May My Body Never Decompose

Incorruptibility – the failure of a dead body to decompose – Is usually said to be a sign of sainthood. But the reverse may be said about the remains of Count Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz. A man of immoderate passions, the count lived from 1651 to 1702. He had 11 legitimate offspring, and was said to have fathered up to 40 other children by exercising his drort de seigneur over local newlyweds, a privilege that came with his position.

                In 1690 the count murdered a shepherd from nearby Bucwitz, because the young man’s bride rejected his advances. The widow accused him in court at Neustadt, but as a feudal landlord, he avoided a murder conviction by making a ‘purification oath’. Von Kalhbutz swore, ‘If I am the murderer, then may the Lord never let my body decompose.’ Written records exist of the accusation and trial, but the oath has been passed down only verbally and cannot be verified.

After he died von Kahlbutz’s coffin was placed in the crypt of the thirteenth-century church in the village of Kampehl in Germany. In 1794 a new estate owner refurbished the church decided to bury the coffins from the crypt in the church grounds. When their contents were checked, one of the bodies was found to have become mummified, It was assumed to be von Kahlbutz, and church records seemed to support this.

                Von Kahlbutz’s remains were examined several times between 1895 and 1983. The corpse had not been embalmed, the internal organs shoed no trace of poisons or drugs that might have preserved the body, nor were there any signs of gases or chemicals in the crypt that might have done so. One theory is that the count may have died of a degenerative condition, such as cancer, and the lack f nutrients surviving in his body corpse to become dry and leathery.

                Folklore has it that von Kahlbutz’s ghost walked abroad and committed at least one more murder in 1806, but there have been no sightings for almost two centuries The mummy, which is still on display today, weighs 6 kilograms, a mere shadow of the count’s living weight of about 70 kilograms.