History RaeTold

The Posthumous Farce of Franz Joseph Haydn's Head, or: Getting Head (for Science)

Our story starts with Franz Joseph Haydn, who you may vaguely know as an Austrian classical composer. In his time, he wrote over a hundred symphonies, among other things, including that one that goes BA ba-da ba-da ba-da ba-da ba-ba. You know the one? Yeah, that one.

Anyway, Haydn was an absolute darling of the Viennese music scene, at a time when people were all about musicians, and every rich person worth their salt had a pet musician that they paid absurd amounts of money to bum around the house, writing music. And then, when he was 77, Haydn died. Everyone was very sad that the music man had died.

At the time, though, Austria was busy with the Napoleonic Wars, and so they didn’t have the time or resources to give Haydn a proper burial. Instead, they just kind of chucked him in a hole in a wee cemetery on the outskirts of the city and moved on.

And that’s when the weird shit really started.

As well as music, people at the time were getting mega into phrenology – the theory that the shape of a person’s skull can determine their intelligence and character (which, to be clear, is scientifically nonsense and starts hurtling towards eugenics real quick). And what could be a better prop to help prove your weird science than the skull of the greatest musician of his age?

So, naturally, a couple of guys ­– Joseph Carl Rosenbaum and Johann Nepomuk Peter ­– bribed the gravedigger at Haydn’s cemetery, a guy called Jakob, to steal his head and give it to them.

As far as I can gather, Peter didn’t know Haydn at all, but Rosenbaum and Haydn were casual acquaintances while the latter was alive, which meant that it was totally chill for them to steal his skull for shady science.

I really cannot emphasise enough here that, clearly, none of these people had fucking jobs.

Unfortunately for wee Jakob, our gravedigger-turned-graverobber, Haydn died in the summer, and the heat had caused him to decompose pretty quickly, meaning the excavation process was much riper than Jakob would have liked, and he fully threw up in the carriage on his way to deliver the head to his employers. But, honestly, that’s a risk you’re just going to have to take when you’re robbing graves, Jake.

Peter and Rosembaum (or, more likely, some poor research assistant) then skinned and bleached the skull, all ready for their mental research. And then, sure, they did a bunch of prodding at the skull and decided that the “bump of music” (definitely a real thing) was fully developed, yadda yadda science.

And then after that, they just… kept the skull. In Peter’s SKULL COLLECTION, which is a completely normal thing for a person to have. He even had a special box made, with carvings and glass windows and a nice cushion, to keep the skull in, and would whip it out at parties to show people.

I mean… everyone needs a hobby, I guess?

At some point, Peter got bored of his skull collection (you know how skull collections are), and got rid of it, giving Haydn’s skull, among others (AMONG OTHERS), back to Rosenbaum.

And then it all gets a bit Carry On Corpse Desecrating.

Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Haydn’s old patron, a prince called Nikolaus, was reminded that his pet musician was still languishing in a hole somewhere out of town, and decided to bury him properly. So he had a nice mausoleum built in his family cemetery (imagine having a family cemetery, honestly just prime goth) and sent some people up to dig Haydn up.

And guess what they found?

Obviously, the corpse had no head.

Nikolaus was furious, and SOMEHOW heavily suspected Peter and Rosenbaum of the head-heist. No idea how he worked that out. Maybe because they were the only people he knew with a HEAD COLLECTION.

Seriously, guys, get a fucking job.

So he sent some pals over to Rosenbaum’s house to get his composer skull back. Rosenbaum, however, didn’t seem keen to return it, which led to a ridiculous cartoon search through the house, with Rosenbaum’s servants moving the skull from room to room to prevent the searchers finding it. At one point, they hid it inside a straw mattress, which Rosenbaum’s wife, Therese, lay on top of. When Nikolaus’s men came into the room, she was like “hey pals, I’m on my period, don’t come any closer or you might catch it” and they SUSPECTED NOTHING AND LEFT. 

Men. I swear to god.

Eventually, to appease the prince, Rosenbaum gave him a different skull. From his skull collection. 

All totally normal.

And that, at least for a bit, was that. The false skull was buried in the nice mausoleum with Haydn’s body, while his actual head stayed with Rosenbaum. After Rosenbaum died, the skull went back to Peter, who gave it to his doctor, and it ended up being passed around between a few collectors and assorted lunatics. It was a fun thing that people would whip out at parties. You know that point in every party, where someone gets smashed and starts showing you their skull collection? Yeah. 

Rich people are a trip.

In 1954, almost 150 years after Haydn’s death, Nikolaus’s descendant, Paul, decided that he would finally track down the rogue skull and return it to the tomb.

Obviously, at this point, nobody was pretending that they didn’t know where Haydn’s skull was any more. Everyone and their mother had been to at least one party where it had been waved around. I fucking guarantee at least one person had a drink out of that skull. Because a party isn't a party without someone getting a bit of head. 

I'm hilarious.

So, yeah, this skull was a well-known feature of the Viennese social scene. Which meant it wasn’t exactly hard to track it down and return to its rightful body. 

They didn’t really know what to do with the other, not-Haydn skull that had been buried with his body for the past century, though. It had gotten comfortable. It was happy there. Technically, it had spent more time with Haydn’s body than his actual head, so one could argue that it had even more right to be there than the original skull. 

So they just left it there.

And so that was how Haydn, after 150 years, ended up with two heads.

You know what, I studied music from the ages of 5-17, and nobody ONCE told me about this, and I had to find out MYSELF, AS AN ADULT, when my friend got drunk and told me about about it.

The British school system has so much to answer for.