By Richard Scheinin --

First, Beethoven's hair shows up in San Jose. And now, his skull.

It's true. Fragments that appear to come from the great composer's skull have surfaced in the home of a Danville businessman and will be on indefinite loan to the Center for Beethoven Studies at San Jose State University.

For millions moved by Beethoven's music, it is not just an amazing event -- something like the bones of an apostle showing up after centuries. It also opens a new window into Beethoven's legendary medical problems, which helped shape his mind and music.

The center, which already owns a celebrated strand of Beethoven's hair, is to make the announcement today after coordinating six years of forensic tests, which seem to corroborate the authenticity of the bones.

``I am in awe,'' said Paul Kaufmann, a Danville businessman. His great-great-uncle, a Viennese doctor named Romeo Seligmann, secretly was given two large fragments and 11 smaller ones when the composer's remains were exhumed in 1863. (Beethoven died in Vienna in 1827.) Kaufmann said the bones will be loaned to the center ``in perpetuity.''

Starting today, they will be locked in a vault and made available for scientific research. The public will see them only in a still-to-be scheduled exhibit that will tell the story behind the bones and their scientific analysis.

``I have no doubt that they are Beethoven's skull bones,'' said William Meredith, director of the Beethoven center, who has helped carry the fragments to laboratories in North Carolina, Illinois and Germany.

``Whenever I hold them or work with them, they strike me mute for the whole rest of the day,'' he said. ``It's not a describable feeling.''

If the center's claims stand up to continued analysis, the bones may help validate the theory that lead poisoning was a reason for Beethoven's terrible suffering: his gastrointestinal problems, deafness and erratic behavior.

The composer himself prayed, in writing, that his doctor would explain it all after his death, so that the world wouldn't look on him as a misanthrope.

``People who revere not only the music he made but the maker of the music will now understand the suffering he underwent,'' said Russell Martin, whose popular book ``Beethoven's Hair'' told the story behind the lock at San Jose State. (The hair was donated to the center after coming up for sale at Sotheby's in London in 1994.) ``And it may well be that that very suffering'' brought about ``the range and profundity of his music.''

In 2000, the fragments were taken to a North Carolina laboratory, which was unable to link the bones to the hair. Another trip that year to the Argonne National Laboratory and Pfeiffer Treatment Center in Illinois, according to Kaufmann, linked the bones to Beethoven's hair and established that each contained similar, extraordinarily high levels of lead. Argonne will announce its findings in early December.

Lead poisoning ``could have killed him or exacerbated his illness,'' said Meredith. It could also have brought on his hearing loss, though Meredith suspects other causes. The composer began going deaf when he 27 or 28 and died at 56.

Meredith tells the story of the skull bones in an article in the new issue of the Beethoven Journal, published today by the American Beethoven Society and San Jose State.

He suspects that Kaufmann's ancestor Seligmann was given the fragments by Gerhard von Breuning, well-known to Beethoven buffs. As a 14-year-old, Breuning had visited Beethoven on his deathbed. After the 1863 exhumation, he was entrusted with Beethoven's skull and, according to Meredith, had reason to give the fragments to Seligmann, who was involved with an analysis of the bones. Years later, Breuning wrote that the composer's skull -- had it remained ``above the earth'' -- would have been of vast scientific interest.

After his death in 1892, Seligmann passed on the fragments to his son Albert, who later left them to a cousin, Ada Rosenthal, and her children, Thomas and Alma.

Alma had emigrated from Austria to the United States and married a German immigrant named George Kaufmann. Paul Kaufmann is their child. The family lived in Honolulu, where, when Paul was small, his mother would open the back door and call for him by whistling the first notes of Beethoven's Fifth.

Until 1990, the bones remained with Thomas Desmines -- Alma's brother -- in Vence, France. That year, with Desmines ailing, the Kaufmanns brought them to Danville. They stored them in a safe-deposit box until Martin phoned in 1999. He was researching his book and had learned about their inheritance. Meredith, already collaborating with Martin, was soon involved.

Kaufmann and Meredith took the bones to DNA researchers in Münster, Germany, earlier this year. With DNA technology rapidly advancing, the German researchers hope to pinpoint whether there may have been a genetic cause of Beethoven's deafness.

In the meantime, Kaufmann said, ``I am overwhelmed.''