Kassengewölbe
About This Site
This is where Schiller was actually buried, and almost nobody comes. It is a small vault on the Jakobskirchhof that opens two days a year, and it has a better claim on the fact of his burial than the famous mausoleum that gets the visitors.
A tax official's grave, bought by the court, 1712–1742
A treasury official had the vault built for his own family around 1712/13 — a chamber sunk into the churchyard with a small pavilion over it. Thirty years later the court's burial office bought it, which is where the name comes from, and began using it for a particular kind of person: those who ranked too high for a common grave and owned no plot of their own. It was, in other words, the answer to an administrative problem rather than a monument to anybody.
The night of 11 May 1805
Schiller's position when he died was exactly the one the vault existed for. He was carried down here in the small hours between the 11th and the 12th of May, with no ceremony at all — buried at night, in a borrowed grave, by a town that would spend the next two centuries claiming him. Twenty-two years later the town came back for him, installed him on the hill beside Goethe, and told itself that story until genetic testing established that the bones it had moved belonged to somebody else.
Two days a year
The pavilion standing over the vault today is a reconstruction of 1927 on the original foundations, and it is unlocked on 9 May and 10 November, from eleven to two. Entry is free. If the Fürstengruft is where Weimar decided to be seen honouring its writers, this is the ground where one of them was actually put — and going to both, in that order, is the most instructive hour the city offers.
Questions visitors ask
- Is this where Schiller was actually buried?
- Yes. He was carried here in the small hours between 11 and 12 May 1805 and buried without ceremony, in a borrowed grave. In 1827 the town moved remains from here to the Fürstengruft, believing them to be his; genetic testing has since shown they belong to someone else.
- Can I visit?
- The vault is unlocked only two days a year, 9 May and 10 November, from eleven to two. Entry is free.
- How old is the vault?
- A treasury official had it built for his own family around 1712/13; the court's burial office bought it around 1742, which is where the name Kassengewölbe comes from. The pavilion standing over it today is a 1927 reconstruction on the original foundations.
Connected Historical Figures
writer • poet • historian
His actual burial, in the night of 11–12 May 1805, in a vault the court kept for people of rank without a grave.
Visit Information
Free
Open on 9 May and 10 November only, 11:00–14:00
Am Jakobskirchhof, 99423 Weimar
50.9832, 11.3282
In Weimar's history
Historical periods
The unceremonious end of the period's second name.
For roughly sixty years a duchy of a few thousand people held the centre of German literature, because its ruler kept inviting writers to live there and then gave them jobs. That is the whole mechanism, and it ran from Goethe's arrival in 1775 to his death in 1832.
In Weimar's history
He died in the study on the top floor of his own house, three years after buying it, and was buried in the night of 11–12 May in a vault the court kept for people of rank who had no grave of their own.
Where he was actually buried, in the night of 11–12 May 1805.