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From: wood@eagle.sangamon.edu (Tom Wood)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Was Beethoven Black?
Date: 31 Jan 1994 17:59:39 GMT

Richard R Urena (urena@twain.ucs.umass.edu) wrote: > acb@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au (Andrew Bulhak) writes:
> > I just recalled that I once (heard|read) that once upon a time,
> >a (black nationalist|Black Studies professor|someone) put forward an
> >argument claiming that Ludwig von Beethoven was black.
> >
> > Has anybody heard of this? Who made this claim, and when? On
> >what was the argument based? How seriously was it taken?

> Beethoven was nicknamed "der schwarzer" (sp?) = "the black one".
> This appears to be the basis for that preposterous claim. I don't
> think it is taken seriously at all. This was discussed not long
> ago in rec.music.classical

> --

>   -=[                      Richard Urena                      ]=-

>   -=[                  urena@miser.umass.edu                  ]=-

This is an "accepted fact" in some circles. For example, note the following:

        [At Stanford University] a group of black and white
        students debated the racial ancestry of Beethoven. The
        black students CORRECTLY MAINTAINED [caps mine] he was
        a mulatto. Later, the white students defaced a poster of
        Beethoven by giving him stereotypical black features
        and posted it on the black student's door.
              
              Richard Delgado, _Campus Anti-Racism Rules: 
              Constitutional Narratives in Collision_
              85 N.W. U.L. Rev. 343 (1991)

ALthough Beethoven's African heritage is an "accepted fact" to some, it just isn't true. Beethoven' contemporaries noted his dark hair and swarthy complexion, but no one ever called him a Negro or mulatto. His genealogy is well-documented, and no records of his ancestors mention that any of them were African, either (they were mainly Dutch and Flemish).

On the other hand, George Bridgetower (1779-1860), a talented violinist for whom Beethoven wrote his "Kreutzer" sonata, was a mulatto, and was frequently noted as such (Beethoven even originally entitled the piece "Sonata mulattica").* But if Beethoven had been black or mulatto, someone would have noticed. Calling him "ein swartzer" just meant he had a darker than usual complexion; just as king Charles II of England was often described as a "black man" because of his rather Italian looks. Not that it would bother me if Beethoven had been black. But he just wasn't.

*New Grove Dictionary of Music, pp. 281-282.