Dom St Blasii

Lower Saxony & Bremen


The tomb of Heinrich der Löwe, the powerful duke who made Braunschweig his capital in the 12th century, lies alongside that of his wife Mathilde in the crypt of Dom St Blasii. The Nazis decided to co-opt his image and in 1935 exhumed Heinrich's tomb to conduct an ‘archaeological investigation’. The corpse found inside had one short leg and dark hair, which threw the master-race propagandists into a spin and raised doubt as to whether it’s really Heinrich entombed here.


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