In Göttingen itself Heeren's name would be all but forgotten. Twenty years earlier, when G.H. Pertz and Friedrich August Ukert had initiated their ambitious project on the "History of the European States", it was Heeren that they had eagerly besought as their main editor. When he died on 6 March 1842 in his eighty-second year, his passing was hardly noticed by those in the immediate vicinity. Only six students from the university would follow Heeren's coffin to his grave. At the time of his death, few recalled how immensely influential had been his writings, and how distinguished his reputation as a historian, in his own time.