We have journeyed in Bach's footsteps only as far as his first marriage on this trip, but we did help mark the anniversary of his death on our first evening in Eisenach at the wonderful Baroque concert in the Nikolikirche. What's more, every day when we walked from the Hotel Krone into town we passed the Bach family graveyard. A plaque on the church wall announces 'Twenty four members of the family of Bach rest in peace here on God's acre', but the Arnstadt register records that a good deal more than that number of Bachs were laid to rest here. Unfortunately however, where their graves are nobody knows, as they were levelled when the graveyard was closed. A brochure reports that in 1937 and in 1980 when underground construction work was carried out in an adjacent street and later a car park was built, bones which could have belonged to this great dynasty were unearthed, and subsequently (and very surprisingly) they were not properly identified or reburied. The brochure even claims they were left lying in the street, which seems very hard to believe.
