Everytime I come across this bullshit I want to say: U need to acquire a
REASONING MIND, and also learn how to GOOGLE.
The Internet is riddled with so-called pro-life web sites that repeat this
ridiculous story, and incidentally change factual premises with wanton
abandon. Here's another version.
'If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three of whom
were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded (all because she had
syphilis), would you recommend that she have an abortion? Then you would
have killed Beethoven.'
This rendering of the legend demotes the great composer from fifth to ninth
in the birth order, raises the number born deaf to three and the number born
blind to two, and gives syphilis to the mother instead of the father. Most
of the forty-three websites I found when searching for versions of the story
attribute it not to Maurice Baring but to a certain Professor L. R. Agnew
at UCLA Medical School, who is said to have put the dilemma to his students
and to have told them, 'Congratulations, you have just murdered Beethoven.'
We might charitably give L. R. Agnew the benefit of doubting his existence -
it is amazing how these urban legends sprout. I cannot discover whether it
was Baring who originated the legend, or whether it was invented earlier.
For invented it certainly was. It is completely false. The truth is that
Ludwig van Beethoven was neither the ninth child nor the fifth child of his
parents. He was the eldest - strictly the number two, but his elder sibling
died in infancy, as was common in those days, and was not, so far as is
known, blind or deaf or dumb or mentally
retarded. There is no evidence that either of his parents had syphilis,
although it is true that his mother eventually died of tuberculosis. There
was a lot of it about at the time.
His mother did not have syphilis. She did contract tuberculosis, but not
until Beethoven was nearly 20 years old. Beethoven's parents had 5 children
after him. Casper Anton Carl, Nikolaus Johann, Anna-Maria Franziska, Franz
Georg, and Maria Margareth Josepha. Anna-Maria and Franz Georg both died
only days after their birth. None of the children were known to be blind,
deaf or mentally retarded. None were ever in a mental institution.
