In 1802, Ludwig van Beethoven asked his brothers to request that his doctor, J.A. Schmidt, describe his malady—his progressive hearing loss—to the world upon his death so that 'as far as possible at least the world will be reconciled to me after my death.' Now, more than two centuries later, a team
Ludwig van Beethoven in portrait by Carl Jaeger. Over two centuries after Ludwig van Beethoven’s request to disclose his progressive hearing loss upon his death, researchers have partially fulfilled his wish by analyzing DNA from locks of his hair. Published in the journal Current Biology, the study offers insights into the famous composer’s health struggles.
“We were unable to find a definitive cause for Beethoven’s deafness or gastrointestinal problems,” Krause says. “However, we did discover a number of significant genetic risk factors for liver disease. We also found evidence of an infection with the hepatitis Bin at latest the months before the composer’s final illness. Those likely contributed to his death.”
“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,” says Tristan Begg, now at the University of Cambridge, U.K.
First, they analyzed independently sourced locks of hair attributed to Beethoven, only five of which they confirmed came from the same European male. They deemed these five to be “almost certainly authentic” and used them to sequence Beethoven’s genome to 24-fold genomic coverage.
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