Cranioklepty (16 page)

The photographer J. B. Rottmayer took a number of photographic studies, while the sculptor Alois Wittman was called in to make plaster casts. A dentist was retained to make records of the composers' teeth. And last was Dr. Romeo Seligmann, who took
exacting measurements of the skulls for future scientific research. Known by his friends simply by the nickname “Wonderful” for his brilliance and congeniality, Seligmann had taught himself Arabic and Persian while still a high school student and had become one of the foremost scholars of the history of medicine. In his spare time he worked out a philosophical treatise on the relationship between ancient Indian and Greek medicine, and he was building his own skull collection for his anthropological research. In addition to his medical specimens, he was an avid art collector, and through his friendship with Goethe's daughter-in-law, Ottilie (who was a patient and lavished gifts on him), he acquired a massive collection of Goethe portraits and mementoes (which became known as his “Goethiana”).

Shepherding the head of Beethoven through the whole process, of course, was Breuning. Indeed, he kept the skull with him at all times; although work on the skulls was done in a secret location, where there had to be at least two people present at all times to prevent tampering or theft, Breuning was allowed to take Beethoven's home with him each night. He was not a phrenologist by profession, nor was he captivated by the New Science, as Joseph Carl Rosenbaum and Johann Peter had been sixty years earlier. But the fact that phrenology had been largely discredited didn't mean it hadn't left its traces on respectable science. As he compared their skulls in the laboratory, Breuning made a pronouncement about the two composers that has since become infamous in classical music studies: He claimed that the skulls “seemed to reflect the characteristics of the composers' works. The walls
of Beethoven's skull exhibit strong density and thickness, whereas Schubert's bones show feminine delicateness.”
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Breuning also claimed that the fragmentation of Beethoven's skull, combined with the dampness of the grave, had caused the bone to warp and that this explained the rather odd shape that the forehead had assumed. Rather than being a high, well-developed forehead, as could be expected of such a genius, it was sloped back and disturbingly low. Warping, due to moisture, seemed the only plausible reason for this.

While the casts were being made, a quick search for the missing temporal bones was also carried out. There had been a published report that a certain unnamed “medical celebrity in Paris” might know their whereabouts and perhaps might even have taken them. But this inquiry came to no avail; the medical celebrity in question replied in a letter, “When I left Vienna, I only had the pleasure to take with me from the Austrian capital the gratitude for my professors and the friendship of my colleagues that I appreciated. I never heard anyone speak about Beethoven's ears.”
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As for the items of clothing and other fragments, Breuning ordered special zinc cases so that they could be returned to the new coffins without fear of further disintegration.

Despite his work during this time, Breuning was still upset over the board's decision to reinter the skulls, and he would continue to brood over it in coming years. “How important and how
interesting it would be for science,” he wrote twenty years later, “if these skulls remained available for further, more thorough investigation. They should be preserved above the earth and accessible in a museum, art gallery, or library. The two composers would be better honored by such action than by the usual interment of their skulls in tombs.” The board's decision reeked of a superstition that Breuning found indefensible when compared to scientific inquiry. “Only highly prejudiced people (who are unfortunately in the majority) would be offended” by putting the skulls in the museum, and “any person with scientific training would certainly not object.” Breuning concluded: “I am sure no feelings of piety will be offended if the dry skulls, having long been separated from the rest of the skeletons, should be immortalized in such a way.”
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But Breuning's attachment to the head of his father's friend had gone beyond simple scientific inquiry. Each night he returned home with the skull, placing it lovingly beside his bed to meditate on while he drifted off to sleep. “What stormy feelings passed through my mind,” Breuning later said of those days, “evoking such powerful memories, as I had possession of that head for a few days . . . [and] kept it by my bedside overnight, and in general proudly watched over that head from whose mouth, in years gone by, I had so often heard the living word!”
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T
HE COMPOSERS' SKULLS,
along with the tin boxes containing the other relics, were reunited with the rest of the remains on October 22. Gerhard von Breuning brought Beethoven's skull fragments, and most likely it was he who reassembled them in the coffin, reconstructing the head of the composer as best he could. It was a solemn, low-key affair, with about twenty people looking on as the coffins were closed and locked; the keys given to Dr. Standthartner; the lids soldered closed; and, finally, seals of the society affixed to the coffins.

The next morning both coffins were interred in newly constructed vaults. The audience for the ceremony was a good deal larger; the chapel was big enough to fit only the doctors and immediate family, while other spectators were obliged to wait outside. After a requiem mass, the coffins were carried to the vault, with Breuning among the Schubert pallbearers and Standthartner among the Beethoven pallbearers.

A blessing and another song were offered, and then the deputy head of the society delivered a homily. He spoke of the way emotions always attach themselves “with heartfelt love” to the remains of the dead, “as to a lock of a friend, as to the letter of a beloved person,” even though “cold reason might smile.” He said that even though one could honor the dead composers with monuments or by playing their work, “we still like to make a pilgrimage to the places where the earthly part of their being that
has been shed rests.”
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After he had finished, the new coffins were sealed in the vault and the crowd dispersed.

But, as these things go, not all of Beethoven had made it back into the vault.

W
HAT WAS LEFT
of Beethoven remained undisturbed for another quarter of a century, until 1888, when the body was once again exhumed. This time the reason was that the Währing cemetery was in near disintegration and was to be demolished to make way for new buildings. Along with the other coffins to be moved, Beethoven's remains were to be transferred to the “Grove of Honor” of the central cemetery in Vienna.

