Summary: Photo of the dance of death painting in St. Mary's Church in Lübeck. The original text from 1463 is placed below the pictures - with an English translation.(1)
What follows is the entire text from 1463, or rather: what remains of it. The first 108 lines are taken from the dance of death in Tallinn, Estonia. The next 72 lines are missing and then follow the lines that Jacob von Melle wrote down in 1701. To make things worse, Jacob von Melle has apparently shuffled some of the verses, but I shall return to that subject in the notes to each picture.
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| Painting with text below (145 KB). |
The preacher, who introduces the dance, does not appear on the painting in Lübeck, so I have used a clip from the painting in Tallinn instead. The rest of the pictures are photos taken between the two world wars by Wilhelm Castelli. These pictures are available several places but the best reproduction can be found in Bernt Notke und sein Kreis by Walter Paatz, Berlin 1939. For some reason Paatz has removed the text below the painting.
I have inserted colored drawings in some of the footnotes. These are lithographs made by Carl Julius Milde in 1852.
The preacher
Death speaks to all
The pope
The emperor
The empress
The cardinal
The king
The bishop
The duke
The abbot
The knight
The Carthusian
The nobleman
The canon
The mayor
The physician
The usurer
The curate
The merchant
The parish clerk
The craftsman
The hermit
The peasant
The youth
The maiden
The baby
The text was originally copied from Der Todtentanz in der Marienkirche zu Lübeck and later compared with the text in Der Totentanz der Marienkirche in Lübeck. Where these two texts diverged, the facsimiles were consulted.
Notice, that "u" and "v" has been interchanged at places to make the text more accessible and the abbreviation "vñ" has been resolved into "unde". Headings and punctuation has been added.
(1)
At least I hope it's English :-)
Otherwise, please contact me.
Dansk 
The dance of death
Text and photos
