Dear Alexandre,

Classical music is in the blood of Vienna, it is everywhere, defining its existence, filling it up with energy. From the many buildings to enjoy the music to the places of education, Vienna is a great city for fans of the widespread genre. People from all over the world come here to take a listen, artists search its stages to perform, Vienna’s history is filled with world’s finest composers. But Vienna is also Vienna. So let me tell you about a historic incident that has everything you need for a typical Viennese story: Gravediggers and corpses, some rich family, some morbid criminals and one of the most famous composers of the whole wide world – Let me tell you about the very surprising adventure of Haydn’s skull.

Our story starts at the Esterhazy’s. This super rich noble family was very powerful and influential. Coming from Hungary, they had one of their headquarters in Eisenstadt, the capital of Burgenland – a big estate, a noble men’s residence. They had some Lord from England over, the Duke of Cambridge, and to show off, they made a nice concert and display featuring the music of Esterhazy’s pride – Joseph Haydn. Haydn had been their court composer for decades, but you maybe knew that already. So the story goes that the visit of the Englishman brought attention to the fact that Haydn’s grave wasn’t on the property, but in a small cemetery in Meidling in Vienna.

Joseph Haydn had a long life and died in 1809 from old age (at the age of 78 – different times then…). His last words are told to have been words of encouragement to calm down his servants as they could hear canon fire as Napoleon’s army approached Vienna. This invasion was the reason, why Haydn got buried in Vienna. Whilst he didn’t get the big ceremonial funeral that he would have gotten, if he had died a bit earlier, Napoleon honored the famous composer by sending French officers to accompany the coffin. All of that is not worth a story yet, but hold on – it gets better! So eight years or so later, the Esterhazy family sends out some people to exhume Haydn’s body, so he can be buried in an honorary grave as a man of his status should have gotten in the first place, as surely a lot of people thought. I don’t know, why they looked into the coffin. Maybe it was broken, maybe someone was really curious to get a look, but I can only imagine their level of surprise, when they found out that something important was missing – The corpse of Joseph Haydn had no head! Now that is a story.

Let me introduce you to Joseph Carl Rosenbaum. He was a secretary at the Esterhazy estate and a real life acquaintance of Haydn. He admired the genius of the composer, was a big fan probably, but he had  - I think it is fair to say – an obsession with a certain field of “science”. Did you ever hear of Franz Josef Gall? He invented the field of phrenology – and when I write “invented”, I do this for a reason. He stated that the brain has different regions for different functions – and this was the only thing he was right about. He drew maps of the brain where you can see, where your area for “jokes” sits or the area for “love for children”, your jealousy, your anger and so on. But he seemed to have only guessed those regions, because not only did science proof in the meantime that he was wrong about that, he was really bad in making empirical studies. So, he wasn’t a good scientist, but his lectures were a real hit. People loved his idea that you could measure the head of someone and that this will tell you everything about the personality of the individual. So what he actually invented was a horoscope-like system that sounded scientific – there was a real craze around his ideas. As you know history, Gall’s ideas of phrenology were later used as a way of legitimation of slavery and genocide, as “scientists” claimed to be able to identify inferiority in people they wanted to rob, enslave and kill, all whilst thinking of themselves as intelligent and morally high standing gentlemen. But back then the Gall hype danced around ideas of identifying criminals, mentally ill people and geniuses by just looking at their head instead of observing their behavior. Doctors telling parents what the skulls of their children say about the perfect career for them, crime fighters dreaming of being able to see the evil straight away. And in all of that there was Mister Rosenbaum, thinking that the genius of his friend Joseph Haydn must be clearly visible in his skull. What creepy encounters it must have been, when Mister Rosenbaum visited the composer, staring at his head as if it was treasure. Weird to be observed by a visitor, who just comes by to see, how old and ill you are and how far away from the grave. Because Mister Rosenbaum had a plan. Haydn was still alive, when he procured a box made out of glass (if I remember correctly), that should hold one day the skull of the composer. Yes, Mister Rosenbaum was a creep.

