builder at Miltenberg Johann Martin Schmidt. They had 14 children, of whom seven died in childhood; Marianne Kraus was a sister of Joseph's. After a short stay in Osterburken, the Kraus family moved in 1761 to Buchen (in the Odenwald), where Joseph Bernhard Kraus found a position as a clerk. Joseph Martin Kraus began his formal education there. His first music teachers were rector Georg Pfister (1730–1807) and cantor Bernhard Franz Wendler (1702–1782), who gave him mainly piano and violin lessons. Kraus showed his musical talent at an early age. When he was 12, he was enrolled in the Jesuit Gymnasium and Music Seminar at Mannheim, where he studied German and Latin literature and music. There he received a rigorous musical training, especially in violin technique, and philological education from P. Alexander Keck (1724–1804) and P. Anton Klein (1748–1810).