Fight Over Joseph Haydn’s Body.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIII, Issue 12, 22 September 1909, Page 34

Fight Over Joseph Haydn’s Body.

Seldom has a great composer received such world wide homage to his talent as that accorded to Joseph Haydn in connection with the celebration of tl i centennial anniversary of his death. For it has been made the occasion of the biennial meeting in the Austrian capital of the congress of the International Musical Society, an organisation so vast in extent that it may be said to stretch from China and Japan, all across Asia and 'Europe, to the Western Hemisphere and to Australia. In fact, the gathering of the congress, to which most foreign nations sent delegates of musical celebrity, and for the entertainment of whom the Austrian treasury granted a considerable sum of money, may be said to have resolved itself into a glorifies -

tion of the memory of that Croat Slav who, born as the son of a wheelwright, in a village of lower Austria, has sometimes been described as “the Robert Burns of music.” Among the principal features of the festival was the pilgrimage by the members of the congress to Eisenstadt, Prince Esterhazy’s place in Hungary, where Haydn lies buried in the St. Marie Einsiedel Church, and where, after the celebration of a memorial service, wreaths were laid by the chief foreign delegates and by Austro-Hungarian authorities and societies upon his tomb. This, however, did not pass off without a somewhat sensational contretemps, for Dr. Lueger, who for more than 12 years past has been the burgomaster of Vienna, insisted upon being the first to pay this tribute to Haydn, insteal of occupying the fourth or fifth place in the line of those depositing floral emblems on his grave. Moreover, as he laid down the wreath of the city of Vienna, he exclaimed: “I salute the grave of Haydn, who was a good German and a good Austrian. I salute upon Hungarian soil the grave of a composer who gave us our Baered national hymn, which is despised in this country.” Not content with this anti-Magyar demonstration, the doughty mayor of the Austrian metropolis declined to attend the grand luncheon, at which Prince and Princess Esterhazy entertained, after the memorial service, all the members of the congress. Lueger’s rejection of the hospitality of the Esterhazys was couched in a message to the effect that neither he nor his fellow members of the City Council of Vienna could accept the hospitality of a Hungarian Prince in whose house Haydn’s national hymn—namely-, “Gott erhalte Franz den Keiser” —is not allowed to be played. Fie also intimated that the city of Vienna was about to institute legal proceedings for the purpose of recovering -from Prince Esterhazy the remains of Haydn and their return from Eisenstadt to Vienna. The conflict—for such it is bound to be—cannot fail to bring to light a most extraordinary condition of affairs, namely, that in the tomb at Eisenstadt there is only the headless trunk of the composer. The head that was added to the remains some weeks after their arrival from Vienna was not that of Haydn, hut of a perfect stranger. The actual head of Haydn is to-day one of the treasures of the museum of the Imperial Society of Music of Vienna, and owing to the effect that it is suffering from the ravages of time, it is proposed to inter it in a magnificent tomb, to be erected as a memorial to the composer by the city of Vienna. The city naturally does ’ not relish the idea of having only- a part of Haydn’s remains in the tomb which it is about to erect, and has therefore instituted a series of investigations for the purpose of ascertaining by what means the Esterhazys could be compelled to surrender the rest of Haydn’s body- with the view to its reinterment along with the head. From this inquiry it would appear that when Haydn died, on the last day- of May. in 1809. during the French occupation of the city, he was buried very quietly in the Hundsturm cemetery;

that is to say, within the precincts of the metropolis. Only- a few intimate friends and a score of French officers were present at the funeral, at which none of the Austrian authorities were represented. A few days after the burial the coffin was disinterred and opened, and the head of the corpse cut off and taken away by two well-known scientists of the day, whose names are a matter of record. The wig was left in the coffin, which was duly returned to the ground. Some years later Prince Nicholas Esterhazy was led, by the enthusiasm aroufeed through the performance of “The Creation” at Eisenstadt, in the presence of a distinguished audience composed of the monarchs and statesmen assembled in the Austrian metropolis for the Congress of Vienna, to consider the question of removing the remains of the composer to Eisenstadt, with a view to rendering the latter a bourn of pilgrimage to the admirers of Haydn for all time. Now, according to the laws of the day, and which still remain in existence, bodies cannot be disinterred and removed from their tomb without the specific sanction of the municipality of the commune in which the grave is situated. But there is no evidence to show that Prince Nicholas Esterhazy- ever sought or received the permission of the city of Vienna, as required in law, for the removal of Haydn’s remains from the Hundsturm cemetery to Eisenstadt, and the fact has been established that the prinee managed to effect the transfer solely and entirely by reason of his great wealth and influence, which enabled him, so to speak, to disregard statutory ordinances. At the time of the removal—it was in 1820— it was found that the body was headless. The wig was there, but not the head which it had adorned in life. Prince Esterhazy made diligent inquiries, and later on a head was sent from Vienna to be added to the remains, as appears from a letter written by- the Rev. Father Franki, dated December 4. 1820, in which he reports to Prince Nicholas Esterhazy that he had quietly opened the coffin containing the remains of Haydn in the church at Eisenstadt and had added the head which he had received from Vienna. As there is the most authentic and indisputable evidence to show that the head still in the museum of the Imperial Society of Music at Vienna is that of Haydn, it naturally follows that the one added to his body at Eisenstadt is that of a stranger.