Anna Catharina Bischoff

Anna Catharina Bischoff (23 March 1719 – 30 August 1787), also known as the "Lady (or mummy) of the Barfüsser Church" was the wife of the pastor Lucas Gernler.

[1] In 1975, the Barfüsser Church underwent a thorough renovation, during which the archaeological department of the city of Basel excavated and documented hundreds of burial sites.

On 20 October 1975, workers discovered a brick-walled grave chamber in front of the choir, containing two well-preserved coffins sitting on a pile of bones.

A first examination in 1976 by anthropologist Bruno Kaufmann revealed that Mercury sulfide (found in the whole body, especially in the lungs), prevented decay and was responsible for the mummification.

Computer tomography revealed atherosclerosis of the abdominal aorta and gallstones, pointing at a diet consisting mainly of carbohydrates and fatty meat.

During her lifetime, the woman had lost all the teeth in her upper jaw due to a sugary diet and oral hygiene neglect; her lower incisors and canines, although decayed, were preserved.

Here rests with God the honorable and virtuous Catharina Gyssendorfferin, housemistress, wife of Isaak Byschoff, the former Hospital Master.

Blendinger's description of the "small female corpse" coincides with the mummy of Anna Catharina Bischoff exhumed in 1975 for the second time.

The team of genealogists of Basel's citizen-researchers undertook this painstaking task and drew a family tree of the female line with information drawn from church and marriage records and internet groups.

From her, Marie-Louise Gamma and Diana Gysin were able to reconstruct an uninterrupted female line over 15 generations, from the beginning of the 16th century to Rosemary Probst-Ryhiner in the present.

[8][9] A World News BBC team travelled to the media event in Basel's Natural History Museum in January 2018 to report on the forebear of the prominent politician.

After their wedding in 1738 in Basel, the couple returned to Strasbourg, where Anna Catherina gave birth to seven children, of which only two daughters survived past childhood.

Augusta remained single and the other, Anna Katharina Gernler (1739–1776), married the German historian and diplomat Christian Friedrich Pfeffel von Kriegelstein.

In 1781, Lucas Gernler died from a stroke aged 77, leaving behind countless letters and a church hymnal; a year later, Anna Catharina, then 62, moved to Basel.