Loxstedter Dance of Death

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Excerpt from the ceiling painting Loxstedt Dance of Death in St. Mary's Church in Loxstedt

The Loxstedter Totentanz is a ceiling painting from the 15th century in the St. Mary's Church in the village of Loxstedt , which belongs to the Loxstedt community of the same name and is located south of Bremerhaven in the Lower Saxony district of Cuxhaven .

The church was built in 1371 after the second wave of plague in what was then the archbishopric of Bremen , the so-called “children's plague” , as a chapel with three bays . The vaults were painted in the first half of the 15th century. The subject of the pictures in the middle vault is the quick, sudden death to which people were exposed at the time of the plague epidemics.

Dance of death

The Loxstedter Dance of Death in the middle vault is a group picture with three people. A couple is depicted, separated by death. In contrast to other depictions of the subject, where death dances with people in a round dance (e.g. Lübeck Dance of Death ), the narrow space on the vault cap does not allow such a large-scale depiction here.

Man and woman are shown as a rich, courtly couple dressed in the fashion of the time. The slogan above the representation of women reads: lust unde vrolichheit verzhrik uppe düsser erde (= New High German, for example: “I desire lust and happiness on this earth”). The banner above the male figure repeats the sentence, in addition a year was given here, of which the decade is missing: 14--8. "Lust and happiness" were the motto of many people at that time. You lived as if every day was the last.

Death stands between the two. He is not represented as a skeleton in the usual way. Wilted meat lies on the bones. The skin appears leathery and mummified. The body cavities are gutted. To prove that it is a dead body, toads sit in the abdomen and on the chest. Snakes wind around arms and legs and look out of their eye sockets. He is holding a scythe in his hand. An image that people were familiar with. The banner above death reads: O Minsch an de Erden wat ick bün dat wisstu become (= New High German for example: “O man on earth: what I am, you will become”).

People always had this penitential sermon in front of their eyes, because the picture is in a prominent position, looking towards the altar, above which there was a depiction of the Last Judgment .

Pictures in context

The dance of death is not isolated, however. The penitential sermon is followed by a solution for the people: the invocation of saints as patron saints against the plague should bring help. The most famous plague saint, St. Sebastian, is depicted on the northern vaulted cap  . On the southern vaulted area we find the stoning of Stephen .

Exactly opposite the dance of death, on the western cap, there is a monumental representation of St.  Christopher . He is regarded as the patron of a blessed death. With the Christ child on his shoulder, he is symbolically the carrier of souls into paradise. This picture is reminiscent of the ferryman Charon from Greek mythology .

Further development

Ceiling painting The Holy Kinship in the St. Mary's Church in Loxstedt

When the previous chapel was elevated to a parish church in 1451, it was extended to the east by a square choir . The vault above the new altar was painted with a picture of the holy clan , which is now known as a very well-preserved depiction , in keeping with the style of the cult of St.

The other motifs in the new choir are the legend of St. George in the north, the adoration of Jesus by the Three Kings in the south and the creation of Eve , the fall of man and the expulsion from paradise with a cherub with a flaming sword in the west .

As early as the 16th century, the paintings were whitewashed in the course of the iconoclasm of the Reformation . They were only rediscovered and uncovered in 1910, with the exception of a few missing parts in the depiction of the Last Judgment and the most western yoke. In 1965 they were thoroughly restored, with additions from the first restoration removed. In 1999 the pictures were cleaned and the arches and vault ribs repainted.

literature

  • Dietrich Diederichs-Gottschalk : The late medieval plague cycle in the ev.-luth. St. Marien Church in Loxstedt . In: Yearbook of the Men of the Morning Star. No. 71, Bremerhaven 1992, Ed .: Men from Morgenstern , ISSN  0931-8313 , pp. 29-40.
  • Rolf Schmonsees: Covered by lime for 300 years - church painting is being restored and toads as a sign of death - Loxstedter Totentanz is the focus of the plague cycle. In: Nordsee-Zeitung . August 5, 1998.
  • Publications in the Niederdeutschen Heimatblatt
    • Ulrich Euent: Anna Selbdritt and Holy Kinship . An enigmatic picture from the eve of the Reformation . In: Men from Morgenstern, Heimatbund an Elbe and Weser estuary e. V. (Ed.): Niederdeutsches Heimatblatt . No. 815 . Nordsee-Zeitung GmbH, Bremerhaven November 2017, p. 1–2 ( digitized version [PDF; 6.6 MB ; accessed on July 6, 2019]).
    • Ulrich Euent: The pictures are ancient, the message is very current. The dance of death representation in the St. Marien Church in Loxstedt . In: Men from Morgenstern, Heimatbund an Elbe and Weser estuary e. V. (Ed.): Niederdeutsches Heimatblatt . No. 845 . Nordsee-Zeitung GmbH, Bremerhaven May 2020, p. 1–2 ( digitized version [PDF; 3.5 MB ; accessed on August 1, 2020]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrich Euent: Anna Selbdritt and Holy Family. An enigmatic picture from the eve of the Reformation . In: Men from Morgenstern, Heimatbund an Elbe and Weser estuary e. V. (Ed.): Niederdeutsches Heimatblatt . No. 815 . Nordsee-Zeitung GmbH, Bremerhaven November 2017, p. 1–2 ( digitized version [PDF; 6.6 MB ; accessed on July 6, 2019]).

Coordinates: 53 ° 28 ′ 12.8 "  N , 8 ° 38 ′ 50.9"  E