As a Prussian officer Schill tried to mobilise a Prussian uprising against Napoleonic occupation. He led his company of Hussars to Stralsund to continue the fight. Schill fell on 31 May 1809 in street fighting against superior French forces. The next day his head was cut from his corpse and sent to Napoleon’s brother, Jerome of Westphalia, while the rest of his body was buried in St Jürgen’s Cemetery. Schill’s came into a natural history in the Dutch city of Leiden before finally being buried in Braunschweig in 1837.
In the fighting in Stralsund 557 of Schill’s officers and men were captured. Fourteen of them were shot without trial in July 1809 in Braunschweig, while eleven of the officers were sentenced to death for “street robbery” and executed on 16 September 1809 on the Lippewiesen in Wesel.
In Stralsund Ferdinand von Schill’s memory is kept alive by the Schill Stone in Fährstrasse, the Schill memorial on Olof-Palme-Platz and his grave on St Jürgen’s Cemetery on Knieperdamm, while a memorial stone at Knieper Gate recalls his comrade-in-arms Friedrich Gustav von Petersson.
