Plötzensee dance of death

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The Plötzenseer Totentanz is a work of art by the Viennese painter and sculptor Alfred Hrdlicka in the memorial church in the Evangelical Community Center Plötzensee in Berlin . On 16 panels, Hrdlicka takes up the motif of the medieval dances of death and thus refers to the current threat to people and peoples through violence, power and arbitrariness. On all panels there are two round windows and a bar with a meat hook - a reference to the former execution shed in the nearby prison (today the Plötzensee Memorial ).

The origin of the Plötzensee dance of death

In the mid-1960s, the Paul-Hertz-Siedlung development area was built near the Plötzensee memorial . This prompted the Evangelical Church Community of Charlottenburg-Nord to build a second community center for the people in the new district. From the beginning, the church service room was planned as a memorial church for the victims of Plötzensee. The parish priest at the time, Bringfried Naumann, won over the Viennese artist Alfred Hrdlicka for the artistic design. He first made 27 draft drawings, on the basis of which he then created the 12 panels that were ready for the inauguration of the church on the 1st of Advent 1970. The remaining panels ("Emmaus - Last Supper - Easter" and "Death of a Minority") were put up in 1972.

The boards

The boards, 3.50 meters high and 0.99 meters wide, are primed, 19 millimeter thick joiner wood panels on which drawings are applied in pencil, charcoal, Indian ink, opaque white and red chalk. The steel girders and iron hooks and (with one exception) the arched windows from the Plötzensee execution shed can be seen on all panels. The dance of death shows in a loosely connected series a chain of associations of biblical and contemporary topics, which represent injustice, violence and death directed against people.

The boards in detail

West wall:

Cain and Abel - death in the boxing ring - death in show business - death of a demonstrator (2 panels) The panel with the theme " Cain kills his brother Abel" opens the dance of death. According to biblical tradition, this is the first murder in human history (Old Testament, Genesis 4, 1-7), and Hrdlicka contrasts situations of death and violence of his time.

Death of a minority is the only single tablet. Hrdlicka dedicated this plaque "to the extermination of a race (the Indian ) that has long since become a minority". It can be seen as a memorial against any kind of "ethnic cleansing".

East wall:

Death in Plötzensee : the beheading of John the Baptist - mass execution in Plötzensee (2 panels) - the guillotine The tradition of the beheading of John the Baptist (New Testament, including Matthew 14, 3-12) forms the biblical reference story to the murders in Plötzensee 1933–1945. The two types of execution that were carried out there are shown on the boards in the church room in the direction in which the Plötzensee execution shed is located: The judgments were initially carried out with the guillotine since 1937 . After the guillotine was rendered unusable by a bombing, hanging was introduced. Hitler himself ordered a steel girder to be installed in the execution shed, on whose eight iron hooks the first victims were members of the " Red Orchestra " and, after July 20, 1944, ninety people who belonged to these resistance groups or who were murdered as their helpers.

North face:

Crucifixion (3 panels: Left thief - Crucified - Right thief ) The execution of Jesus Christ on the cross (New Testament, Mark 15, 20-41 and parallels) is depicted by Hrdlicka using traditional elements of Christian art: right and left of Jesus the two robbers ("thieves"), himself identified by the crown of thorns. But the crucifixion is moved to the execution shed in Plötzensee: instead of the cross, the steel girder serves as a gallows, the iron hooks take on the function of nails. Hrdlicka thus relates Golgota and Plötzensee to each other.

Emmaus - Last Supper - Easter The Emmaus picture was last tackled by Hrdlicka and completed on the 1st of Advent 1972. As a picture of the resurrection faith of the Christian community, it is intended to express calm and peace, consolation and overcoming, courage and hope. The biblical background is the New Testament story of the two disciples who, after the death of Jesus, recognize the risen Christ in a stranger who broke bread with them (Luke 24, 13-35). The scene in Hrdlicka's Emmaus picture is reminiscent of a prison cell, several people crouch down, a man is being led away to the left by a man in uniform. The reference to the Emmaus story is given by the light central figure, which - barely recognizable - breaks the bread.

meaning

Hrdlicka's work is the first dance of death depiction in the main room of a church in art history; at the same time it is the first completely new creation of a monumental dance of death in the 20th century. It is "one of the most impressive of his oeuvre" and was described by gec / Kathpress as "the most important work of contemporary church art in Berlin".

Web links

Literature selection

  • Bringfried Naumann: The Plötzenseer Dance of Death in the Protestant Community Center Plötzensee ( Der Kleine Kunstführer No. 1316). Schnell & Steiner Verlag, Munich, 2nd edition 1993, ISBN 978-3-7954-5026-7
  • Rüdiger von Voss, Gerhard Ringshausen (ed.): The sermons of Plötzensee. To the challenge of the modern martyr . Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86732-064-1 (with a detailed description of the church and the Plötzensee dance of death in the Plötzensee community center)
  • I. Mössinger, U. Saltin: The ecumenical memorial region Charlottenburg-Nord / Plötzensee: Alfred Hrdlicka's “Plötzenseer Totentanz” . In: Reiner Albert, Roland Hartung, Günther Saltin (eds.): Alfred Delp und die Kunst = Alfred-Delp-Jahrbuch Volume 3, LIT Verlag, Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-643-10148-8 , p. 57ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Bringfried Naumann: The Plötzenseer Totentanz in the Protestant Community Center Plötzensee. 2nd edition 1993, p. 2.
  2. ↑ a b Bringfried Naumann: The Plötzenseer Totentanz in the Protestant Community Center Plötzensee. 2nd edition 1993, p. 8.
  3. ^ Rüdiger von Voss and Gerhard Ringshausen (Hg): The sermons of Plötzensee. To the challenge of the modern martyr. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2009, p. 24.
  4. ^ Ulrich Weinzierl : Alfred Hrdlicka, the tender berserk - Wlet, February 27, 2008.
  5. ↑ Diocese of Linz: New ecumenical memorial center at the place of execution in Jägerstätters  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.dioezese-linz.at