Chopin: My Heart Went Home to Warsaw Without Me
Frédéric Chopin died in Paris on 17 October 1849, and his body is still buried there at Père Lachaise. His heart was taken out during the autopsy he had asked his own doctor to perform. It was dropped into alcohol — probably cognac — and sealed in a crystal jar. Early in 1850 his eldest sister, Ludwika Jędrzejewicz, carried that jar to Warsaw hidden under her clothes, past the guards at the border. In 1879 the heart was walled into a pillar of Holy Cross Church in Warsaw, where it still is; in 1944 the German occupiers took it, and returned it. Chopin's terror of being buried alive is the reported reason he asked for the removal, and in 2014 Polish scientists allowed to inspect the unopened jar reported an enlarged heart with tuberculosis lesions, sitting in a liquid that looked like cognac. 123
References
- 1Heart of Frédéric Chopin, Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
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