On a gloomy March Monday in 1827, German composer Ludwig van Beethoven died at 56. He had long suffered from jaundice and was bedridden. His limbs and abdomen were swollen, and every breath was a heavy struggle.
When friends sorted through his belongings they found a document Beethoven had written a quarter-century earlier. It was a will in which he pleaded with his brothers to tell the public about the details of his condition. In a state of utter despair, Beethoven confessed that he was contemplating suicide.
Today it’s well known that Beethoven became completely deaf by the age of 48. It began with tinnitus just after he turned 20. His hearing worsened over time, and when he could no longer hear high tones he stopped performing publicly as a pianist.
This was a tragic irony. Beethoven wanted to understand the reasons behind his suffering. His doctor, Johann Adam Schmidt, whom Beethoven outlived by two decades, was never able to determine what caused his illness.
In 2023, nearly two centuries after the composer’s death, researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany tried to fulfill Beethoven’s wish in a way he could never have imagined. The scientists conducted a genetic analysis of DNA taken from his hair.
“First and foremost, we wanted to shed light on Beethoven’s health issues, particularly the progressive hearing loss that ultimately led to his complete deafness,” said biochemist Johannes Krause, a co-author of the study.
Portrait of Beethoven at age 13
Deafness Wasn’t the Only Ailment Afflicting Beethoven
The composer’s health problems extended beyond hearing loss. At least since age 22, he suffered from severe abdominal pain and chronic bouts of diarrhea. Six years before his death he showed early signs of liver disease, which experts believe contributed, at least in part, to his premature death.
In 2007, a forensic examination of a strand of hair attributed to Beethoven suggested that lead poisoning may have accelerated his death.
Given the era’s drinking vessels and medical treatments that used lead, that finding wasn’t shocking. But the 2023 study showed that the hair strand actually belonged to an unknown woman, which undercut the earlier conclusion.
Instead, several strands more likely to have come from Beethoven himself pointed to a hepatitis B infection, probably worsened by alcohol use and other liver-disease risk factors.
What About Other Ailments of the Composer?
Krause said, “We were unable to find the exact cause of Beethoven’s deafness or gastrointestinal issues.” He added that scientists still have many unanswered questions about the composer’s life and death: Where did he contract hepatitis? Why was a female hair strand long thought to be his? And what exactly caused his abdominal pain and hearing loss?
The team set out to answer Beethoven’s question about his hearing loss and didn’t find a definitive cause. But they did uncover a different surprise hidden in his genes.
The researchers compared the Y chromosome from Beethoven’s hair samples with the Y chromosomes of his living male-line relatives and found mismatches. That pattern suggests a break in the direct male line — in other words, an ancestor in the male lineage may not have been the biological father of the next generation.
The study was published in the journal Current Biology.
