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Part One of this essay appeared in Volume 20, nos. 1-2 (2005) of The Beethoven Journal.
THE MOST IMPORTANT RESEARCH ON THE SKULL FRAGMENTS since 2005 TOOK place in 2012. In January I suggested to Paul Kaufmann, the owner of the skull fragments, that we try to find an osteologist to examine the approximately ten small pieces ofbone that had never been inspected by a osteological specialist. These fragments had been stored in the small metal box that held the two larger pieces that had been analyzed and identified as Beethovens by Hans Bankl and Hans Jesserer in 1985, as reported on in their 1987 book Die Krankheiten Ludwig van Beethovens: Pathographie seines Lebens und Pathologe seiner Leiden (Ludwig van Beethoven's Illnesses: the Pathography of his Life and the Pathology of His Suffering, Verlag Wilhelm Maudrich).1 (A pathography is a retrospective study, often by a physician, of the life of an individual or the history of a community focusing on the influences and effects of disease on the person or community.)
Mr. Kaufmann had told me that his mother, Alma Kaufmann, had often called the collection ofbones "Beethovens ear bones." His recollections are confirmed by a letter of February 12,1987, in which she wrote that in 1863 Beethovens "remains were exhumed for reburial in a more distinguished cemetery. At that time Professor Seligmann was given the Beethoven Skull for his collection. However our uncle was only interested in the Ear Bones of the skull because of Beethovens deafness." (This statement contains three significant errors.2) Since the ear bones were lost not long after Beethovens autopsy on March 27,1827, it seemed important to ask for an expert opinion on the small fragments from an osteologist. Mr. Kaufmann generously agreed, as he has with all scientific research on the bones, to show them to an osteologist we identified.
On January 25,2012,1 wrote to Dr. Dena Werb, professor and currently vice-chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, San Francisco, who directed me to three researchers at UCSF who might be able to help. One of them, Dr. Kimberly Tbpp, Sexton Sutherland Endowed Chair in Human Anatomy, recommended that I contact Dr. David Burr, Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Indiana University. In...