Franz Schubert’s cause of death shows mercury in the hair

The love life of the composer Franz Schubert is still a present topic. Sometimes the focus is on the unfulfilled love, for example to his student Kartesse Karoline Esterhazy. A liaison with the Zofe Pepi Pöcklhofer is documented as the actual love affair and contacts in the red light milieu also seem to have been proven. In addition, Schubert is likely to have had homosexual tendencies, and again and again in letters from the code “young peacocks”, with which male lovers were meant. Not that sexual orientation would have a relevance, except that he had to live it out secretly.