Hans Rott was Bruckner's favorite student and Gustav Mahler's fellow student in Vienna. Coming from a poor background, he treid to get a state scholarship, for which he applied with his 1st Symphony. When he presented it to Johannes Brahms, a member of the board of trustees, the latter gave the Bruckner student a harsh rebuff - with devastating consequences for Rott's unstable psyche: on a train journey, he tried to stop a fellow passenger from lighting a cigar at gunpoint, convinced that Brahms had prepared the carriage with dynamite. The journey ended in the lunatic asylum, where Hans Rott died of tuberculosis in 1884, after several suicide attempts at the age of 25.