Lübeck's Dance of Death

Wilhelm Mantels (1816 - 1879)

Merchant with spurs or craftsman?

Wilhelm Mantels

Friedrich Wilhelm Mantels (17/6 1816 - 8/6 1879) was the leader of Lübeck's library, a grammar school teacher and a historian. He was married to Maria Louise Henriette Nölting - a daughter of the family where his friend Carl Julius Milde lived.

In 1866 he published Der Todtentanz in der Marienkirche zu Lübeck. Here he laid the ground for much of the later research into the dance of death in Lübeck. Included in the book were Carl Julius Milde's handsome lithographs.

Mantels was the first to point out that Jacob von Melle had written down the text in a wrong order. In one case Death tells the debauched nobleman that he shall receive great wages for his work. Apparently the nobleman had been interchanged with the mayor - both in the painting and in the text.

In the other place the merchant speaks about "my handicraft". Here the merchant and the craftsman have traded places - but only in the text - the picture of the craftsman still shows a merchant with spurs.

Mantels arranged the text in a more sensible way - but wanted to explain how this error could have happened.

The Wood Table Theory

Mantels suggested that the original dance of death from 1463 had been painted on wood tables - with 1 human and 1 Death per table. These tables could have shuffled when the painting was copied in 1701.

In many books and even on the Internet the "fact" still pops up - that the original painting had been painted on wood tables, but the truth is that it was only a theory and the theory was false:

Lübeck in the background of the dance

Mantels never supplied any evidence - it was simply useful for explaining the inverted sequence of dancers.
As an honest scholar Mantels himself pointed out the weakness in his theory: It couldn't explain how in the case of burgomaster and nobleman both persons and text had been exchanged - whereas in the case of merchant and craftsman only the text had been rearranged.
A problem that Mantels had failed to see was that one can see Lübeck behind the mayor and the nobleman. If Mantels' wood plates had been shuffled, Lübeck's skyline would have looked rather strange.
Mantels himself gave a deathblow to his theory 7 years later: It turned out that Wortmann's copy had been mounted in the same frame as the original painting, and Mantels himself had an opportunity to feel the remnant of the old canvas under the new one - which proved that the old painting had been cut out.(1)

Unfortunately it was precisely Mantels' words about the painting being cut out that were used later by Heise for his crackpot theory: That the fragment in Tallinn was a surviving fragment of Lübeck's original painting from 1463.

By the irony of fate, a careful and conscientious scholar has thus fathered two theories that are equally stronglived, equally false and mutually contradictory!

Sources

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 1885 (vol. 20, 253 - 256) (Mantels himself wrote 23 articles for this work)
Biographisches Lexikon für Schleswig-Holstein und Lübeck, 1991 (vol 9, 219 - 222) (with a portrait of Mantels by C. J. Milde).
Wilhelm Mantels: Der Todtentanz in der Marienkirche zu Lübeck.

Further information

Anton Wortmann - who copied the painting in 1701.
Jacob von Melle - who wrote down the text (in the wrong order).
Notes about the burgomaster and the nobleman
Notes about the craftsman and the merchant
Is the fragment in Tallinn a surviving fragment of Lübeck's original painting from 1463?
Carl Julius Milde - Mantels' friend who illustrated his book.

(1) Mantels wrote in Göttingsche gelehrte Anzeigen, Jahrg. 1873 pp. 721: »Ich fand nämlich unter der von oben her das Bild in seinem Umlauf begrenzenden, wulstartigen Holzbekrönung alte Leinwandreste hervorragend, welche namentlich an der Westseite ununterbrochen fortlaufen, Farbenspuren tragen und den deutlichen Beweis liefern, daß das vorige Leinwandbild herausgeschnitten ist, um es zu entfernen, und wohl auch, um vom Maler bequem copiert werden zu können.«