When Gerhard von Breuning heard the news, he wrote an essay on the skulls of Beethoven and Schubert in which he lamented the dispersal of the cemetery's occupants. “Along with the cemetery's demise, we will likewise have to bury many historical memories that link us to the times and conditions of their lives.” He recalled the various composers and friends who had desired to be buried close to Beethoven: Stephan, his father, who had wanted to be buried next to his friend and had been laid to rest “a few graves further down”; Clementi and Ritter von Seyfried, buried on either side of the composer; the playwright Johann Nepomuk Nestroy and the poet Franz Grillparzer; and Schubert, whose “longing to be close to Beethoven, often expressed
in his feverish dreams, was fulfilled when he was buried only a few graves up from Beethoven.”
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Breuning saw the cemetery as a delicate network of old friends and colleagues whose lives had intersected in startling and momentous ways and who now continued their conversations in the grave. A whole history could be unraveled by tracing the connections in the Währing cemetery: “All these memories and reference points connecting us with the past,” he wrote, “are now being destroyed and will be forgotten as these ‘famous' and ‘outstanding' deceased people will be transferred to other cemeteries.”
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It's odd that a rationalist like Breuning should care about this so much. He was clearly of two minds: He wanted Beethoven's remains transparently available for science for all time; he even complained that the photos taken in 1863 had not been made publicly available. But it was hard for him to maintain scientific objectivity, hard not to see the beauty in a cemetery of old friends lying beside each other, hard not to see the mystery in the skull of a friend by one's bedside, the living word now silent.

As with the 1863 exhumation, when Beethoven was moved in 1888 medical experts were allowed access to the composer, but this time only for a mere twenty minutes—they later complained that the circumstances surrounding this examination “were highly unfavorable.” Still, they had enough time to find that the
plaster casts were accurate enough to be used for future study and that there could be “no real objection to the authenticity of the skull fragments found in the coffin.”
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The 1863 exhumation had already revealed the strange way in which, over time, underground, bones simply disappear. Decay, bacteria, any number of factors can cause even something as hard as bone to disintegrate. So the 1888 doctors, pressed for time, noted only in passing that a portion of the occipital bone was missing, as was a portion of the left parietal bone. These pieces were substantially larger than the petrous bones taken by Wagner—the occipital bone forms the broad back shelf of the head, and the parietal bones each form half of the roof of the cranial cavity. The missing pieces, each about four inches long, seemed too big to have simply disintegrated, especially considering that the express purpose of the 1863 reburial had been to keep the remains in better condition. The committee continued its cataloging of the bones of the skull, then moved on to its conclusions. Curiously, the members seem to have not found it noteworthy that more of the skull was missing than had been in 1863. Each autopsy, it seemed, led to more bits of Beethoven's head disappearing; perhaps this was just the way of the world.

As in 1863, a speech was given at the 1888 reburial, written by Joseph Weilen and delivered by the actor Joseph Lewinsky. In his praise of Beethoven, Weilen noted that the composer was to be buried next to the cenotaph of Mozart, “whose grave covers not
his bones but the shameful reproach for his contemporaries who, having received his masterpieces, lacked due regard for preserving his ashes.” He then quoted Grillparzer, whose body was also about to be transferred out of the Währing cemetery:

You who have gathered at this place, step closer to this grave . . . the one who lies here was inspired. Striving for one thing, caring for one thing, suffering for one thing, offering everything for one thing, this is how this man walked through life. . . . If there is still any sense of wholeness in us in this broken time, let us gather together at his grave. This is why there have always been poets, and heroes, singers, and those inspired by God—so that through them poor ruined human beings raise themselves up, ponder their origin and their destination.
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I
T'S NOT CLEAR
whether either Gerhard von Breuning or Romeo Seligmann was present for this second exhumation. It's not clear whether, if they had been, they would have shared what they knew about the newly discovered missing portions of Beethoven's skull, the occipital fragments. As he saw his own death impending, Beethoven had bitterly remarked to Dr. Wawruch that if anyone could save him from the oblivion of
death “his name would be Wonderful!” He had been referring to the
Messiah
, but in a curious way his prophecy would yet come true: in 1863 persons unknown had kept out a few precious fragments of the composer's skull—to save them from the oblivion of decay and disintegration—and given them to Dr. Romeo Seligmann, known to his friends simply as “Wonderful.”

Mysteries surround Beethoven's death; perhaps they always will.

With the temporal bones lost, an accurate diagnosis of his deafness may never be made, and even a recent DNA analysis of his hair has raised at least as many questions as it has answered. His ailments may have been caused by lead poisoning, or perhaps by a treatment of mercury for syphilis or some other problem, but in all likelihood the answer will never be known. And then there is the question of the skull fragments, the second set to be removed, extracted, in 1863 during the first exhumation and noted only in the second exhumation. Who gave them to Romeo Seligmann?

Dr. William Meredith, who runs the Ira F. Brilliant Center of Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University has pointed to Gerhard von Breuning. Gerhard had the motive, being perhaps the most vocal proponent of keeping Beethoven's head in a museum rather than having it go back into the ground. And he had
the means, since of all those present he was the only one ever to be left alone with the skull. The missing fragments were from the back of the skull and thus would not have been missed when Breuning arranged the fragments face up in the casket for reburial. And the fragments were kept—it would later be discovered—in specially made zinc boxes, the same kind as the ones Breuning ordered for the clothing and other nonhuman remains.

Meredith offered another plausible explanation. “Perhaps Breuning did not lose the argument on October 15, 1863,” he suggested, “about the reburial of the skulls. Of all the people involved in the exhumation, he held a unique position, having been Beethoven's friend as a teenager. His word and moral authority in this regard must have carried special weight. Perhaps the Committee agreed to an undocumented compromise. Perhaps Breuning himself was allowed to keep the two large fragments, but the matter was not to be made public.”
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