Better with head

When the gravestone of a nameless soldier depicted in frontal view was found in Mainz-Weisenau in 1906, broken into several pieces, the feet of the figure and the explanatory inscription were missing. Either as a direct result of the war - the museum and its collections were severely damaged or partially destroyed by bombs during the Second World War - or the turmoil of the post-war period, the head broke off of the gravestone, which was only 12 cm deep, and was lost. After the war, the gravestone was restored and the feet were added in a modern way, but the area of the missing head was smoothly filled in with stone substitute. For decades, the soldier stood headless in the stone hall until the missing piece was discovered by chance in the museum depot in 2022. In a major restoration project, the head was put back into the gravestone and has since fitted like a glove, as if it had never been lost.