Beethoven's Skull: The Strange Journey of Bone Fragments from Vienna to California

When the great German composer Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna, Austria, in 1827, people near him, following a custom of the time and place, cut off many strands of his hair as keepsakes. Researchers have long known of the continuing existence of those hairs.

However, what practically no one knew till 1987 was that fragments of Beethoven's skull also survived. In the 1990s those bones became historically important because tests on them could confirm or disprove hair-test results suggesting that Beethoven had suffered from massive lead poisoning.

The 1987 revelation came through a book written by two German doctors, who did not, however, say where the bones were or who had them. When associates of the Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University in California finally found the bones in 1999, they were astonished to discover that, since 1990, the skull fragments had been sitting just a few miles away, in Danville, California.

Here, in brief, is the story of the strange journey of Beethoven's skull fragments from 1827 Vienna to present-day California.

1827 Autopsy

Beethoven, who was born in Bonn, Germany, probably on December 16 (he was baptized on December 17), 1770, died at the age of fifty-six in his Vienna apartment on March 26, 1827. The death certificate indicated the cause of death as dropsy.

The following day, a local physician, Dr. Johann Wagner, performed a private autopsy. Beethoven's personal physician, Dr. Andreas Wawruch, also was present. Records do not show who requested or authorized the procedure.

Dr. Wagner sawed out the two temporal bones (one on each side of the skull, near the temple) and made another cut across the top of the skull so that he could remove it like a cap. His method was crude, causing considerable fragmentation of the skull bones.

The temporal bones, having cavities and spaces associated with the ears, were taken away for study in the hope that they might reveal something about Beethoven's deafness. Those bones have been lost since the 1830s-40s.

However, the other bone pieces were reattached to the skull, apparently with gauze to hold the fragments in place. Those bone fragments, along with the rest of Beethoven's body, were buried on March 29 at the nearby Währing Cemetery.

1863 Exhumation

In 1863 the board of directors of the Society of the Friends of Music in Vienna voted to exhume the bodies of Beethoven and fellow composer Franz Schubert, allow medical examinations of the remains, and then rebury them at a new, more elaborately honored location. Beethoven was disinterred on October 13.

Present at Beethoven's examination were Carl von Patruban, a professor of anatomy; Dr. Standthartner, a physician and the director of the board of the music society; and Gerhard von Breuning, a physician whose family had been close to Beethoven since his Bonn days and who, as a teenager, had personally known the composer. Those three observers found that the skull gauze had fallen apart, that the skull was in nine fragments, and that besides the temporal bones, some other bones, such as part of the crown, were missing.

The committee in charge of the exhumations wanted to rebury the rest of the skeletons but to keep the two skulls for study and spiritual inspiration. The committee members were heavily influenced by the current popularity of phrenology, the study of the skull based on the belief that it indicates mental faculties and character.

They also hoped that Beethoven's temporal bones might resurface and be reattached to the skull. The committee therefore placed Beethoven's skull temporarily into Breuning's hands for safekeeping.

But the committee members were overruled by the music society's administrators, who, at an October 15 meeting, decided to rebury the entire skeletons, including the skulls. Consequently on October 23 both complete bodies were reburied in new vaults at the Währing Cemetery.

However, unknown to almost everyone, some of Beethoven's skull fragments, located at the back of the skull and therefore hidden from onlookers as the skeleton lay in the coffin, escaped reburial. Those fragments were the bones that circuitously made their way to California nearly 130 years later.

Romeo Seligmann, Vienna, 1863-1892

No record exists of the exact sequence of events concerning the unburied skull fragments in 1863. However, Breuning did have possession of them, he did openly state his belief that the skull should be preserved for posterity, and later in 1863 the fragments did end up in the hands of Romeo Seligmann (1808-1892), a physician and the first professor of medical history at the University of Vienna.

Seligmann had a famous skull collection that he kept for scientific study. Apparently Breuning, perhaps in collusion with other members of the Society of the Friends of Music, secretly gave Seligmann two of the nine large skull fragments discovered at the 1863 examination plus eight small pieces that broke off during handling. Those bones have remained in the Seligmann family to the present day.

In 1873 the Währing Cemetery was closed. In 1888 the music society, with cooperation from local government officials, decided to move Beethoven's and Schubert's remains again, this time to the Grove of Honor at the Central Cemetery in Vienna.

During this process, officials briefly examined Beethoven's remains and noted the missing fragments at the back of the skull. Seligmann, however, did not reveal to the officials that he had the missing pieces.

Albert Seligmann, Vienna, 1892-1945

When Romeo Seligmann died in 1892, he left the skull fragments to his only child, Adalbert, known as Albert, Seligmann (1862-1945). Albert, an artist and art critic, lived virtually his whole life in Vienna and kept the precious bone relics in his Vienna apartment up to 1936.

The exact location of the bones between 1936 and 1945 is not certain. During those years, Albert hid many family treasures, including the skull fragments.

He feared that the Nazis, who were already using Beethoven's image and music to promote the Third Reich, would turn Beethoven's skull fragments into a Nazi propaganda tool. His fears increased when Germany annexed Austria in 1938. Because the Seligmann family included some members of Jewish heritage, the family members were in danger of being harmed and their possessions were in danger of being confiscated.

Albert did, however, live safely through the war, dying in Vienna in December 1945. In his will, he directed his lawyer to sell much of his estate, including the bones. Instead, the bones ended up in the hands of Albert's good friend Emma von Mérey, who faithfully held them till the rightful heir could pick them up. Sometime in 1946 she gave them to Albert's heir Tom Desmines.

