gms | German Medical Science

Beethoven was already hard of hearing when he was just 28 years of age. During the last years of his life he was completely deaf – a thorny path indeed for the highly talented musician.

In 1801, at the age of 31 years, Beethoven described his symptoms as : "poor hearing " with high-frequency hearing loss and "a loss in speech comprehension", "tortuous ear noises" [tinnitus], "distortions" [recruitment] and "hypersensitivity" towards sound [hyperacusis].

Beethoven describes the characteristic, social isolation of the hard of hearing, the hearing loss as a disease, which in the truest sense of the word was a double-edged invisibility: Others could not see it, while the sufferer himself withdrew and made himself invisible. Beethoven withdrew himself away from the world of the hearing. A significant part of Beethoven’s very existence as a human being had disappeared beyond recall.

Beethoven entertained thoughts of suicide, and only his music saved him. The loss of his hearing and bold compositional works, in reality contradictions amongst themselves, but for Beethoven they could still be united together as one.