ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Season 1, Episode 14 · 1 year ago
SHARE THIS EPISODE
Season 1, Episode 14 · 1 year ago
EP15 Haydn's Missing Head
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Hello, everyone and welcome back todestination death or welcome to destination death. If you are new here,I hope that you guys are having a great week. I am going to be really honestfor a second. I already recorded this episode. Well, I wasunder the impression that I recorded this episode completely through oncebefore and for whatever reason garage ban decided that it was notgoing to keep the audio so we're going to take another swing. I am not I'm going to try not to befrustrated about it. I had a massage today, so we're it caught me on a goodday. Okay, I hope you guys have had a great weekor are having a great week if you're listening to this on a week day. I really wanted to go grocery shoppingtoday, but I ended up not doing that lately on my days off, I kind of just want to record and then relax, so my my relaxing for today was doing getting a massage, and today, during my massage, my therapistdid a lot of like really deep stretches on me. One of my goals for two thousand andtwenty is to get my splits not really for any particular reason just to bemore flexible and you know, maybe I would get a little bit more benefit outof yoga if I was able to do some of the more advanced poses and whatnot. But that is a little something about me. Iwant to get my splits in two thousand and twenty. What are some of your two thousand andtwenty goals? I would love to hear them. My other big THOUSANDA. Twenty goal isto completely eliminate single used, plastics and plastic from my home ingeneral. It has been very difficult, but I have made the switch to a lotmore sustainable items in the past few months. It is definitely more expensiveup front, but I'm finding that I'm purchasing now things that are of higher quality. So Ibelieve that they'll last me a lot longer and they will probably workbetter than the plastic counterparts. So I recently did a big purge of mykitchen and I had a lot of plastic tepper ware. I don't want to contribute to the environmental destruction by justthrowing it all away, so I have donated a lot to good will and gave things topeople that I didn't want that they could find. Some use from part of this, for me, is finding a way to reduce my plastic loadwhile not adding more to landfill, so we're going to see how that goes. Partof this is also going to be like purchasing more sustainable and egofriendly gifts for people. I love...
...gifting. I love giving people gifts,but I find that often a lot of gifts are pretty wasteful, so I'm going to try this year to giveas many sustainable and ECO friendly gifts as I possibly can. I also cannot believe that it isalready February we're literally done with a whole weekin February. Actually,that just is unbelievable to me in some podcast related news. Next weekI will be bringing my boyfriend on the show, hopefully for more than oneepisode, but we will see he might not want to record a second oneafter we record our first one, but it will be for a special valentines dayepisode. We will most likely be covering Alsheimer's disease andpotentially something else, I'm not sure yet, but I am looking forward tothat. Today's episode is another fun and WildOne. We are going to talk about Hiden and his head, but before we get into that, let's goover to my disclaimer. The information in this podcast, aswell as those that follow, is information readily available on theInternet. I have spent my own time researching these events and haveincluded only information I deem necessary in describing the events tomy audience. That being said, some information topics and opinionsexpressed from this point on could be considered explicit, grotesque and oroffpudding. Listen with your own. Listen, listen with your own discretion. Okay! So, for some backgroundinformation we will go over hiden and his life just briefly, because I knowthat you guys want me to get straight to the good stuff Joseph Hidon was born in a row. Rou,Austria. I think that's how you pronounce it. In March seventeen thirtytwo Hyden's parents had noticed from an early age that their son was musicallygifted and they knew that where he was currently living, he would not have anyopportunity to get any musical training so around the time that he turned six.They accepted a proposal from their relative, Johan, frank, theschoolmaster and choir master in Hainburg. That hyden would be hisapprentice. Hiding therefore went off to frank in Hainburg and he never again livedwith his parents. In the Frank Household, Hyden didn'thave a great time. Frank didn't really provide enough food forHiden, so he was very often hungry. He also was not treated like one ofFrank's children, so he often wore tattered and dirty clothing, but he began his musical training thereand cand soon play both the Harpsichord and violin and the people of Hainburgheard him sing treble in the church choir, and this is a little a little bit of asad part. But hyden was motivated to sing very well in the hopes of gaininginvitations to perform for people that were wealthy, because when they hired people to sing,they often would give them food and refreshments. So hiden at this point in his life, washaving to sing for food, which is pretty sad. I don't like. I don't likethat part of the story.
