Hair sample thought to be Beethoven’s
By Melissa Mitchell, News Bureau Staff Writer (217) 333-5491; melissa@illinois.edu Ads for hair-color products in the 1950s introduced the question, “Does she, or doesn’t she?” But Ed Rath, associate director of the School of Music, said the question that he and some of his colleagues are scratching their heads over is, “Is it or isn’t it?” The “it” in question is about a dozen loose hairs, contained in an envelope and passed from one music professor to another through the years for safekeeping. According to local music-school legend, and documented in a handwritten letter enclosed in the envelope, the hair was removed from the head of composer Ludwig van Beethoven. The shearing may have occurred in 1827 when the composer was on his deathbed, or many years later in 1863, when the body was exhumed and the remains measured and examined. Rath, who has been the most recent caretaker of the locks, said the hair’s appearance on campus can be traced to Hubert Kessler, a music professor at Illinois from the 1930s through ’60s. Kessler, Rath was told, received the envelope from a great uncle, who wrote the letter regarding the provenance of its contents in Vienna in 1948. “A solid 10 years ago, Alex Ringer – a recently deceased faculty member – gave me the envelope and said it’s supposed to be Beethoven’s hair,” Rath said. “He said, ‘just hang onto it.’ ” So that’s exactly what Rath did, until recently, when William Kinderman, a noted Beethoven scholar who joined the faculty in 2001, found out about it. “He said there was a possibility that it could be valuable and that it should be tested,” Rath said. So Rath contacted Sarah Wisseman, director of the UI’s Program on Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials. Rath said Wisseman “got in touch with people in California who had other samples of hair that has been identified as belonging to Beethoven.” The other hair Rath refers to is known as the “Guevara Lock of Beethoven’s Hair.” Part of the collection of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University, the hair is on view – side by side with a sample of the Illinois hair – in an exhibition on Beethoven at the Spurlock Museum through May 4. The Guevara lock is named for Dr. Alfredo Guevara, who purchased a portion of hair at auction at Soetheby’s in London in 1994 and donated some of it to the Brilliant Center. A number of scientific and medical tests, including DNA analysis, have been performed on the hair to affirm its authenticity. Wisseman made arrangements with the same lab used by the Brilliant Center – Laboratory Corporation of America, Research Triangle Park, N.C. – to determine whether DNA present in the Illinois hair matches the Guevara sample. “I went to (the Music Building) with a pair of tweezers and picked out two of the longest hairs and one shorter one,” Wisseman said. “The lab gave us special instructions on how to send it to them – in a package marked ‘biohazard.’ Biotechnology provided containers.” Rath said he and Kinderman are hopeful that test results on the Illinois hair samples will be known in early May, when scholars from around the world gather on campus for a conference on “Beethoven and the Creative Process.” “If the hair matches the Guevara Lock,” Kinderman said, “it’s probably a good indication that ours is authentic.” “It has all the earmarkings of authenticity,” Rath added. But either way the story ends, he said, “it’s certainly a romantic tale.”
