HOUSTON (PRWEB)
March 23, 2023

Ludwig van Beethoven’s genome was recently sequenced by an international team of scientists and it revealed some shocking information about his family history.

The name “van Beethoven” is synonymous with some of the most beautiful and innovative sonatas, symphonies, and concertos ever composed. Ludwig’s virtuosity emerged from a challenging youth, however. His father Johann van Beethoven is well known to have been an erratic, alcoholic, and at times abusive parent, who would wake his teary-eyed young son and make him practice until dawn. Now, researchers have used DNA to show that Ludwig, the most famous Beethoven, is not genetically related to other living Beethovens.

A Musical Mystery

Ludwig’s generally established genealogy traces his father’s line back to van Beethoven ancestors in Belgium. Back in 2020, researchers at Cambridge University and the Max Planck Institute sequenced the DNA from several locks of hair attributed to Ludwig. Together with researchers at FamilyTreeDNA in Texas, the team planned a routine analysis of Ludwig’s paternal line by examining his Y chromosome.

The research team contacted living descendants of Aert van Beethoven (1535–1609), Ludwig’s supposed 5th great-grandfather. Five descendants of Aert agreed to take a DNA test. Because the Y chromosome is passed down from father to son with few changes each generation, the Y-DNA from Ludwig’s hair locks and the patrilineal descendants of Aert should be a close match.

Surprisingly, they were not a match! The five present-day descendants of Aert van Beethoven belong to haplogroup R1b, whereas Ludwig van Beethoven belongs to haplogroup I1. Those two father lines are separated by over 45,000 years, since around the time humans left Africa.

This strongly indicates that there was an extra-pair-paternity (“EPP”) event in Ludwig’s father’s line. Somewhere, starting with Ludwig’s father Johann and going up his family tree to his 5th great grandfather Aert, one of these Beethovens wasn’t a biological ancestor to Ludwig.

The Hunt for Ludwig’s Paternal Ancestry

One of Ludwig’s paternal ancestors wasn’t his real biological ancestor. The secret suitor might have acted in any one of seven possible generations, from Ludwig’s father up to his 5th great-grandfather Aert. The team showed that Aert was indeed the father of his two sons Jan and Lambert, but could not definitively prove Aert was the father of Hendrik, Ludwig’s 4th great-grandfather.

Aert experienced quite a trauma in his own love life. His first wife Josyne Vlasselaer and the presumed mother of Lambert and Hendrik was burned at the stake in 1595 after having been condemned for witchcraft. Aert could do nothing to save his wife, but was allowed to keep half of their confiscated family property, after paying for the cost of the arrest, interrogation, torture, and burning. He later remarried with Petronella Geerts and fathered his youngest son Jan late in life.

Assuming Aert was Hendrik’s true father, perhaps Ludwig’s grandfather Lodewijk was not his true biological grandfather. Lodewijk’s wife Maria Ball suffered from alcoholism and was treated at the local monastery. Further supporting this idea is the fact that Maria’s son (Ludwig’s father) Johann has no known baptismal record.

Until more van Beethoven descendants test their Y-DNA, we can’t pinpoint the exact source of Ludwig van Beethoven’s true biological patrilineage. Luckily, an ever-increasing number of people are testing their Y-DNA, so it may simply be a waiting game.

Validating Ludwig’s Hair

Given the nature of this major revelation, the research team wanted to be absolutely sure that the hair-lock DNA belonged to Ludwig van Beethoven. They set the bar high with numerous expectations that must be met.

For example, they required multiple (five) hair locks to have identical DNA, each with independently strong provenance showing how they were collected from Ludwig van Beethoven at different points in his life. It is unlikely that the same fraud was committed five independent times. Of course, the team also validated that the DNA was male, and has DNA damage patterns consistent with Beethoven’s age.

FamilyTreeDNA also invented a new genetic method to validate the hair sample. Called “Geo-Genetic Triangulation” (GGT), it searches for customers who match the sample’s autosomal DNA. “Some of our shared DNA can be erroneous, so we have to be careful” says Dr. Paul Maier, population geneticist at FamilyTreeDNA and coauthor on the paper. “GGT finds matching DNA segments and matching ancestor locations that are validated by three or more customers. It ensures that only locations with a high likelihood of being ancestral to Beethoven are selected.” The team used GGT to show that the sample shared ancestry with customers primarily in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, consistent with Ludwig’s German ancestry.

Ludwig’s New-found Relatives

The research team used the genetic Y chromosome profile obtained from Ludwig’s hair to identify potential patrilineal relatives in the FamilyTreeDNA database. Candidates were contacted and offered complimentary upgrades to high resolution Y-DNA tests to participate in the study. Some were in for an unexpected surprise connection to one of the most famous composers of all time.

Six participating customers were found to share patrilineal ancestry with Ludwig in the last 1,000 years. Their oldest known paternal ancestry ranges from Germany (most commonly), to Poland, Slovakia, and even Pennsylvania, a common settlement location for German-American immigrants. Although their pedigrees offer some clues about Ludwig’s ancestry, the common ancestor lived a millennium ago, before the time when surnames became common in Europe.

Notwithstanding the age of this ancestor, FamilyTreeDNA customers proved to be quite excited to discover a connection with Ludwig van Beethoven. “It makes me proud,” said one customer, upon hearing the news for the first time. “I’ve been doing a lot of research on my ancestors for a couple of years, because I had no idea exactly who my father was, and he had no idea exactly who his father was. This is awesome. I’m a little bit speechless.” The public awaits a closer Y-DNA match to Ludwig’s DNA to provide the final clue as to the identity of his secret ancestor.

Ludwig’s Maternal Ancestry

Ludwig’s genealogy traces his mother’s line back to the Rhineland-Palatinate region in Germany in the 1600s. Mitochondrial analysis showed that he belonged to a common European haplogroup called H1b1-T16362C.

He shares this maternal ancestry with James Watson, Nobel Prize winner, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of the DNA molecule, and the second person in the world to make his sequenced whole genome publicly available. Their only difference is a single mutation C16176T that is unique to Ludwig. Over time, new DNA testers may become the closest matrilineal match to Ludwig van Beethoven.