Beethoven’s Hair

Thanks to Russell Martin’s book Beethoven’s Hair (2000) and the awarding winning documentary film from Rhombus Media of the same name (2005), it is probably accurate to state that the Guevara Lock of Hair owned by the Center is the most famous surviving lock of the composer’s hair. The astonishing journey of this storied lock of hair is carefully set forth in Martin’s book, which has remained in print and been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Danish, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Norwegian, and Hebrew. The lock was sold at a Sotheby’s, London, auction in December 1994 to four members of the American Beethoven Society, Dr. Alfredo Guevara, Ira Brilliant, Caroline Crummey, and Thomas Wendel. With characteristic generosity, Dr. Guevara donated the majority of his portion of the hair to the Center. Several medical tests have been conducted on strands from the original lock from the portion still owned by Dr. Guevara. They have shown that Beethoven did not receive opiate pain killers during the last painful months of his life, that he suffered from lead poisoning during those same months, and that spikes in the lead may be related to the medical treatments that involved puncturing Beethoven’s abdomen to release the painful buildup of fluids (“dropsy”). (Tests on Beethoven’s skull fragments in the summer of 2010 have revealed that he had the average amount of lead in his bones for a man of his age until his last four months.) DNA tests on strands from this lock by Dr. Marcia Eisenberg and LabCorp, as well as other hairs the Center has assisting in getting tested, have yielded only a limited amount of genetic information. According to Dr. Eisenberg and based solely on DNA evidence, “The information from this lock was too limited to draw conclusions as to its source.” (This is also true of the DNA testing of the bone fragments.) Fortunately, the provenance of the Guevara Lock and its history is so detailed that we can conclude with some certainty that it did come from Beethoven. What makes the lock special and valuable to most people, however, is the fact that it came from the head of a composer who created music that continues to speak to us with transformational emotional power and depth. As Martin correctly asserts in his book, “It was his music’s ability to change the lives of the people who heard it that led Ferdinand Hiller to clip the lock, then treasure it throughout his life, that had made it a profound kind of gift in a time of terrible crisis [during World War II], that had brought it to America with the most eager anticipation, that had stirred the examination of its chemical secrets.”

Treasure 12

 

The Guevara Lock of Beethoven’s Hair from 1827 (in original frame under convex glass)

Gift of Dr. Alfredo Guevara, Ira F. Brilliant, Caroline Crummey, and
Thomas Wendel, 1994