Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz

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Mummy of the knight Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz

Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz (* 6. March 1651 in Kampehl , Mark Brandenburg , † 3. November 1702 ibid ), (father: Balzer of Kalebutz, Mother: Rixa von der Schulenburg ) in different spelling as Christian Friedrich von Kalebuz was known, a nobleman from Brandenburg who achieved fame above all for the fact that his corpse did not decompose without using artificial mummification processes . The mummified corpse is a tourist attraction.

background

Complete view of the mummy of Kahlbutz
Kampehl village church

For his services as a cornet in the regiment of the "general of the cavalry" Prince Frederick II. Of Hesse-Homburg in the Battle of Fehrbellin against Sweden in 1675 Kahlbutz received from the Brandenburg Elector Friedrich Wilhelm the estate Kampehl in Neustadt an der Dosse as a hereditary fief . The often misleading term “knight” refers to his membership of the Brandenburg knighthood.

Knight Kahlbutz died of a hemorrhage at the age of 52 and was buried in a double coffin in the patronage crypt. The last von Kahlbutz died in 1783, which is why the estate subsequently changed hands several times. In 1794, the Kampehl church was renovated and, as usual, the coffins were to be buried in the crypt annex. When the coffins were opened, it turned out that only one corpse of the knight Kahlbutz had not decayed. Kahlbutz was buried with two cannonballs that he brought from the Battle of Fehrbellin . These can still be seen there.

family

Kahlbutz had been married to Margarete von Rohr († 1724), a member of the long-established Brandenburg noble family von Rohr , with whom he had eleven children, since at least 1682 .

The following cannot be classified in the order of birth:

Saga and tales

The vernacular found an explanation for the mummification of the knight Kahlbutz and saw in it God's just punishment for a murder. The forecast for Kahlbutz was the murder of her fiancé, the shepherd Pickert from the neighboring Bückwitz accused in 1690 by his maid Maria Leppin. The deed happened at Lake Bückwitz. The reason was that he had killed the shepherd in revenge because the maid had denied the knight the " right of the first night ". He also argued with Pickert about the size of the pasture. In the subsequent criminal trial in Dreetz near Neustadt, however, Kahlbutz was acquitted on the basis of his own testimony on oath, as there were no witnesses. Knight Kahlbutz is said to have sworn before the court: "If I was the murderer, God willing, my corpse should never rot."

Over the years, the mummy has been given more haunted and other mysterious stories. From the time of the Napoleonic occupation in 1806 there are stories about jokes by the French occupiers. The mummy is said to have been used by French soldiers as a "night watch". Theodor Fontane distantly writes down the legend that Napoleon's soldiers once wanted to crucify the mummy on the church altar for fun. When they tried to nail down the left hand, it jumped back to its starting position and slapped a soldier who immediately died of shock.

Kahlbutz is said to have killed the shepherd Pickert at the Schwenzebrücke on Lake Bückwitz. Fontane takes up the following story about this: Strollers were attacked by an invisible load when they crossed the Schwenzebrücke around midnight . The more they wanted to part with the burden, the heavier it became. Only when they were far enough away from the area in which the murder was supposed to have occurred did this burden let go. It is also said that horses at midnight in the same place for inexplicable reasons only struggled, shied or simply stopped.

In 1806 a French officer is said to have taken the mummy out of the coffin, verbally abused and spat at him and put it back into the coffin the wrong way round. He then asked him if he was really haunted, he should visit him at midnight in his quarters. The next day the officer is said to have been found dead in his quarters with his neck twisted 180 degrees. Doors and windows are said to have been locked from the inside so that entry from the outside was not possible. The French soldiers took out their anger on the villagers, who protested their innocence in the murder. A short time later there were court proceedings in Neustadt, in which the process was dropped because no perpetrator was possible because of the locked doors.

Incidentally, all kinds of jokes were practiced with this mummy in the village, so it was used for various pranks at weddings . In 1913 she was placed in the bridal bed of a newlywed bride. At the beginning of the 20th century it was exhibited in a waiting room of a Neustadt doctor for several years and caused fainting attacks in patients. It is said to have been placed on the roof of the school by schoolboys.

Hardly anything remained of the clothing in which Kahlbutz was buried. Only his boots, a death cap and a few tatters of ribbons were preserved. In the 1930s, students broke into the crypt, stole the boots and his armor that was on display there. A few weeks later, they returned a boot and said that the beer they drank from the boot was delicious.

