She was a young, pretty and very wealthy, Danish, a widow after a seemingly successful marriage to her somewhat older cousin, the rich ship-owner and merchant Andreas Bodenhoff.
However, she wasn't only wealthy, but also DEAD: Giertrud Birgitte Bodenhoff (1779-1798).
The grave of Giertrud Birgitte Bodenhoff on the beautiful and stylish cemetery in Copenhagen, Assistens Kirkegården, that also holds Hans Christian Andersen
Such a rich and elaborate grave wasn't for everyone, but Giertrud really was very wealthy. Also, she was out of a well-connected family. One might assume that that ought to have been her guarantee of a peaceful and undisturbed resting place, but no, on the contrary. Not long after her burial, there were rumors that she hadn't been dead when she was interred, but only in some kind of coma. The doctors had treated her with some heavy stuff, morphine and the like when she had a boil inside one of her ears. That in itself is dangerous, and when the patient is overdosed it may even be lethal. Anyway, Giertrud was pronounced dead by her doctors and buried in her splendid grave. As it is, one of her three half-brothers wasn't too sure that she really had died, and he said: "I don't understand, why my sister is laid to rest, 17 years old and with red cheeks."
How did the rumor of Giertrud not being dead start? Well, a grave digger by the name of Christian Meisling made a confession when he lay dying: He and some of his colleagues had not only digged graves out, but had also been grave-robbers. They knew that this young and rich widow had been laid into her coffin, adorned with jewelry which any poor, pennyless grave digger would want to get his hands on, so they had dug her up. To their extreme horror, the "dead" woman woke up, when they pulled at her ear rings. When she realized what was going on, she begged them to save her life, offering them a lot of money, but they choose to kill her and close the grave upon her once more.
Had Giertrud and her family known this she might have saved herself even before the grave robbers found and murdered her, but they didn't, so this time she stayed dead, so to speak. Actually, for many years, until one of her relatives had her grave opened once more as he wanted to check up on what had happened to her. Even at the time of the death of Giertrud it was well-known that the grave-diggers had robbed several corpses, as some of them had been found in the bushes or on the ground. The dead body of one totally nude, young man, who was found robbed of everything in the bushes by his grave, made it obvious that there must be foul play on the cemetery.
Viggo Starcke
When the grave of Giertrud was opened in 1953 by her relative, the Danish politican, Viggo Starcke, he found evidence that she had moved - or had been moved - after her interment. However, this observation wasn't conclusive, as some expert said that it happened quite often that corpses moved when their coffin was moved.
So, WHAT happened to the rich, young widow, who even knew how to run the business she had inherited from her dead husband? I would say that that still is an open question, but I, for one, believe the grave-digger, Mr. Christian Meisling, when he said that he and his colleagues killed her.
https://cemeteriesroute.eu/poi-details.aspx?t=2786&p=15521
https://slaegtsbibliotek.dk/920461.pdf
Wikipedia
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