Beethoven and His Genetic Secrets

It is surprising that the brilliance of Ludwig van Beethoven's music is compatible with his deafness. But the total loss of hearing from the age of forty is just one of the many ailments that plagued the German composer, born in Bonn on December 16, 1770. DNA extracted from his hair reveals that he suffered from hepatitis and severe gastric problems. It also uncovered infidelities in his ancestry, as his genetic map includes genes foreign to his family lineage.

A scientific team conducted an in-depth analysis of Beethoven's DNA from samples of his hair, as reported by Science Alert. "Our goal was to clarify Beethoven's health problems, including the progressive hearing loss that led to functional deafness in 1818," explains Johannes Krause, a biochemist involved in the study and a member of the Max Planck Institute.

The main cause of his deafness, which was also not diagnosed by Johann Adam Schmidt, Beethoven's personal physician, has not been established. The composer suffered from tinnitus since his twenties, a condition that causes constant and intense sounds in the ears. He developed an intolerance to loud noises and a loss of hearing of high tones that would ruin his career. So much so, that in a letter to his brothers, he admitted being so distressed that he contemplated suicide.

He also suffered from severe abdominal pains and chronic episodes of diarrhea from a young age. Six years before his death, the first symptoms of liver disease appeared, which contributed to his premature death in Vienna, on March 26, 1827, at the age of 56. He had been bedridden since the previous Christmas, suffering from jaundice, with a swollen abdomen and limbs, and severe respiratory difficulties.

A forensic investigation conducted in 2007 on a supposed strand of Beethoven's hair suggested that lead poisoning might have accelerated or caused his death. At that time, it was common to drink from lead containers and medical treatments of the era included this heavy metal. But in 2023, a now-revised study confirms that the hair belonged to an unknown woman and not to the musician.

The analysis of several strands that were indeed from the composer attributes his death to a hepatic infection exacerbated by his alcohol consumption and reveals a striking genetic surprise: the comparison of his chromosomes with those of Beethoven's patrilineal descendants revealed a mismatch.

"This finding suggests an extramarital paternity event in his paternal line in the generations before the composer's birth, between the conception of Hendrik van Beethoven in Kampenhout, Belgium, around 1572, and that of Ludwig van Beethoven seven generations later," said Tristan Begg, a bioanthropologist at the University of Cambridge.