Question

With the apparently not embalmed corpse of the knight, numerous investigations have already been carried out, which should clarify why the natural decomposition process did not start especially with this corpse. Both Rudolf Virchow and Ferdinand Sauerbruch dealt with the knight's corpse, and the Berlin Charité also unsuccessfully examined Knight Kahlbutz in the 1980s. Why Kahlbutz did not decompose remains unexplained. However, there are a few cases where the natural decomposition process has similarly failed.

Natural mummification

The natural decomposition process of a corpse can be stopped or delayed by some circumstances, whereby the corpse dries out and "leathered", it becomes a mummy . In such a natural mummification process, the nature of the air and the soil are primarily to be observed. Absolute dryness, slight radioactivity or certain "evaporation from the ground" can have a beneficial effect here, as can hermetically sealed coffins or constantly moving, very dry air. Likewise, the constant intake of toxic medication during one's lifetime - in very small amounts that are harmless to the patient - can promote natural mummification. Numerous such poisons and active substances can hardly be detected in retrospect, as many of the fatty substances in a mummy change or evaporate over time. A closure by moisture leads to wax corpse .

Similar mummified human remains are found several times. The leather Franzl in Upper Austria remained mummified in his crypt and gave rise to different interpretations. The mummified remains of the Holy Vogts are kept in the church of St. Peter in Sinzig . The three Waldhausen mummies are in the collegiate church of Waldhausen in Upper Austria . Probably the most famous place with hundreds of mummified corpses, which are not only in coffins, but also hang on the walls, is the Capuchin Crypt (Palermo) .

Current state of research

It is believed that Ritter Kahlbutz suffered from an illness that caused his body to become very wasted. This may relate in particular cancer , muscular dystrophy or tuberculosis in question. Some facts speak for tuberculosis as Kahlbutz's disease, which have been handed down and which seem to confirm the clinical picture. According to tradition, Knight Kahlbutz is said to have "suffocated in his own blood". This strongly suggests that Kahlbutz had a hemorrhage shortly before his death, which can occur as a result of severe lung diseases ( lung cancer or tuberculosis). Kahlbutz was buried in a double oak coffin. The already started decomposition of the corpse was probably prevented by the locked coffin, its own exhalations and the lack of breeding ground for the extremely emaciated corpse. Due to the construction of the crypt and the coffin, large amounts of air could blow past the corpse, transporting enough water away from it and thus drying out the corpse. This presumably led to natural mummification through "leathering". In addition, due to the dry environment and the construction of the coffin, hardly any insects reached the corpse, so they could not decompose it any further.

Others

  • The story of the “leather knight” was taken up artistically and is the theme of the four-part television series Spuk aus der Gruft from 1997.
  • The Illmersdorf mummies, which are also located in Brandenburg, were created without artificial mummification processes.

literature

Trivia

  • The story of the “leather knight” served as a template for Dorothea Flechsig's children's book: Knight Kahlbutz . Glückschuh Verlag, ISBN 978-3-943030-40-2 .

Web links

Commons : Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ernst Heinrich Kneschke : New general German nobility lexicon . Volume 4, Leipzig 1863, p. 621.
  2. ^ A b Association for the History of the Mark Brandenburg (ed.): Märkische Forschungen , Volume 2, Berlin 1843, p. 382.
  3. ^ Anton Balthasar König : Biographical Lexicon of All Heroes and Military Persons , Volume 2, Arnold Wever, Berlin 1789, p. 219 . Reprint: LTR, Starnberg 1989, ISBN 3-88706-305-8 .
  4. ^ Anton Balthasar König: Biographical Lexicon of All Heroes and Military Persons , Volume 2, Arnold Wever, Berlin 1789, p. 220 . Reprint: LTR, Starnberg 1989, ISBN 3-88706-305-8 .
  5. ↑ George Adalbert von Mülverstedt , Ed .: Collection of marriage foundations and personal commemorative letters of the knightly families of the provinces of Saxony, Brandenburg, Pomerania and Prussia . 360 p., Magdeburg 1863 (p. 90). Online at Google Books
  6. ↑ Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Areligen Häuser A, Justus Perthes , Gotha 1904, p. 699.
  7. ↑ But a mummy alone does not make a legend ( Memento from February 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ a b Mark Benecke: On the trail of the perpetrator. This is how modern criminal biology works . ISBN 3-404-60562-4
  9. ^ AC Aufderheide: The geography of mummies . In: AC Aufderheide (Ed.): The Scientific Study of Mummies . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003, p. 170.
personal data
SURNAME Kahlbutz, Christian Friedrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Knight Kahlbutz; Knight of Kahlbutz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian knight
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1651
PLACE OF BIRTH Kampehl , Brandenburg
DATE OF DEATH November 3, 1702
Place of death Kampehl , Brandenburg