Mozart’s gravedigger, Joseph Rothmayer, took this skull from its grave ten years after Mozart was buried with five others, in 1791. Rothmayer had attached a wire to the skull so he would know which was the composer’s (or decomposer’s, if you will…). In 1902, the skull came into the possession of the Mozarteum.
In 2006, the Mozarteum tested the skull’s DNA against relatives of Mozart, and results were inconclusive. The skull shows it received a blow about a year before death, which matches Mozart’s descriptions of headaches in the last year of his life.
For the Retronaut, what is important is not whether it is Mozart’s skull, but that it might be. Consider what music was generated inside it – and if not this one, then another that you and I would find very hard to tell apart.
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