Death of Ludwig Van Beethoven - Funeral and Burial

Funeral and Burial

The funeral was held on 29 March 1827 at the parish church in Alsergrund, and he was buried in the Währing cemetery, northwest of Vienna. Many thousands of citizens lined the streets for the funeral procession. As with all crowds, estimates vary, with witnesses reporting anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 onlookers. Theaters were closed, and many notable artists participated in the funeral procession as pallbearers or torch bearers, including Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Franz Grillparzer, Carl Czerny, and Franz Schubert.

In the days following the funeral, one of the grave-diggers was reportedly offered a substantial sum of money to remove the head from the grave. As a result, Beethoven's friends had a watch put on the grave.

In 1863 Beethoven's body (and also that of Schubert, who was buried nearby) was exhumed, studied and reburied, in proceedings paid for by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. At that time, fragments from the back of his skull, which had been separated during the autopsy, were acquired by the Austrian doctor Romeo Seligmann, which are also now in the Center for Beethoven Studies. His remains were moved in 1888 to the Zentralfriedhof.