A painted child's skull from 1814 has emerged in the archive of the University of Jena.
He comes from the district of Miesbach, as can be seen from the inscription on the skull.
Schliersee - “The honorable Virgin Maria Ehamin, Bauer's daughter from Langer-Bauer, died in Fischhausen on February 25, 1814. The last hour was mine at 12 o'clock in the evening. Nobody knows when the being will come. My life was only thirteen years. 1822. ”, it says on the five-piece. Despite the lack of anatomical and pathological peculiarities, the skull is unique: a painted wreath of flowers twines from the front sides to the upper back of the head. In the dark eye sockets, remnants of color pigments point to a formerly shimmering gold painting.
The find in Schliersee became known because of the inscription "Fischhausen". The local homeland researcher Gerhard Wittich has now been able to decipher the story after he had scoured the local parish register with 10,000 entries. The 92-year-old found what he was looking for with the card from Josef Eham, the father of the child who died of typhus at the age of 13. The girl's date of birth, July 31, 1800, is noted there, which corresponds to the age. The exhumation of the skull that followed eight years after the burial was explained by the researcher Ulrike Lötzsch, who works at the Institute for Anatomy at the Jena University Hospital, with a procedure that was sometimes common in Bavaria's Alpine region: “A few years after the burial, the remaining bones were exhumed , cleaned,bleached in the sun and then exhibited in ossuary. "
In the future, the skull will be exhibited in Jena. It could have entered the university collection via a holiday home from the Jena company Schott in Schliersee.