The Dance of Death in Berlin

St. Mary's Church, August 2005 (128 KB)

Lübeck's dance of death was famous far abroad and inspired several books. To visit Lübeck's dance of death was a part of any educational travel (like those of Hans Christian Andersen and Thomas Nugent).

Berlin's dance of death was less famous. If fact, nobody even knew there was a dance of death - until 1860 when the fresco suddenly appeared under a layer of whitewash during repair of the wall.

The fresco has been restored several times since then - and attempts have been made to "improve" the fresco by painting it over. In 1955 the fresco was "de-restored" and all the unoriginal layers of paint were removed. This is one of the reasons why the fresco looks better on old photos (see the external links below) than it does today.

The painting is in a very bad condition and it has been necessary to protect it behind glass - in order to secure it against humidity and variation of temperature. In the photograph above, one can see how the dance of death continues on the wall in the background The little castle is not a part of the dance of death - it's placed there because the room with its controlled humidity is also used as a workshop for restoring other objects of art in the church.

The dance of death, August 2003 (147 KB)

The photo to the right shows what the fresco looks like today. In general the red colours are best preserved - and the blue colours are the worst ones.

Compared to the masterpieces in Lübeck and Tallinn, the fresco in Berlin is far more primitive - with simple drawings made directly on the wall. This may seem odd today, but the reason is that back in 1490 Berlin was a very small town with less than 10,000 inhabitants. In contrast to this, Lübeck had more than twice as many inhabitants - and Lübeck, being the Queen of the Hansa, could afford to hire world famous artists (like Hans Memling) or local talent (like Bernd Notke).

As recently as in 1506, Abbot Johannes Trithemius declared that a truly learned person was as rare in the Berlin-area as a white raven.

The Dances of Death in Lübeck and Berlin

Berlin's dance of death is thought to be from 1490. This makes it close to 30 years younger than the dance of death in Lübeck. Therefore it's assumed that the painting in Berlin is inspired by the one in Lübeck. The only place where they (in my opinion) are similar is when Death speaks to the pope in Lübeck:

Al hevestu in godes stede staen
Een erdesch vader [...]

Though you have stood in God's stead,
an earthly father [...]

In Berlin, Death tells the pope:

Pawes erdescher vader [...]
gy hebben in der stede gades ghestan

On the other hand there's a close relationship between Berlin's dance of death and Dodendantz, so this merits its own page.