More than two hundred years ago, Ludwig van Beethoven asked his brothers to tell the world about his gradually worsening hearing loss after he passed away. Recently, a team of researchers used some of his hair to analyze and figure out what happened to him. They shared their results in a journal called Current Biology on March 22nd. So now people can finally understand more about what caused Beethoven’s hearing problem.
Johannes Krause from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany said “Our main aim was to investigate Beethoven’s health issues. He famously suffered from a hearing disorder that grew worse over time – it started when he was in his 20s and caused him to be completely deaf by 1818.”
Scientists couldn’t figure out why Beethoven had hearing and stomach problems, but they did find some genetic issues that might have caused him to have liver issues. They also found traces of hepatitis B virus in his body which could’ve contributed to his death.
Research on Beethoven’s DNA showed that the Y chromosome in his DNA was different from five of his modern day relatives which had the same surname and same ancestor according to historical data. This means that there could have been an extramarital “event” somewhere down the generations of Beethoven’s father.
Tristan Begg, who is currently at the University of Cambridge in the UK, has suggested that there was a special event between Ludwig van Beethoven’s father and grandfather that happened seven generations ago. This would have been when Hendrik van Beethoven was living in Kampenhout, Belgium in 1572 and later when Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany in 1770.
Begg and Meredith came up with the idea for the research almost 10 years ago, inspired by Beethoven’s request to know more about his illness. In this new study, Toomas Kivisild from Belgium joined them. The team of researchers used technology that has been developed recently, which allows them to study genomes (all the genes together) even if they only have a small amount of hair from an old person.
Firstly, the researchers looked at 5 locks of hair to make sure they were from the famous composer Beethoven. They felt assured that these five pieces were truly authentically from Beethoven and used them to figure out his genome (all of his genetic information) to a large accuracy level (24-fold).
Before this study, people thought that Beethoven had a lot of illnesses that he got from his parents. But in the study, scientists could not find out why he had problems with hearing and his stomach. However, they found out that one of Beethoven’s inherited issues was being prone to liver disease.
When studying the DNA in his samples, scientists found that Beethoven had a type of hepatitis called B. This combined with genetics and his drinking too much alcohol could explain why he was so sick with liver disease that it eventually led to his death.
Scientists concluded that past theories about Beethoven having lead poisoning weren’t true because the sample tested wasn’t even his! In order for any future tests on lead, medicine and mercury to be accurate, they must use a verified sample.
Scientists did a study of Beethoven’s hair and found that its DNA is most similar to the people living in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. This makes sense because Beethoven was German! Further research might help us understand when he got infected with hepatitis B. We could also learn more about his relatives by studying them too.
This research was made possible with the help from The American Beethoven Society and The Hugh Stuart Center Charitable Trust.
Reference: “Genomic analyses of hair from Ludwig van Beethoven” by Tristan James Alexander Begg, Axel Schmidt, Arthur Kocher, Maarten H.D. Larmuseau, Göran Runfeldt, Paul Andrew Maier, John D. Wilson, Rodrigo Barquera, Carlo Maj, András Szolek, Michael Sager, Stephen Clayton, Alexander Peltzer, Ruoyun Hui, Julia Ronge, Ella Reiter, Cäcilia Freund, Marta Burri, Franziska Aron, Anthi Tiliakou, Joanna Osborn, Doron M. Behar, Malte Boecker, Guido Brandt, Isabelle Cleynen, Christian Strassburg, Kay Prüfer, Denise Kühnert, William Rhea Meredith, Markus M. Nöthen, Robert David Attenborough, Toomas Kivisild and Johannes Krause, 22 March 2023, Current Biology.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.041