And he was not alone. He had a friend who ran a prison – a Mister Peter. I am not sure how they met – maybe at a phrenology convention for super fans? – but they were in it together. I have to mention now that Mr. Rosenbaum was a rich influential guy at this point. He had built a fancy garden in the fourth district with a villa and a prominent tower – der Rosenbaum’sche Garten. Famous people like the composer Salieri or the writer Grillparzer would visit him and his wife, who was an opera singer. He certainly was a man, who thought of himself as civilized and noble, so when he was about to hire an undertaker to disturb the peace of the cemetery by letting Haydn’s head be chopped off his corpse at night, he brought two men from a magistrate with him and explained, that this action was necessary to save Haydn’s skull from thieves. Oh, the audacity! “I have to steal this to prevent it from being stolen!” Some great piece of logic. I bet he didn’t tell them, that this wasn’t the first head theft he was involved in. Some weeks before, he and his mate had let the Undertaker hunt for another head, as a rehearsal so to say. It was a famous head as well, a popular actress, who got buried at the same cemetery in Meidling as Haydn would be a bit later. The Undertaker with the for me funny name Herr Demut, chopped the head off soon after the burial and Rosenbaum and his friend Peter brought it to a doctor. This doctor offered them the service of defleshing the head in a few weeks of time, so that the skull would be clear and clean – discrete of course. They weren’t too happy with the result, but still the brought the freshly robbed skull of the composer to said doctor. It must have been lovely to drive around with a seven-days-dead severed head of a guy you once knew. Legend says, that Rosenbaum took it out of the bag in the carriage and vomited instantly. The smell must have been gorgeous and I am sure, whoever had to clean up afterwards must have been delighted.

The doctor did better this time and Rosenbaum and Peter made a time share agreement. Isn’t that a lovely friendship? Rosenbaum had the skull in his precious box, Peter liked to put the skull on display in his garden, when he had it. Two man and their shared hobby. Hach! Adorable. But we remember a few years later, the theft was noticed by the men who wanted to bring Haydn’s remains to the Esterhazy estate. The police got involved. It was practical that the good old doctor had already died, making him the perfect scapegoat for the crime. Rosenbaum gave the skull back. Everyone was happy. Oh sorry, wrong ending!

Rosenbaum gave back a skull, but they soon found out that this was the skull of someone who had died way earlier in his youth. “Haha, upsi, that was an honest mistake”, Rosenbaum probably said. But this time round, the police didn’t believe the whole “It was the doctor”-story. They came to Rosenbaum’s house to search for the skull. I would like to know with what excuse his mind came up to defend his next actions. He was rich, he could have just given it back and it would have landed in a protected grave with the rest of Haydn’s bones and he would have never be brought before a judge. But he was not only rich, he was obviously obsessed with the skull, because, when the police knocked on the door, he hid the skull box underneath the mattress and laid his wife on top of it. The police searched the whole property, but when it came to the bedroom, he explained that his wife was menstruating in there. No policeman had the guts to enter. After a while he got hold of the skull of a man who had died at around 70 years old. If he again had stolen it from a grave is unknown. But he gave that skull to the police and it was buried with Haydn’s bones.

Still he kept the real skull and when he died, the skull went in Peter’s properties. But when Peter died, his widow didn’t gave it to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (society of the friends of music) as by Rosenbaum intended. Maybe she didn’t want to be involved in this crime, she gave it to her doctor. The skull wandered from hand to hand, but made its way to the Musikfreunde in the end. There it is said to have been on display on a piano. I guess, that no one really believed the thing was real. But when they found out, that it probably was, they gave it back, right? Hahaha, good joke. No, they wanted to keep it and talked about their duty of caring for it. Finally, in 1954, Haydn’s grave got opened again and a famous artist put in the real skull in a huge ceremony. The other skull remained in the grave as well, so Haydn’s skeleton had first no head then one and now two of them. I would like to know, who the other skull belonged to and what his story was, sure that during his lifetime that poor fellow had never guessed that his skull would end up being buried with the bones of one of the most famous classical composers in whole wide world.

There is a Haydn museum in the Haydngasse in Vienna’s 6th district. It took me so long to write that story, because I wanted to visit it first, but illness kept me in bed for weeks. I still want to go though, it is the same house he owned and died in, a beautiful old building. Maybe I will see you there, when I finally manage a visit. Maybe other stories are hidden in that museum as well…

Have fun discovering new places in my home town my friend ☠️😉