Homework
When Beethoven died, the weather even sort of noted the event. There was a rare thunderstorm and snowstorm, and there was a crash of lightning and thunder and ... Beethoven opened his eyes and sort of raised up his fist and the Viennese look it as a portent of something great had happened. A great man had died. During the lying in state, all of Beethoven’s hair was cut off as souvenirs.
What happened to the hair later is that the lockets of hair were put into frames and kept by people that were friends of Beethoven. Nowadays, the attraction of the locket of hair, I think primarily, is that it allows people 200 years later to be in the presence of Beethoven again in a physical way.
Here it is. OK. There it is. Well, too light. OK. It’s sealed with this inscription onto the paper. This hair was taken by my father, Doctor Hailer, on the day after Ludwig Van Beethoven’s death from Beethoven’s corpse.
Here it is, it was a vacuum. I have a medical practice, and I see a lot of patients but seldom do I get to treat Beethoven posthumously. For me, it’s 10% science, 90% emotion.
Look at there, the brown is more… intense, intense here, his hair’s color.
I am no one special, but he has affected me in a very personal way when everything else is lost and you really think you are alone, which happens to you frequently. You are never really alone, if you listen to Beethoven. At least, I am never alone because I always have Ludwig Van.
200 years since the birth of Beethoven, his music still speaks as he expressed it from the heart to the heart. Ludwig Van Beethoven was born in Bonn in the house, possibly in this room. 100,000 people climb these stairs every year drawn by love of his music. They particularly want to see the room where this extraordinary spirit came into the world. Not wanting to disappoint them, museum staffs have labeled this the birth room, but they are guessing. It’s a shrine to composer whose music has inspired pilgrimage and passion across time, and now across different cultures.
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