Editing Franz Schubert (section)

===Final illness and death===
[[File:Kalvarienbergkirche Hernals 9.JPG|thumb|Memorial at the Kalvarienberg Church, [[Hernals]]]]
[[File:Schubert Franz.jpg|thumb|The site of Schubert's first tomb at [[Währing]]]]

In the midst of this creative activity, his health deteriorated. By the late 1820s, Schubert's health was failing and he confided to some friends that he feared that he was near death. In the late summer of 1828, he saw the physician Ernst Rinna, who may have confirmed Schubert's suspicions that he was ill beyond cure and likely to die soon.<ref name=Newbould275/> Some of his symptoms matched those of [[mercury poisoning]] ([[mercury (element)|mercury]] was then a common treatment for syphilis, again suggesting that Schubert suffered from it).<ref name="Gibbs168">[[#GibbsLife|Gibbs (2000)]], pp. 168–169</ref> At the beginning of November, he again fell ill, experiencing headaches, fever, swollen joints, and vomiting. He was generally unable to retain solid food and his condition worsened. Five days before Schubert's death, his friend the violinist [[Karl Holz (violinist)|Karl Holz]] and his string quartet visited to play for him. The last musical work he had wished to hear was Beethoven's [[String Quartet No. 14 (Beethoven)|String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131]]; Holz commented: "The King of Harmony has sent the King of Song a friendly bidding to the crossing".<ref>[[#Memoirs|Deutsche (1998)]], p. 300</ref>

Schubert died in Vienna, aged 31, on 19 November 1828, at the apartment of his brother Ferdinand. The cause of his death was officially diagnosed as typhoid fever, though other theories have been proposed, including the [[Syphilis#Tertiary|tertiary stage of syphilis]].<ref name=Newbould275>[[#Newbould|Newbould (1999)]], p. 275.</ref> Although there are accounts by his friends that indirectly imply that he had contracted syphilis earlier, the symptoms of his final illness do not correspond with tertiary syphilis. Six weeks before his death, he walked 68 km (42 miles) in three days, ruling out musculoskeletal syphilis. In the months before his death, he composed his last work, "[[Der Hirt auf dem Felsen]]", making [[neurosyphilis]] unlikely. Meningovascular syphilis is also unlikely because it presents a progressive stroke-like picture, and Schubert had no neurological manifestation until his final delirium, which started only two days before his death. 
Lastly, his final illness was characterized by gastrointestinal symptoms (namely vomiting). These issues all led Robert L. Rold to argue that (although he believed Schubert had syphilis), the fatal final illness was a gastrointestinal one such as [[salmonella]] or indeed typhoid fever. Rold also pointed out that when Schubert was in his final illness, his close friend Schober avoided visiting him "out of fear of contagion". Yet Schober had known of his earlier possible syphilis and had never avoided Schubert in the past.<ref>{{Cite journal |title=Schubert and Syphilis |journal=[[Journal of Medical Biography]] |url=https://doi.org/10.1177/096777209500300409 |last=Rold |first=Robert L. |year=1995 |issue=4 |volume=3 |pages=232–235|doi=10.1177/096777209500300409 |pmid=11616366 }}</ref> Eva M. Cybulska goes further and says that Schubert's syphilis is a conjecture. His multi-system signs and symptoms, she says, could point at a number of different illness such as [[leukaemia]], [[anaemia]], or [[Hashimoto's thyroiditis]], and that many tell-tale signs of syphilis — [[chancre]], mucous plaques, rash on the thorax, pupil abnormality, [[dysgraphia]] — were absent. She argues that the syphilis diagnosis originated with Schubert's biographer Otto Deutsch in 1907, based on the aforementioned indirect references by his friends, and uncritically repeated ever since.<ref>{{Cite journal |title=The Myth of Schubert's Syphilis: A Critical Approach |journal=[[Music and Medicine]] |url=https://mmd.iammonline.com/index.php/musmed/article/download/647/pdf/0 |last=Cybulska |first=Eva Maria |year=2019 |issue=1 |volume=11 |pages=44–47|doi=10.47513/mmd.v11i1.647 |s2cid=151254154 }}</ref>

Schubert was buried, at his own request, near the grave of Beethoven, whom he had admired all his life, in the village cemetery of [[Währing]] on the edge of the [[Vienna Woods]].<ref name="Duncan79" /> A year earlier he had served as a torchbearer at [[Death of Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven's funeral]].
In 1872, [[Schubert Monument, Vienna|a memorial to Franz Schubert]] was erected in Vienna's [[Stadtpark, Vienna|Stadtpark]].<ref name="Duncan79">[[#Duncan|Duncan (1905)]], pp. 79–80</ref> In 1888, both Schubert's and Beethoven's graves were moved to the [[Zentralfriedhof]] where they are next to the later graves of [[Johann Strauss II]] and Johannes Brahms.<ref name="Gibbs197">[[#GibbsLife|Gibbs (2000)]], p. 197</ref> [[Anton Bruckner]] was present at both exhumations, and he reached into both coffins and held the revered skulls in his hands.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/apr/01/sex-death-dissonance-anton-bruckner-concertgebouw-orchestra Tom Service, "Sex, death and dissonance: the strange, obsessive world of Anton Bruckner", ''The Guardian'', 1 April 2014]. Retrieved 11 August 2020</ref> The cemetery in Währing was converted into a park in 1925, called the Schubert Park, and his former grave site was marked by a bust. His epitaph, written by his friend, the poet [[Franz Grillparzer]], reads: ''Die Tonkunst begrub hier einen reichen Besitz, aber noch viel schönere Hoffnungen'' ("The art of music has here interred a precious treasure, but yet far fairer hopes").