Crown of death

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Crown of death from Franconia, Ratibor Castle (Roth)
Ensemble of skulls, Herzberg village church (Rietz-Neuendorf)

The death crown was a decorative object at the burial of infants and children or single people who died young. There is evidence of this from all over Europe and for the period from the end of the 16th to the 19th century, and occasionally up to the 20th century.

Use of the death's crown

Originally, the death crowns were grave goods that were pressed into the hand or arm of the deceased or placed next to the head. Because the death's crowns became more and more complex and expensive, it became customary to use the crown on loan from the church, which was returned after the burial.

One of the first investigations into the use of skulls was undertaken by Otto Lauffer at the beginning of the 20th century .

In the research project Atlas of German Folklore , a question was asked about the use of the death's crown in the early 1930s. 100,000 individual statements from 20,000 German-speaking communities were evaluated. Despite inadequacies with regard to the questions - such as the specification of the term "crown of death", which is called differently in different regions - the study provided a basis for the analysis of the customs associated with the crown of death. However, the research results available so far (as of 2009) do not yet allow a fixed chronology of the ritual to be established.

Skulls in the Fürth district

In today's district of Fürth, death crowns were either placed on the coffin of unmarried women, bachelors and children who died in the 17th century , or they were added as funerary jewelry as grave goods . During excavations in 2009 on the site of a former cemetery in Fürth , complete skulls were recovered. These crowns were made of silver wire into which glass or precious stones were worked.

Skulls in the Altenburger Land

In the village church in Dobraschütz , 13 death crowns from the period between 1791 and 1813 were preserved on an epitaph. Three further epitaphs were to be found on the church floor. Crowns and epitaphs were completely restored in 2017 and are fully exhibited in the church.

One of these skulls was assigned to a 13-year-old boy who died of scarlet fever in 1811.

Skulls in the Northeim district

The Museum Uslar has a collection of 27 skulls from the village church of Vahle (2 copies are still on site). They date from the period between 1814 and 1875.

Otto Piltz, Auf dem Erste Stand (gallery of the village church).

Skulls in the Marburger Land

Otto Piltz, women pray the Our Father (ground floor of the village church).

The genre painter Otto Piltz stayed regularly in Cappel near Marburg from 1879 to 1884, where he painted, among other things, interior views of the village church. They show the way in which skulls were attached in the church at that time.

Otto Piltz, child baptism in Cappel.

See also

literature

  • Gerald Bamberger: Death crowns from approx. 1750 to 1850 in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. In: Walter Stolle: Death. On the history of dealing with death and grief. “De Dod belongs to the Lewe”. Exhibition Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, Folklore Department, Lorsch Branch, November 1, 2001 to June 30, 2002. Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt 2001, ISBN 3-926527-60-9 , pp. 99–111.
  • O. Lauffer: The popular use of skulls in Germany. In: Journal of the Association for Folklore. 26, 1916, ISSN  0179-0064 , pp. 225-246.
  • Sylvia Müller: Monuments of love. Evidence of the death's crown usage in the Mark Brandenburg. Berlin-Story-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-929829-63-1 .
  • Wolfgang Neumann (Hrsg.): Death wedding with wreath and crown. On the symbolism in the customs of single burials. An exhibition by the Museum for Sepulchral Culture, Kassel, September 30, 2007 to March 2, 2008. Arbeitsgemeinschaft Friedhof und Denkmal, Kassel 2007, ISBN 978-3-924447-37-3 .
  • Ernst Helmut Segschneider : Death wreath and crown in single burial. Based on a documentation of the Atlas of German Folklore. Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 1976, ISBN 3-7927-0200-2 ( Works and Living 10).
  • Gerhard Seib: wreath and crown in the single funeral. Example from Hessen and the Harz. In: Hans Kurt Boehlke (ed.): How the old formed death. Changes in the Sepulchral Culture. 1750-1850. An exhibition by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Friedhof und Denkmal eV, Kassel, organized by the Working Group of Independent Cultural Institutions eV at the Bonn-Bad Godesberg Science Center, August 2 to September 2, 1979. Hase & Koehler, Mainz 1979, ISBN 3-7758-0982-1 (= Kassel Studies on Sepulchral Culture 1), pp. 113–119.
  • Yvonne Schmuhl: Death wreath, death crown . In: RDK Labor (2015).
  • Juliane Lippok: Corona Funerbis - Modern dead crowns as an object of archaeological research. Contributions to the prehistory and early history of Central Europe 54, Langenweißbach 2009, ISBN 978-3-941171-09-1

Web links

Commons : Skulls  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Totenkrone  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ O. Lauffer: "The popular use of skulls in Germany" In: Journal of the Association for Folklore , Volume 26, Berlin 1916, p. 225ff.
  2. Ernst Helmut Segschneider : Dead wreath and crown in single burial , Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne, 1976, ISBN 3-7927-0200-2 , pp. 10-12
  3. Sylvia Müller, Monuments of Love, p. 8f.
  4. Volker Dittmar: Baroque cult of the dead. New discoveries on the Fürth church square . Fürther Nachrichten of August 22, 2009
  5. Christiane Kneisel: Rare death crowns adorn the church in Dobraschütz . Ostthüringer Zeitung from June 1, 2017