Mozarteum University Salzburg

It appeared as Mosshard, Mozart, Mozart, and in still other variants.

Bernard Baumgartner, director of the Salzburg Mozarteum, thinks it derived from the old German root mod or mut, from which came the word mut, courage.

Be this as it may, German Mozarts were anything but exceptional a couple of hundred years before Leopold Mozart or his son Wolfgang came into the picture.

In Augsburg there was an Anton Mozart who painted landscapes in the manner of Bruegel.