Dance of Death in the Strasbourg Preacher Church

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Until the fire in 1870, the former Dominican church in Strasbourg had a mural from around 1485 depicting a group dance of death .

History of the mural

The Strasbourg Preacher's Church from the middle of the 13th century belonged to the Dominican Order until 1531. Since the Reformation, the church was called Temple Neuf and was the main church of the city's Evangelical Christians. After the fire of 1870, a new five-aisle building was erected at the same location and inaugurated in 1877. Up until the fire in 1870 there was a mural in the church by the Strasbourg painter Lienhart Heischer ( Martin Schongauer's school ) from around 1485, which showed how death calls individual groups to itself, called the Predigerkirche's dance of death . The slightly larger than life-size figures of the dance of death were whitewashed during the Reformation and only rediscovered in 1824; then they were at least partially exposed and drawn.

description

It was a rare representation of a group dance of death. The individual groups of people were separated from each other on the mural by slender columns of a colonnade. There are only five scenes left in the 19th century, namely:

  • a Dominican preaching from the pulpit with ten listeners from different ecclesiastical and social classes,
  • death with pope, cardinals and entourage,
  • death with emperor and empress as well as death with persons from their entourage,
  • death with king and queen and their entourage,
  • two death figures with abbot, bishop and prelate as well as with a lady and an old man.

This former dance of death is comparable to the - also no longer preserved - dance of death painting in the cloister of the Strasbourg cathedral and the group dance of death in Leuk ( canton of Valais ).

The texts of the accompanying verses are no longer known.

meaning

The Alsatian folklorist Joseph Lefftz wrote about this group dance in 1930: “An important work of art has ... been lost. It was characterized above all by the broad, painterly treatment, the simple, calm formation of the figures, the clarity and distinctness of the room design and the safe arrangement of the figures. The choice of colors and the treatment of the robes were masterful ... The Strasbourg Dance of Death, in its deviations from many similar pictures in Basel, Bern, Freiburg ... in terms of the groups of figures, the sequence of pictures and the verses, has a lot of peculiarities and would be worth investigating closely. "

literature

  • Friedrich Wilhelm Edel: The New Church in Strasbourg - news of its formation, its fates and peculiarities, especially of the newly discovered death dance. Strasbourg 1825, p. 55 ff.
  • Stephan Cosacchi: Makabertanz - The dance of death in art, poetry and customs of the Middle Ages. Meisenheim am Glan 1965, p. 666 ff.
  • Reiner Sörries: Dance of the Dead - Dance of Death. Dettelbach 1998, p. 100f. (with pictures).
  • Hans Georg Wehrens: The dance of death in the Alemannic language area. "I have to do it - and don't know what" . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2012, p. 81f. ISBN 978-3-7954-2563-0 .