Hyden belt spent much of his career asa court musician musician for the wealthy Ester Hazy family at theirremote estate until the later part of his life. He was essentially isolatedfrom other compose composers and trends in music, so he essentially had to become original. So this is one of the reasons that he'ssuch a famous composer is because he basically came up with all his ownstuff and it didn't sound like anythinganyone else was putting out because he didn't know what other people wereputting out. He was for most of his career. He was the mostcelebrated composer in Europe, so things do get a lot better for littleJoseph Heiden. He ended up becoming a friend andmentor of Mozart, a tutor of Beethoven, and he was the older brother ofcomposer Michael Hyden. During the later years of hissuccessful period, Haden faced just the troubles that come with old age, he hadfluctuating health and he had a struggle to complete his final works bythe end of eighteen, O three hiden's condition had declined. He was unableto compose any new music and he suffered from general weakness. Hebecame dizzy, he couldn't concentrate and he had apparently painfully swollen legs and at the time they didn't really havea word for the condition that he has. It is supected that he was sufferingfrom Arterio sclorosis and we have talked about arterio sclerosis andother episodes on this podcast, one of them being my autopsy story, where we talked about how the Atherosclerosis of the patient caused a blockage of the right coronary artery.So as we remember, Arterio Clarosis, the buildup of fats, mostly cholesterol, in the lining ofthe arteries, so it can cause generalized Adema. It can cause issueswith blood getting to the brain all of those things. So there was a performance organized in his honor ofthe creation, which is one of his very first works. The composer was broughtin with basically on a wheelchair to thesound of trumpets and drums, and he was greeted by Bethoven. Beethoven ended up,leading the performance and other musicians and members of thearistocracy hiden was so moved and exhausted by theperformance that he had to leave at intermission. After that he lived for fourteen moremonths. His final days were pretty loud. I guess I would describe it inMay. AD. Eight tudren O nine, the French army under Napoleon, attackedVienna and in basically bombed hisneighborhood. He ended up trembling. He was terrified. There werea bunch of children around that were just as terrified, so he ended up getting visited by a bunch ofFrench calvary officers and they sang an area from the creation to him, whichI don't know if that makes up for...
...having my city bombed, but he liked itapparently, on the twenty sixt of May, Hyden playedhis emperor's Hymn with unusual Gusto three times and in the same evening hewas Takento his deathbed. He died peacefully at tw. Forty am on thethirty first of May, eighteen, O nine. When he was aged seventy seven. Okay. Now we can get to the crazy part of thestory due to the wars that still raged inAustria, hydens employer, Nickolass, the second who was Prince Ester Hazey, the people that he had been working,his entire life for temporarily buried the cucomposers body on the land just outside the estate, because the estate lands were kind of up in the air.They were having an argument about who actually owned the land, so he didn'twant to bury hide in somewhere where his body could potentially becomeproperty of someone else. So he buried him in a different semin cemetery thatwas still within the city limits. At the time Vienna was rife withphrenologists and for those of Tyou that don't know. PHERNOLOGISTS arepeople that study the bumps and ridges and grooveson human skulls, because they believe that it will provide some idea as tothe mental capacity of the person that hadthe skull. So Joseph Carl Rosenbaum was aphrenologist. He believed that if he he was to comeinto possession of Hyden's head, he could study the skull and learn thesecrets of Hyden's musical genius. I bet you know where this is headed, soRosenbaum teamed up with his friend, Johan Peter, and they bribed a cemetery caretaker tobreak open, hidens casket and remove his head. The caretaker did this and delivered a wrapped up. Severedhead to Rosenbam and Peter Rosenbaum was so excited at the idea ofhaving hidens head that he ended up opening the bag and looking at it- andthis is a quote from him quote- I had to vomit the stench had overcome me.The head was already quite green, but still completely recognizable. So then they bring the head to ViennaGeneral Hospital and have it dissected, debrained, bleached and cleaned. I don't know who you have to be to takea severed head to a general hospital and just have them clean it for youwith no questions asked after he had this cleaned polished,lovely white skull from Hyden. He had a specialy draped display casemade, which was propped up in a...
...very noticeable position in his home.I'm imagining that it was probably some place near the fireplace so that nomatter where he was sitting in his living room, he could see Hyden's head odd, hidins head stayed there in thisdisplay case, for eleven years in eighteen, twenty Prince Nicholas decided to transferhidens mausoleum to its permanent place in the Izenstat city church on his ownestate outside of Vienna. While the body was being moved, theydiscovered that there was no head just a wig where the head should be. The prince is obviously so angry. He notified the police, who ended up very easily figuring out that Johan, Peter and Rosenbaum had hyden's head, so they go to Rosenbaum's house, buthis wife pretended to be sick and hid hide and skull inside the bed. With her Rosenbaum then decided he was going tosurrender another skull from his personal collection, and that was then buried with Hyden'sbody in his new mausoleum. So just to check in really quickly here, Hyden's head is severed by some randomcemetery worker delivered in a bag. To these two dudes, the dudes take the skull Wellif theytake the entire head to a general hospital. have it cleaned and polishedwith no questions asked Prince, finds out the heads missing. Please go to the House of one of thedudes whose wife is hiding the skull in in her bed with her, so that the skulldoesn't get taken from them and then dude gives them some randomperson skull to put on the shoulders of one of the most decorated composers. What okay? For years after this Rosenbam kept Solpossession of Hydens skull, and then he died in eighteen, twenty nine and leftthe skull to Peter, with the understanding that Peter would turn inthe skull to Vienna Society of the Friends of music. Peter didn't do this. He ended up dyingand he said that he was going to do it, but hehad loaned the skull to another phrenologist, a doctr Carl Haller, whoended up saying. I don't really care what Peter wanted happened to the skull,I'm just going to keep it, so he had it for a while and then heultimately ended up. Giving Hyden's head to in Anatomy, professor at the UNIV University of Vienna. So now Hydin's head is that the University of Vienna, withan anatomy, professor, probably being used to teach anatomystudents years passed, the scul remained at theuniversity. Even though the Society of...
