The building was first mentioned in documents in 1617. On 3 August 1711, the court dancing master Johann Lorenz Spöckner received permission by decree to hold dance lessons for nobles, in preparation for their life at court, in a house on Hannibalplatz, today named Makartplatz. In the
Seelenbeschreibung (census) of 1713, the house was already referred to as the Dance Master's House. His son (1706–1767) bought the house from his mother in 1739 and succeeded his father as court dancing master. On 21 November 1747, he was the best man for
Leopold Mozart at his wedding to
Anna Maria Pertl. The
house on Getreidegasse, where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his siblings had been born, became too small for Leopold and Anna Maria's family to live, or to host social gatherings. In 1773, six years after the death of Franz Gottlieb Spöckner, the Mozart family moved into a spacious, 8-room apartment in the Tanzmeisterhaus, including a large hall which had been used by the dancing master for lessons. This the Mozarts used for teaching, for domestic concerts, for storing keyboard instruments sold by Leopold, and for
Bölzlschiessen, a form of recreation in which the family and their guests shot airguns at humorously designed paper targets. Wolfgang lived at the house until he moved to Vienna in 1781. His mother died in 1778 and sister
Nannerl got married in 1784. Leopold at first lived alone with his servants in the apartment, and from 1785 until his death in 1787, with his grandson Leopold Alois Pantaleon, who had been entrusted to his care by the infant's mother, Nannerl. == 20th century ==