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)

Text and photos

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.

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 text was originally copied from Wilhelm Mantels' Der Todtentanz in der Marienkirche zu Lübeck and later compared with the text in Prof. Hartmut Freytag's 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.

Click to see picture and text.

Sources

• Der Totentanz der Marienkirche in Lübeck ...und der Nikolaikirche in Reval (Tallinn) — by Hartmut Freytag. This is by far the best and most thorough book about the subject - with more facts and less nonsense than any other book.

  The book has nearly 500 pages and contains everything you wanted to know about the dance of death in Lübeck and more. The text from Lübeck and Tallinn is examined with annotations to almost every word. Articles about the stained glass windows, Copenhagen's dance of death, the clothes, the language and much, much more.

  There are very nice colour pictures of the dance of death in Tallinn but - strangely - not from Lübeck! This painting is only reproduced as an 8-cm high concertina-style banner. You would think, that when a book is published with nearly 500 pages about a single painting, there would be room for a bigger picture!

• Der Todtentanz in der Marienkirche zu Lübeck. This book measures 29 by 47 cm and is just as unhandy as the full title of the book: "Der Todtentanz in der Marienkirche zu Lübeck. Nach einer Zeichnung von C. J. Milde, mit erläuterndem Text von Professor W. Mantels. Neudruck der Ausgabe Lübeck: Rahtgens 1866. Mit einem Nachwort "Der Totentanz in der Marienkirche zu Lübeck und das Totentanz-Fragment in der Nikolaikirche zu Reval (Tallinn)" hrsg. von Hartmut Freytag, Lübeck 1989. Zweite, vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage 1993. Dritte, erneut vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage 1997."

  This is a facsimile reprint of Wilhelm Mantels' book from 1866, where he lays the ground for all later research. It also contains the handsome colour lithographs by C. J. Milde from 1852 (8 plates).

  Mantels was a pioneer, and pioneers tend to become outdated. On the other hand Mantels is still worth reading since he had access to the church records and almost counts as a primary source.

  Freytag has added a section with the newest (137 years) research.

• Der Totentanz in der Marienkirche zu Lübeck. Separate offprint from Der Wagen, 1951 - 8 pages + a concertina-style banner. It's amazing how much has happened to the research since 1951: almost every "fact" in this pamphlet is wrong, and no — Nathanael Schlott is not spelled Natanael Schott.
• Das Revaler Totentanz-Fragment. A concertina-style banner (73 * 17 cm) with a nice colour reproduction af the dance of death fragment in Tallinn. There's a short text in Estonian and (High) German.
• Dodendantz. German book by Timothy Sodmann from 2001. This is a facsimile print of Dodendantz from 1520. The book also contains a transcript of the text, a complete glossary (Low German - High German) and a 30-page postscript about Lübeck's dances of death. Highly recommendable.

  The book can be bought on the Internet by sending a mail to the publisher Rainer Heeke in English, German or Dutch (the price is 18 Euro + postage).

• Den gamle danske dødedans. Copenhagen's dance of death from 1550 reprinted in 1896 with introduction and annotations by Raphael Meyer. Available from the Internet Archive.
• Totentänze ....Die Deutschsprachigen Spätmittelalterlichen Totentänze unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Inkunabel, Des dodes dantz, Lübeck 1489 by Brigitte Schulte.

  Schulte compares the structure of 14 dances of death (13 of which are German). The last part of the book is a thorough and sound comparison of the text in Lübeck/Tallinn with Des dodes dantz and Dodendantz.

External Links

• Death in art. The very best site - in English and French. Dances of death from all of Europe with pictures and text. Lots of pictures of The triumph of Death, The Three Living and the Three Dead, Death and the Maiden etc. etc. Patrick Pollefeys has a separate page about Lübeck.
• Folkebøker. A Norwegian site with a chronology of the dance of Death. Includes the text from Copenhagen's Dance of Death from 1550 including the old woodcuts.

Further information:

• The chapel before the bombardment.
• The sequence of dancers.
• The moral of the story.
• Drawings of the painting.
• How good a witness was Jacob von Melle?
• How good a copy was the painting from 1701 of the painting from 1463?
• Dance of death books
  • Des dodes dantz
  • Dodendantz
  • Copenhagen's Dance of Death
  • Dødedantz

First
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(1) At least I hope it's English :-)
Otherwise, please contact me.

Dansk The dance of death Text and photos