The High German 4-line Dance of Death

CPG 314, the two preachers

Codex xyl. 39, Death and the child

A number of dances of death from southern Germany and Switzerland are collectively called Oberdeutscher vierzeiliger Totentanz: "Oberdeutscher" because the text is in High German — as opposed to the Low German dances of death in Lübeck, Tallinn and Berlin — and "vierzeiliger" because each verse consists of 4 lines — as opposed to the 8-line der doten dantz mit figuren.

The oldest of these texts, CPG 314(1) (picture to the left), shows how the German text is a translation from Latin. In this old manuscript Death doesn't appear, and the text only consists of the complaints of the dying people. It is easy to see the inspiration from the Vado Mori-literature.

The 24 dancers introduce themselves: »I was a holy pope […]«, »I have, as king […]«, etc., lament their fate, and let the next participant take over.

In all the other (later) versions of Oberdeutscher vierzeiliger Totentanz, speeches have been added for Death, but the resulting dialogue is only ostensibly a dialogue: Death greets the humans energetically, vivaciously, ironically - even humorously - while the humans ignore Death's words, introduce themselves to the reader, »I was a holy pope […]«, »I have, as king […]«, etc., whereupon they go on lamenting.

The child ignores Death and calls for his mother: "How can you leave me thus?"

The start of Kleinbasel

This is most evident at the end of the dance, where the mother ignores Death and addresses her son: »Oh child, I would have saved you;«, while the child in turn also ignores Death and calls for his mother: »Oh woe, my dear mother […] How can you leave me thus?«

In other dances of death, like the ones in Lübeck and Berlin, the dying might address Death directly and implore for respite, but this never happens in Oberdeutscher vierzeiliger Totentanz — precisely because the humans' speeches were written many years before Death appeared on the scene.

Strictly speaking Death still doesn't appear anywhere. What we have here is a "real totentanz", where a row of dead people drag the living away. Read more about Dance of Death or Line of the Dead.

The most famous dance in this family is Death from Basel. There were 2 dances in Basel and both had increased the number of dancers from 24 to 39. In Kleinbasel the text is still familiar, but the famous dance in GroßBasel had been changed so thoroughly through repair and renovations that it can only be partly recognized.

Variants

We know the text from a number of sources. To the right is a family tree where Wilhelm Fehse traces the evolution of the texts.

• H¹: Cpg 314. This text is the most original and thus at the top of the tree. In this old manuscript Death doesn't even appear.
• H²: CPG 438, Heidelberg's dance of death
• M¹: Cgm 270(2), leaves 192b— 197b.
• M²: Codex xylogr. Monac. 39.(3) The illustrations are from a block book (i.e. picture and text made out of one woodcut), but the pictures have been cut out in the 15^th century and used for illustrating an even older hand-writing. Only a few remnants of the woodcut-text still exist, which have been re-cycled as binding-material for other books.
• M³: Cgm 2927, leaves 13" — 15". Handwriting which at places is illegible.

  Cod xyl. 39, Death and the pope: "Der tod zu dem Bapst spricht"

• Ms. germ. fol. Berol. 19(4), leaves 224 — 227
• Basel's dances of death. The dance has been expanded with 15 extra dancers in Großbasel and Kleinbasel. As the family tree shows, the text in Kleinbasel is at a more developed stage compared to the others.

Resources

• The manuscripts M¹, M², M³ and Berol 19 have never been typed out. The curious reader must look in the footnotes of Massmann's and Fehse's "ur-texts".

  Fehse's article, Der Oberdeutsche Vierzeilige Totentanztext in Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, vol. 40 page 67 ff, is far better than Massmann's. Massmann included an extra manuscript, M⁴, without realizing that this in reality was M¹ and M², that had been mixed together and heavily edited by another professor named Docen.

  Fehse's article is half a century newer, he includes Berol 19, which Massmann didn't know about, and he's generally more meticulous and sharp-witted than Massmann.

• M² (Codex xylogr. monac. 39) has been scanned and is available in high resolution from Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum: Totentanz.
• The text from Kleinbasel can be read at Europäische Totentanz-Vereinigung's site.
• On the present site are presented CPG 314, Heidelberg's dance of death and Basel's dance of death.
• Six of the texts are compared dynamically here.

In This Section

• Death's Dance, or Line of the Dead?
• The texts - a dynamic comparison of 6 texts
• CPG 314
  • The text from CPG 314
• Heidelberg's dance of death
• Kleinbasel
• Basel

(1) CPG 314. . . : CPG is short for Codices Palatini Germanici. Thus CPG 314 is the name of the 314^th German-language book in Bibliotheca Palatina in Heidelberg.

(2) Cgm 270 . . .: Cgm is short for Codices germanici monacenses — i.e. German language books from Die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in München/Munich.

(3) xylogr . . .: Xylograph means woodcut. For inscrutable reasons "Codex xylogr. Monac." cannot be shortened to "Cxm" analogous with Cgm.

(4) Ms. germ. fol. Berolin . . .: Ms. = manuscript / handwriting, Germ. = German language, Fol. = folio-format (more than 35 cm height-wise), Berolin = books from Bibliotheca Regia Berolinensis i.e. The Royal Library in Berlin.

Dansk The dance of death Oberdeutscher vierzeiliger Totentanz