Which Skull Is Schiller's? Goethe, the Vault and the DNA Test

Friedrich Schiller died in Weimar on 9 May 1805. He was buried during the night of 11 to 12 May 1805 in the Kassengewölbe on the Jakobskirchhof, the churchyard of St. Jakob (Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Kassengewölbe). The Kassengewölbe was a shared vault for people of high standing who had no private family grave of their own.

The vault held many coffins, stacked over the years. The Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie records the same burial place. By 1826, according to the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, the remains inside could no longer be securely identified.

In March 1826 the Kassengewölbe was due to be cleared, and Weimar's mayor, Carl Leberecht Schwabe, set out to recover Schiller's remains before that happened. What he met inside was hard going: decayed coffins and bones that had mixed together over two decades. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar says that 23 skulls were recovered in searches that ended on 20 March 1826 (Der Friedrich-Schiller-Code). Schwabe's own account of the burial and the search survives and can be read on Wikisource_und_die_Aufsuchung_seiner_Gebeine_(1826)).

From those 23, Schwabe picked one large skull as Schiller's. He had no laboratory, so he did what he could: he compared the skulls with Schiller's death mask and listened to the recollections of people who had known the poet. A skeleton to go with the skull was assembled later that year, and in 1827 skull and skeleton were moved to the Fürstengruft.

People sometimes ask, in a German phrasing that turns up online, "Wer hat F. Schiller geklaut?", or who stole Schiller. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar's account describes no theft. The poet's remains were lost the slow way, among other people's coffins and bones in a shared vault, long before anyone went looking for them.

This is the part of the story most people have heard. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Schiller's friend and fellow poet in Weimar, had the selected skull brought to his house in 1826. He kept it there for a time, contemplated it, and wrote the poem later known as "Bei Betrachtung von Schillers Schädel", which translates as "On Contemplating Schiller's Skull" (Klassik Stiftung Weimar). The poem dates from 1826, but its familiar title was given to it later, as an article in PMLA on Goethe's poem on Schiller's skull explains.

Goethe believed the skull was Schiller's. That belief is what gives the scene its weight: a poet alone with what he took to be the head of the friend he had lost, turning it into verse. A German forum question on Gutefrage asks readers whether they would keep a dead friend's skull at home, and the reason the question exists at all is this moment in Weimar. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar holds both a sculpture and a painting that show Goethe with the skull.

If the image of a poet holding a skull feels familiar, it should. Hamlet does the same thing in the graveyard scene, which we cover in Alas, poor Yorick, and the old habit of keeping a skull nearby to think about death has its own history in what memento mori means. For Goethe, though, the skull on his table was not a symbol but his friend. The sad turn is that, as the 2008 tests showed, it was someone else.

The Fürstengruft is a mausoleum on Weimar's Historischer Friedhof, the historic cemetery. It was built from 1823 to 1828 on the orders of Grand Duke Carl August (Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Fürstengruft). The remains believed to be Schiller's arrived in 1827, while the building was still going up. Goethe's sarcophagus stands there too, and the two poets rest beside members of the ducal family.

For about eighty years, that was the end of the story. Schiller, as far as anyone knew, rested next to his friend.

Then, in 1911, the vault was opened again. August Friedrich von Froriep, director of the Anatomical Institute at the University of Tübingen, reopened the Kassengewölbe and between 28 August and 1 September 1911 excavated 63 skulls (Klassik Stiftung Weimar). He chose one of them as Schiller's after comparing it with death masks, casts and anatomical evidence. Froriep presented the skull publicly in 1912 and published his study in 1913 (Klassik Stiftung Weimar, August Friedrich von Froriep).

The remains attributed to this "Froriep skull" were placed in the Fürstengruft in 1913 or 1914; accounts give both years. For a time, Weimar had two competing "Schiller skulls" under one roof, each chosen by a serious man using the best comparison he had, and they could not both be right. As it turned out, neither was.

The question was finally put to science in the project "Der Friedrich-Schiller-Code", run by MDR and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar. It combined comparative DNA analysis with historical, anthropological and other investigations. The DNA comparison used material attributed to Schiller and samples from close relatives (Klassik Stiftung Weimar).

In 2008 the project reported its result: neither the older Fürstengruft skull nor the Froriep skull belonged to Friedrich Schiller. The DNA findings also showed that the bones in the sarcophagus came from several different people. The skeleton assembled in 1826 had been put together from more than one person (Klassik Stiftung Weimar). The sarcophagus is now empty, and Schiller's actual remains have not been identified.

What makes the Schwabe skull so persuasive is how well it seemed to fit. In 2009 the Klassik Stiftung Weimar made a 3D print of the Schwabe skull set under Schiller's death mask, and it shows how closely the two appeared to match (Klassik Stiftung Weimar, 100 Schätze). The DNA had already ruled it out the year before. A face can seem to fit a skull and still belong to someone else, which is worth keeping in mind whenever you see a facial reconstruction. For Schiller's 250th birthday in 2009, the foundation also presented a publication and an exhibition with the pointed title "Schillers Schädel. Physiognomie einer fixen Idee", or "Schiller's skull: the physiognomy of a fixed idea".

Once neither skull was Schiller's, the natural question was whose they were. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar notes that the Froriep skull has been associated with Luise von Göchhausen, a court lady of the Duchess Anna Amalia (Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Kassengewölbe Mausoleum). Historians have attributed the older Schwabe skull to another person as well. These are attributions, not certainties. Either way, the people in the Kassengewölbe were real men and women of Weimar, someone's ancestors, and the story belongs to them too.

That is the "Schiller skull mystery" as it stands. The mystery is no longer which of the two skulls is his, because the answer is neither. The open question is where Schiller himself is, and nobody has an answer to that yet.

The Kassengewölbe you can see today is not the vault Schwabe climbed into. The present structure is a 1927 reconstruction built over the original foundations, and the old underground vault was filled in after the site lost its use (Klassik Stiftung Weimar).

The Fürstengruft is open to visitors, and Schiller's empty sarcophagus still stands there beside Goethe's. The Klassik Stiftung Weimar lists these details for 2026 on its opening hours and prices page and its visitor FAQ:

Weimar's city site also describes the Fürstengruft for visitors planning a trip.

A few questions come up again and again, in English, German and Spanish. The short answers follow.

The facts fit in a few lines. Schiller was buried in a crowded vault in 1805, a mayor chose a skull in 1826, Goethe wrote a poem to it, an anatomist chose another in 1911, and DNA in 2008 said neither was his. What stays with people is less the science than the friendship: two poets placed side by side in the Fürstengruft, and one of them sitting with a skull, sure he was holding his friend. If you enjoy the stories of famous heads that went astray, Weimar has company, from Haydn's skull and Mozart's skull to Descartes's skull and Goya's skull.

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