Johann Strauss II gave up Austrian citizenship and his church to remarry, then left his fortune to a music society instead of his family

Johann Strauss II wanted to leave his second wife, Angelika Dittrich, and marry Adele Strauss. Catholic Austria did not allow a divorced person to remarry while the spouse was alive. Strauss converted to Lutheranism in Vienna on 9 July 1886, gave up Austrian citizenship, and became a citizen of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, where civil divorce was possible. He married Adele in the court chapel of the Ehrenburg in Coburg on 15 August 1887. His will, written years earlier, named the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, not his family, as sole heir. His wife and relatives received lifelong annuities from an estate that included several houses and stage royalties. The society received his Vienna palais and sold it in 1900. No inventory was made at his death, so it was never settled which objects were gifts to Adele and which belonged to the society. Strauss items passed through Adele's family to her brother-in-law Josef Simon. The Gestapo seized that collection after 1937, and Vienna's city museum and library bought it cheaply from the Nazis in 1942. In 2001 the city agreed to buy it back from Simon's heirs for £3.3 million. The palais was destroyed by bombing in 1944. Strauss lies in a City of Vienna honorary grave beside Brahms in 2026.