Roughly two centuries after the death of Ludwig van Beethoven, genetic examinations were performed on hair strands attributed to the renowned German composer. These analyses unveiled new revelations pertaining to his health challenges, hearing impairment, and ancestral heritage.
In the year 1802, Ludwig van Beethoven tasked his siblings with the request that his physician communicate to the public about his condition—his gradual loss of hearing—once he was dead. He hoped that this disclosure would help to bring about a sense of understanding and acceptance from the world in the aftermath of his death.
Now, the researchers have partially achieved their goal by examining DNA extracted from his hair.
"Our primary goal was to shed light on Beethoven's health problems, which famously include progressive hearing loss, beginning in his mid- to late-20s and eventually leading to him being functionally deaf by 1818," said Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
The frame containing a lock of hair attributed to Beethoven was cut from his head by Anton Felix Schindler on March 24, 1827, and given to Ignaz Moscheles after Beethoven's death.
"We were unable to find a definitive cause for Beethoven's deafness or gastrointestinal problems," Mr Krause said.
"However, we did discover a number of significant genetic risk factors for liver disease. We also found evidence of an infection with the hepatitis B virus in the months before the composer's final illness. Those likely contributed to his death."
According to a study published in the journal Current Biology, "As commonly happens when people analyze DNA, the researchers uncovered another surprise. Beethoven's Y chromosome doesn't match that of any of five modern-day relatives carrying the same last name and sharing, on the basis of genealogical records, a common ancestor with Beethoven's paternal line."
"The finding points to an extramarital "event" somewhere over the generations on Beethoven's father's side," wrote the authors.
"This finding suggests an extrapair paternity event in his paternal line between the conception of Hendrik van Beethoven in Kampenhout, Belgium, in c. 1572 and the conception of Ludwig van Beethoven seven generations later, in 1770, in Bonn, Germany," said Tristan Begg, now at the University of Cambridge, UK.
