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The Week in Germany: Culture

October 6, 2006

DNA Tests Ordered to Clear up Mystery of Schiller’s Skull

The Weimar Classics Foundation in Eastern Germany announced that DNA testing has been ordered to resolve a nearly 125-year-old mystery about the skull of the German Poet Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805).

Two heads are apparently not better than one: The German poet Schiller

The William Tell author and a leading figure of Classicism was originally buried in a mass grave after his death in 1805. According to his widow’s wishes, the plot was reopened in 1826 so that Schiller’s remains could be moved to an individual grave. By that time, however, the bodies in the grave had become intermingled, and Weimar’s Mayor Karl Leberecht Schwabe made the determination as to which skull belonged to Schiller using the best scientific means at his disposal; he laid the 23 recovered skulls on a table, pointed to the largest one and declared it to be Schiller’s.

Despite its dubious origins, the skull was accepted as Schiller’s for decades. Schiller’s friend and mentor Johann Wolfgang von Goethe claimed the skull shortly after it was exhumed and kept it on a blue velvet cushion underneath a bell jar in 1826 before it was placed in an oak coffin in Weimar’s ducal vault (Goethe was interred next to Schiller’s putative remains upon his own death in 1832).

The anatomist Hermann Welcker called the skull’s authenticity into question in 1883, and the confusion was compounded when another exhumation of the mass grave produced yet another skull said to be Schiller’s. That skull joined its predecessor in the Weimar vault in 1914.

The Weimar Classics Foundation hopes that the DNA test will end debate over the skulls, although it is entirely possible that neither of the skulls belonged to Schiller. Hellmut Seemann, president of the foundation, has admitted that the outcome of the tests could be even more embarrassing for the Weimar foundation. “The worst case would be if both skulls are Schiller’s,” he joked, as reported by dpa.

Schiller Shines at Annual Goethe Society Bash (from TWIG, Nov. 4, 2005)

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