Family background

Brahms's family associations with North Germany were long and deep. His forebears on his mother's side came from Schleswig-Holstein. They can be traced to Itzehoe, Tondem, Leck and Flensburg, and included school teachers, pastors and aldermen, several of whom belonged to the Schleswig-Holstein minor nobility: one of the most famous of them, the engraver Melchior Lorch (1527–86, the creator of the so-called ‘Elbekarte’ which bears his name), was also a prominent portrait painter. Research on the mother's side reveals a line traceable to connections with the Swedish king Gustav Wasa (1496–1560). Brahms's maternal grandfather, Peter Radeloff Nissen, migrated from Itzehoe to Hamburg, where, on 4 July 1789, Brahms's mother, Johanna Henrica Christiane Brahms, was born. The forebears on the paternal side led from Heide in Holstein, the birthplace of Brahms's father, Johann Jacob, to Brunsbüttel and further over the Elbe back to Lower Saxony, to the area between the Elbe and the Weser. It was from there that Peter Brahms, Brahms's great-grandfather, migrated to Holstein around 1750. His son Johann came from Brunsbüttel via Meldorf to Wörden, a suburb of Heide. His firstborn son, Peter Hinrich, Brahms's uncle, later occupied the house that still exists today as the Heide Brahmshaus, (now in the possession of the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Gesellschaft). In another, strongly built house in the market place in Heide, Brahms's father, Johann Jacob, was born. The paternal forebears were chiefly craftsmen and minor tradesmen.