...the Friends of music knew that they should have been given the skullfrom Peter. The society ended up suing theuniversity. The descendants of the Ester hazeslearned that the skull in Hyden's mausoleum was nothis head. So then they filed their own lawsuitfor the skull in N, tosdeight, huded and ninety five to the upset of the Esterhazy Estate. The Austrian court awarded the skull tothe Society of Friends of music. So at this point the skull has beendetached from the body for eighty six years so for several generations. After this,the skull sat on a pedestal in the societyes building in Vienna, still noton Hyden's body in on TD, nine TNEEN. Thirty, two, thebycentennial of Hyden's birth, the Ester Hazy family, made another attemptto get the skull back. They bought a fancy new mausoleum forhim, the Society of Friends of music offered to sell the skull to them, but they put the price too high, sothey weren't willing to pay it. How do you sell someone's skull for too high a praice when it was neversupposed to be for sale in the first place? U, okay! During World War, two hydenshead stayed on the pedestal in Biena. At the end of the war, the Society ofFriends decided that they wanted to play nicely and they offered to givethe skull back to the Ester Hazy Estate. So on May thirtieth thousand nineteenND fifty four, the Hamburg Phil Harmonic Orchestra and Choir celebratedthe rejoining of Hydeen skull with the rest of his skeleton, with theperformance of the composers, the creation. As we have talked aboutpreviously, the skull was blessed by the Cardinal.It was then carried in a small leather casket from the society's building in ahearse on a bed of flowers. The hearse transported the skull through the townof Ro row, his original birthplace, where roadside musicians played theemperor quartet, which was something that he composed the skull then arrivedat the Ester Hazy Castle and Ionstat, along with the rest of hydeens bones. The entire thing was put in a coppercoffin and Hiden's remains were laid to restat the Hiden mausoleum of Einstott Hill Church so really quickly. I'M gonna figure out how many years hishead was detached in total, a hundred and forty five years. So this man head was detached from hisbody and used for all sorts of things for a hundred and forty five years andfor a good amount of those years he had some random person's head on his body. I understand the desire to collect humanbones. I do own a few helmet human...
...bones myself and know the bones that I own. It isnot illegal for me to own them. So don't go down that road, but I think there's a difference between not wanting your body after death andnot caring. What happens to it and having your grave desecrated in such a way that your bones are separated from each other for a hundred and fifty years for no one's real benefit? I'm not surethat anyone really benefited from hiding skull not being on his body. It was probably very traumatic for theEsther Hazey family honestly because he spent his entire time as a composer working for them and living with them. It just I don't know. SSome thingsabout death, really bother me and others, I think, are just reallyfascinating, and I think that this story really bothers me, because I don't particularly care what happensto my body, but I do have some loved ones that are very concerned about whathappens to their body after death, and it would be traumatic for me to know that even a finger was missing from themwhen they were laid to rest, because that's not what they wanted. So that's my take on this situation, and that is the story of Hyden's head. The weirdest part to me, I think, isjust someone putting the head inside a display case just in their living room.For years, and then when they get caught going as far as to put someone elseshead in the casket with the body, I don't know that is all I have for you guys thisweek. I will check back in in a couple days. I hope that you enjoyed thisepisode as much as I enjoyed telling it. I am. I have been watching garage bandin the background this whole time I've been recording, so I am really gladthat it recorded this time. I hope that you have a great day or agreat weekend or a great week, don't forget to follow the show onInstagram at destination, death, podcast and if you feel so inclined, please doreview this podcast wherever you are listening to it, reviews help me grow. They help me getmore people to listen to me. Please don't feel obligated, but if youhave any nice things to say, go ahead and say them or if you have not nice things, I'malso trying to grow and trying to make this a better podcast with everyepisode. So I will catch you guys later. I hope that you have a great greatgreat great great day and I love you Goo Bye.
In-Stream Audio Search
NEWSearch across all episodes within this podcast