Tom Desmines, France, 1945-1990

Albert Seligmann, who left no wife or children, had three equal heirs. One was Ada Rosenthal (née Adolphine Kohn, 1871-1967), who was Albert's second cousin, daughter of Albert's first cousin Lina Kohn (née Caroline Auspitz, died 1918), and granddaughter of Betty Auspitz (née Therese Seligmann, Romeo Seligmann's sister, 1813-1889).

The other heirs were Ada's two children: Alma Kaufmann (née Rosenthal, 1898-1990) and Thomas Desmines (né Rosenthal, 1902-1993). Thomas had changed his surname from Rosenthal to Desmines in the 1930s after moving to France.

It was Thomas, usually called Tom, who ordered that the Beethoven skull fragments not be sold in 1945. Apparently, though, his reason at the time was not to preserve historical relics but to avoid problems with fluctuating international currencies just after World War II.

Legally the bones belonged equally to Ada, Alma, and Tom, but Tom took sole possession of them. He lived most of the rest of his life in Vence, France, where he usually kept the bones in a local bank vault.

What Tom received from Albert (through Emma von Mérey) were two large bone fragments and an unknown number of small pieces. The number of small pieces has changed over the generations, sometimes going down because of losses, and sometimes going up because of further fragmentations.

An accomplished amateur violist, Tom loved classical music and understood the importance of the skull fragments. Even though he was a trained electrical engineer, he worked at various jobs and sometimes needed money, but he did not exploit the bones for financial gain.

He did, however, lend some bone fragments to two German researchers, the medical doctors Hans Bankl and Hans Jesserer. Their studies formed a chapter in their 1987 book Die Krankheiten Lugwig van Beethovens ("The Illnesses of Ludwig van Beethoven").

By 1990 Tom had developed serious signs of dementia. His mother, Ada, had died in 1967, and his sister, Alma, who had moved to the United States in the 1920s, died in 1990.

Alma's son, Paul Kaufmann (born in 1936), became the next in line to inherit the bone fragments. After Alma's death, Paul, a resident of Danville, California, went to Vence in 1990, became his uncle's legal and medical guardian, and gained permission, because of his uncle's illness, to take physical possession of the bones.

Paul Kaufmann, California, 1990 to the Present

The box that Paul and his wife, Joan, took back to Danville in 1990 contained two large skull bones and eleven small pieces. These numbers can be compared with those in Albert's 1944 will, which listed two large bones and only six small ones. Evidently a great deal of further fragmentation had occurred during the intervening years.

One of the big pieces came from Beethoven's occipital bone, from the lower back portion of the skull. The other big piece originally formed part of the left parietal bone, at the upper back area of the skull.

The parietal piece actually consisted of two fragments glued together, a large one and a small one. The two pieces obviously had originally belonged together and at some point had split apart. Records by Tom Desmines and the German doctors Bankl and Jesserer (including notes, measurements, and photographs) indicate that the gluing, or perhaps regluing, occurred while the three pieces--one occipital and two parietal--were in the Germans' hands in the 1980s.

Between 1990 and 1993, Paul Kaufmann simply maintained the bone fragments in a safety deposit box at a local bank for his ailing uncle, Tom Desmines. When Tom died in 1993, his will gave legal ownership of the relics to Paul.

Just forty miles away from Danville was the Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University. Paul, a businessman, had no connection with the Center, and the Center knew nothing of Paul.

In 1994 some members of the American Beethoven Society, a group associated with the Center for Beethoven Studies, purchased a lock of Beethoven's hair. Tests on the hair suggested that Beethoven had suffered from lead poisoning.

At that point, officials at the Center, as well as Russell Martin, an author who was writing a book on the hair, wanted to find the skull fragments. DNA tests could authenticate both the hair and the bones as Beethoven's, and further tests on the bones could verify the lead poisoning indicated by the hair.

Finding the skull fragments took a lot of tracking. The only known source of information was the 1987 German book, which was the first public revelation of the bones' existence.

The book mentioned Albert Seligmann's heir, but not by name. Russell Martin hired a researcher in France, who traced Albert to Tom Desmines, and then Tom to Paul Kaufmann, who, by an incredible coincidence, lived practically next door to the people who were searching the world for him.

In 1999 Russell Martin phoned the Kaufmann home and spoke to Joan, who verified that Paul had the bone fragments. Soon William Meredith, the director of the Center for Beethoven Studies, visited Paul and secured his cooperation in testing the bones.

Over the next several years, the bones underwent various tests. By December 2005 testing had proven that the hair and the skull fragments were Beethoven's and that both contained toxic amounts of lead.

The lead in the bones was particularly significant because its presence there indicated that it had been in Beethoven's body for a long time before he died. He may have gotten the lead from lead drinking cups or from lead-based medications prescribed by misguided physicians.

The lead poisoning could directly account for Beethoven's well-known chronic abdominal illnesses as well as his personality changes, especially his periods of deep depression and his frequent flashes of irritability. He must have suffered greatly. Lead poisoning also sometimes affects hearing, but, as of now, scientists are uncertain whether Beethoven's deafness resulted from that cause.

In November 2005 the Center for Beethoven Studies announced that Paul Kaufmann had generously provided the skull fragments to the Center on a long-term loan. Having the bones available in a reliable scholarly location will ensure their availablity for possible future scientific or other uses.

Knowledge of the nature and severity of Beethoven's physical and psychological suffering could cast light on the genesis of the strong spiritual element--the will to overcome suffering, the victory of joy over despair, and even, in his late stages, the serenity of acceptance--so evident in his music. Such an understanding in the minds and hearts of future generations could be one of Beethoven's greatest legacies.

(Principal source: William Meredith. "The History of Beethoven's Skull Fragments, Part One." The Beethoven Journal, Summer and Winter 2005: 1-25.)