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Case file s1814 · Literature and art · 1805
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1805
Friedrich Schiller: Portrait of Friedrich Schillerlabel QS:Len,"Portrait of Friedrich Schiller"label QS:Lfr,"Portrait de Friedrich Schiller"
Friedrich Schiller. Anton Graff. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
9 May 1805
Place
Weimar, Germany
Field
poet and playwright · Literature and writing on the timeline
Legal tradition
German states (Saxe-Weimar) · Civil law
Historical event
The 1826 exhumation to build Schiller a proper tomb
Religion
Friedrich Schiller: Protestant and Anglican (recorded as Lutheranism on Wikidata)
Member of
Academy of Science for Public Utility, Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (Wikidata)
Literature and artSecret children and false heirsBodies, bones and burialsIndustry and empireEuropeGermany

Weimar buried a skull as Friedrich Schiller's in 1827; DNA tests in 2008 showed it and the skeleton were not his

Schiller died on 9 May 1805 and was buried three days later in the Kassengewölbe, a common vault in Weimar's Jacobs cemetery. In 1826 Mayor Carl Leberecht Schwabe exhumed the vault with labourers and found 23 skulls (27 in one account). He took them home and judged the largest to be Schiller's. In 1827 that skull and a skeleton assumed to match were placed in the Fürstengruft; Goethe's remains joined them in 1832. According to Wikipedia, Goethe kept the skull privately before this†. In 1911 researcher August von Froriep opened the mass grave and chose another skull, placed in the Fürstengruft in 1914; it was later identified as Luise von Göchhausen's. In 2006 samples were taken for a study called The Friedrich Schiller Code, run by MDR television, the Foundation of Weimar Classics and an international team. Comparison samples came from two of Schiller's sisters and two of his sons. Results released in May 2008 showed none of the skulls matched and the skeleton held bones of several people. The foundation said it believes the remains are still in the Jacobs cemetery and would not search further. Schiller's body has not been identified.

What the law took from it

A body buried without a marked grave cannot be reclaimed later, whatever honor is planned for it.

Sources
  1. NBC NewsPress
  2. thelocal.dePress
  3. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Weimar buried a skull as Friedrich Schiller's in 1827; DNA tests in 2008 showed it and the skeleton were not his,” story s1814, https://www.celebrity.estate/friedrich-schiller-1805, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Literature and artSecret children and false heirsBodies, bones and burialsIndustry and empireEuropeCivil lawGermany