Heart of Frédéric Chopin
The Polish composer Frédéric Chopin had a fear of being buried alive and requested that his physician Jean Cruveilhier perform an autopsy.
While Chopin's body was buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, his heart was immersed in alcohol (probably cognac) and placed in an oak container.
Before his death, one of Chopin's last requests was that his eldest sister, Ludwika Jędrzejewicz, take his heart to Poland to be buried at a local church.
During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, Chopin's heart was taken from the church by Nazi officials to the headquarters of SS commander Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski.
Speculation as to the reason for Chopin's premature death led to requests by scholars and scientists to conduct an analysis of the heart tissue.
[8] In early January 1850, Chopin's eldest sister, Ludwika Jędrzejewicz, returned from France by rail to Poland with her daughter and her brother's heart.
[4] Soviet music historian Igor Boelza wrote about her journey, explaining that Jędrzejewicz had hidden "a small oak trunk under her dress.
[7] In 1926, Archbishop Antoni Szlagowski said of Chopin: "All our past sings in him, all our slavery cries in him, the beating heart of the nation, the great king of sorrows.
A German priest by the name of Schulze requested that the occupying forces be allowed to take possession of Chopin's heart for safekeeping.
Bronisław Edward Sydow [pl], a member of the board of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, approached officials from the Provisional Government of National Unity to arrange a ceremonial return of the heart to the Holy Cross Church, which by that time had been mostly restored.
Recessed in the lid is a silver plate in the form of a heart, with an engraved inscription containing Frederic Chopin's birth and death dates.
Inside this box is a large crystal jar hermetically sealed, in which, in transparent alcohol, is Chopin's perfectly preserved heart.
[5]On 17 October 1945, the 96th anniversary of Chopin's death, the urn containing his heart was handed over to Leopold Petrzyk in Milanówek in St. Hedwig Church's courtyard.
A delegation including pianist Bolesław Woytowicz then transported it by car to Żelazowa Wola, the village where Chopin was born, via a meandering 90-kilometre (56 mi) route taking it through Grodzisk Mazowiecki and Błonie.
There, Wiktor Grodzicki [pl] gave a welcoming speech, saying in part: This heart first beat 135 years ago, in nearby Żelazowa Wola, and soon began to beat more vividly to the sound of a folk song resounding from peasant huts, and when not many years had passed, the same peasant, Masurian song, amplified a thousandfold by Chopin's heart and genius, was already resounding throughout Europe, and today, 96 years after that heart stopped beating – it resounds throughout the world, bearing witness to the immortal values of our song, our culture and our nation.
[5]After the heart arrived in Warsaw, an afternoon commemorative service at Holy Cross Church was broadcast to the nation, with both the president and the prime minister of Poland in attendance.
[9] A eulogy given by musicology professor Hieronim Feicht [pl] was described by the newspaper Życie Warszawy as "a profound analysis of the artistic values of Chopin's music".
In 2008, scholars requested that a DNA analysis of the heart's tissue be conducted to determine if Chopin had died from cystic fibrosis rather than tuberculosis.
