Fragments of skull believed to be Beethoven’s returned to Vienna from US for scientific analysis

Lianne Kolirin and Ashley Strickland, CNN

(CNN) — Fragments of a skull believed to have been that of composer Ludwig van Beethoven have been donated to a university in Austria after spending decades in the United States.

The pieces of bone were donated to the Medical University of Vienna by American businessman Paul Kaufmann, who discovered them in a safety deposit box in a French bank following his mother’s death in 1990.

It later emerged that the bones, which were contained in a tin faintly engraved with the word “Beethoven,” had been acquired from the estate of his mother’s great-uncle, Franz Romeo Seligmann.

Seligmann, who died in 1892, had been a physician, medical historian and anthropologist in Vienna. The skull pieces, now referred to as the Seligmann fragments, came into his possession in 1863 during a reburial of Beethoven’s bones for study purposes.

Over the course of his 56 years, Beethoven famously suffered from progressive hearing loss, as well as gastrointestinal problems and liver disease.

In 1802, 25 years before his death, Beethoven wrote a letter to his brothers, asking that his doctor, Johann Adam Schmidt, determine and share the nature of his “illness” after his death. This letter is known as the Heiligenstadt Testament.

In a telephone interview with CNN, Kaufmann, a retired businessman from Carmichael, California, said the surprise discovery came about when his mother died suddenly while visiting her brother in France.

He said: “In her purse was a key to a safety deposit box in a local bank. When my wife and I opened it, among other things we found a little tin container and on the surface was inscribed ‘Beethoven.’”

Years of research and investigations, coupled with details from letters and documents that Kaufmann unearthed, have since revealed the fragments were acquired by Seligmann in 1863, when Beethoven’s body was exhumed. He is buried in Vienna’s Central Cemetery.

“My great uncle was a medical history professor and he had expertise in skulls and anthropology because he collected skulls,” said Kaufmann.

Earlier this year, a study published in the journal Current Biology revealed how researchers had analyzed Beethoven’s DNA from preserved locks of his hair and sequenced the composer’s genome for the first time.

The five hair samples helped scientists obtain insights into Beethoven’s family history, chronic health problems and what might have contributed to his death at the age of 56.

In the days prior to the handover ceremony in Vienna, Kaufmann traveled to Germany to meet the experts behind the hair discovery at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.

Kaufmann explained that the team there have now taken DNA samples from the bones, which will take several months to analyze, before they can conclusively link them to the hair samples.

CNN has contacted the institute for comment.

He added: “It is extremely emotional to me to return the fragments where they belong, back to where Beethoven is buried.”

The Seligmann fragments will now be housed in the university’s museum, the Josephinum.

Thanking Kaufmann for the donation, the rector of the university, Markus Müller, explained the museum’s special significance in the Beethoven story.

In a press release issued by the university, he said: “We gratefully accept these fragments and will store them responsibly; our collections at the Josephinum are the right place for this.”

He added: “The Josephinum is also the appropriate place for the acquisition of the fragments, since Beethoven’s physician, Johann Adam Schmidt, was also a professor at the Josephinum and Beethoven himself, during his lifetime, wished that his illness be studied and researched after his death.”

According to an academic report published in the Beethoven Journal in 2005, some of the composer’s bones went missing following a private autopsy.

Christian Reiter, a Vienna-based forensic pathologist, has previously examined the skull fragments and deemed them to be credible. The press release quoted him as saying: “With further investigations, for example based on DNA, we will get closer to the question of whether it really is Ludwig van Beethoven. In any case, we are very grateful to Mr. Kaufmann for bringing these witnesses of the past back to Vienna.”

Since his death, questions have swirled around what exactly ailed Beethoven and the true cause of his death. During the last seven years of his life, the composer experienced at least two attacks of jaundice, which is associated with liver disease, leading to the general belief that he died from cirrhosis.

Medical biographers have since combed through Beethoven’s letters and diaries, as well as his autopsy, notes from his physicians, and even notes taken when his body was exhumed twice – in 1863 and 1888 – with the hopes of piecing together his complicated medical history.

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