Goethe's bones had been strengthened and his sarcophagus given a new lining ``but nothing else was changed,'' according to Schlichting.

The revelation comes at a sensitive time when Weimar has just embarked on a series of celebrations and performances to mark the 250th birth anniversary of Goethe and the city's selection by European Union culture ministers as Europe's `Cultural Capital' for 1999. It is the first city in the former Soviet bloc to be honoured in this way.

Goethe, whose most famous work Faust tells of one man's pact with devil, has lain since his death in 1832 in a crypt that also contains the corpse of the great poet and playwright Friedrick Schiller, who died in 1805. According to the scientists' report, seven people including the formerrector of Jena University, and a director of the Museum of Early History in Weimar, carried out the work on Goethe's corpse. They loaded his body on to a cart as night fell on November 2, 1970 and pulled the contraption to the Goethe's Museum for treatment with various chemicals.