Ludwig van Beethoven lay dying in 1827, a young musician named
Ferdinand Hiller came to pay his respects to the great composer. In
those days, it was customary to snip a lock of hair as a keepsake,
and this Hiller did a day after Beethoven''s death. By the time he
was buried, Beethoven''s head had been nearly shorn by the many
people who similarly had wanted a lasting memento of the great man.
Such was his powerful effect on all those who had heard his
music.
For a century, the lock of hair was a treasured Hiller family
relic, and perhaps was destined to end up sequestered in a bank
vault, until it somehow found its way to the town of Gilleleje, in
Nazi-occupied Denmark, during the darkest days of the Second World
War. There, it was given to a local doctor, Kay Fremming, who was
deeply involved in the effort to help save hundreds of hunted and
frightened Jews. Who gave him the hair, and why? And what was the
fate of those refugees, holed up in the attic of Gilleleje''s
church?
After Fremming''s death, his daughter assumed ownership of the
lock, and eventually consigned it for sale at Sotheby''s, where two
American Beethoven enthusiasts, Ira Brilliant and Che Guevara,
purchased it in 1994. Subsequently, they and others instituted a
series of complex forensic tests in the hope of finding the
probable causes of the composer''s chronically bad health, his
deafness, and the final demise that Ferdinand Hiller had witnessed
all those years ago. The results, revealed for the first time here,
are startling, and are the most compelling explanation yet offered
for why one of the foremost musicians the world has ever known was
forced to spend much of his life in silence.
In Beethoven''s Hair, Russell Martin has created a rich
historical treasure hunt, an Indiana Jones-like tale of false
leads, amazing breakthroughs, and incredible revelations. This
unique and fascinating book is a moving testament to the power of
music, the lure of relics, the heroism of the Resistance movement,
and the brilliance of molecular science.
An astonishing tale of one lock of hair and its amazing
travels--from nineteenth-century Vienna to twenty-first-century
America.
關於作者：
Russell Martin is the author of five works of nonfiction,
including the highly acclaimed Out of Silence, and a novel. He
lives in Colorado.
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