in his bedroom, a coffin made from a varnished wine barrel, on which the following verse was written: Here there lies within his skin Half man, half pig, a wondrous thing Clever in his youth, in old age not so bright, Full of wit at morning, full of drink at night. Let the voice of Bacchus sing This, my child, is Gundeling [...] Reader, say can you divine Whether he was man or swine? After he died, the king had his body paraded through the streets of Potsdam and then publicly displayed, wearing the outlandish costume he required Gundling to wear for his own amusement, propped up in the barrel. Various ribald songs were composed specially for his funeral, but the king's antics were so outrageous that the local clergy categorically refused to have anything to do with this parody of a funeral ceremony. Instead, the funeral sermon was delivered by none other than Gundling's long-time tormentor, David Fassman. Work Under Gundling's Presidency of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, the Collegium Medico-chirurgicum was founded. Gundling conducted a systematic evaluation of the sources of the humanities taught in Prussian institutions, and the establishment of the Prussian school system was a project led by him. He was also responsible for the comprehensive mapping of Prussia, and between 1713 and 1715 he traveled extensively throughout Brandenburg to obtain information for his Brandenburg Atlas, which he completed 1724. In addition, he wrote and published a number of historical and biographical texts and in-depth descriptions of the countryside of Brandenburg and Pomerania. His work on Albrecht the Bear, the first Margrave of Brandenburg, contains the first known mention of the story of how Albrecht converted the Slavic Prince Jaxa to Christianity. He was also regarded as a highly influential figure at the Berlin court, who had a major voice in both the internal and the external policy of Friedrich Wilhelm I. The Austrian envoy to the Potsdam court, Seckendorff, complained to Prince Eugene on 23 October 1726 that 'no-one did the Austrians more harm than a certain Privy Councillor, Gundling, who, much against his will, was forced to act the part of a merry-Andrew, but who was always in the king's company; that he was looked on as an oracle in publicis. Whenever Austrian affairs were being discussed, this man insinuated into the king's ear falsa principia; that he was worth winning by the present