Lead cellar

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Mummy in the lead cellar in Bremen

Bleikeller is the colloquial name of the east crypt of St. Petri Cathedral in Bremen . He is best known for the fact that some mummies were found here.

history

The mummies in the lead cellar were discovered by chance around 1698 by the journeymen of the organ builder Arp Schnitger , to whom the east crypt had been assigned as a work space. The discovery of the mummies was a sensation at the time, as there was increasing interest in the natural sciences .

At the beginning of 1709 the cathedral carpenter had to hand over his key, because he hardly got to work because of the numerous visitors. From then on, the key was given to the cathedral clerks , who were able to earn an allowance from visitors to the lead cellar into the 20th century.

When the east crypt was rented out as a storage room in 1822 in order to pay the fourth cathedral preacher with the income, the mummies moved into a Gothic chapel , which was then used as a coal cellar. After the cathedral was restored in the 1970s, these rooms were needed for the cathedral museum . Since 1984 the mummies can be viewed in an outbuilding of the cathedral.

The Bremen lead cellar is currently open to visitors from April to October.

mummification

The phenomenon of mummification has now been clarified. The bodies are naturally dehydrated, whereby the dehydration process overtakes the rudimentary decomposition process . This process is known from mostly elderly and lonely deceased, who are found in their homes three to four months after their neglected death. With some mummies in the lead cellar, winter also contributed to the mummification with the absence of carrion flies .

In Bremen, it was initially assumed for a long time that the lead stored in the basement for repairing the cathedral roof after storms had something to do with the mummification of the corpses stored there. There was also occasional talk of radioactivity from lead or a radioactive source under the cathedral. Measurements in the lead cellar have meanwhile proven that the name of the place where it was found does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the reasons for the mummification.

The roofer

For a long time, one of the mummies was viewed as a roofer who fell from the cathedral roof, was temporarily stored in the east crypt and forgotten there, until it was finally rediscovered mummified. Wilhelm Tacke, the author of the book “Bleikeller am Dom zu Bremen”, found the story to be inconsistent in the course of his research, as the alleged roofer had no visible injuries to the bone tissue. These and other mummies were then x-rayed in St. Joseph's pen , with the result that the “roofer” had a bullet in his back. So it is probably an officer who was shot in the Thirty Years' War or in one of the Swedish Wars that followed in Bremen .

Lord of Engelbrechten

Among the mummies is also the last Swedish administrator of the cathedral, Georg Bernhard von Engelbrechten . At his own request, he was buried in a stone sarcophagus in the Erskin's vault in the cathedral. His daughters took care of the funeral of his wife in the cathedral. When the Erskin vault was filled in at the beginning of the 19th century, the builder Gerhard Meyer moved both coffins to lead cellar No. 2. However, he removed the mummy of Herr von Engelbrechten from the stone sarcophagus, placed it in an open wooden coffin and disguised it as an “English Officer". He disguised his wife as a "Swedish Countess"; Since crowns were visible on the coffin handles , no one suspected. This reburial did not become public until the 1960s, when the stone sarcophagus broke on the front and a message was found in the empty sarcophagus in which Meyer confessed his "theft". The mummies had to be camouflaged because the Napoleonic government in Bremen banned burials in inner-city churches around 1811 .

More mummies

Among the mummies there are two other soldiers , Colonel Gregor von Winsen, and a cornet whose name is unknown . The alleged “student” could also be a mercenary whose hometown was either not known or who could not be transported there easily because of the war.

In the case of the "English Lady", the name "Lady Stanhope" mentioned in travel descriptions could not be verified. The noble family of the Stanhopes did not lose a member at that time.

Most recently, the 80-year-old day laborer Konrad Ehlers was buried in the lead cellar. In recent years he has been allowed to live in the cathedral monastery with free board and lodging on the condition that "he should be buried in the lead cellar after his death". When his death occurred, he was taken to the lead cellar where he was mummified.

Since, because of the Napoleonic burial rules, further mummification experiments with humans were no longer an option, they were carried out with animals instead. A monkey and a cat in lead cellar No. 3 still remind us of this today.

Gift for Goethe

Since the mummies have only been under glass since 1968, they are missing hair and a few fingers, which were taken as souvenirs . A finger of a lead cellar mummy and a child's hand are still in the Goethehaus in Weimar . The Bremen doctor Dr. Nicolaus Meyer , a friend of Goethe , sent them to the prince poet in order to lure him to Bremen. However, Goethe did not accept the offer and gave the relics to his son August. The child's hand probably comes from aristocratic children who, after succumbing to smallpox, were initially buried in the lead cellar, but after 1823 buried in local churchyards.

Sigmund Freud

The founder of psychoanalysis confessed slightly alienated after a visit to the lead cellar in 1909: "The whole thing remains a plaid for the thorough annihilation of people who have become superfluous by fire".

literature

Web links

Commons : Bleikeller  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.stpetridom.de/index.php?id=51
  2. ^ Sigmund Freud : travel journal . In: Gesammelte Werke, Vol. 8, Frankfurt 1973. Quoted here from Johann-Günther König : Bremen. Literary walks in Frankfurt am Main [a. a.]: Insel-Verl., 2000, p. 81.

Coordinates: 53 ° 4 ′ 31 ″  N , 8 ° 48 ′ 31 ″  E