Would the Real Beethoven Please Stand Up!

Was Beethoven in fact a black man of African descent? Why was it necessary for Beethoven's likeness to undergo a transformation which, in my humble opinion, is so readily apparent when an array of sketches and paintings are juxtaposed as they are here?

Why was it necessary for artists and historians to systematically remove any hint of the possibility that Beethoven might have been, or was in fact, a black man?

Why was it imperative that his image go from having distinctly Negroid/African features to some kind of stylized Aryan ideal?