In the fall of 1705, Johann Sebastian Bach traveled from Arnstadt to Lübeck in northern Germany to study with the great organ master stationed at St. Mary’s Church.
For several months, Bach stayed in Lübeck soaking up the sweet tunes of Dietrich Buxtehude. One can imagine the master and his pupil tickling the ivories and dancing along the pedalboard with an urgency that only can overtake two musical geniuses staring death in the face.
No, they weren’t chased by the pursuit of artistic perfection or a bad medical diagnosis. Their creative sessions at the organ were overseen by a literal depiction of death—Bernt Notke’s monumental painting, “Danse Macabre.”
Following in the grand medieval “dance of death” artistic genre, Notke created a composition for the interior of the church to remind the denizens of Lübeck that death was never far away and was the great equalizer.
Rich or poor, nobleman or commoner, the end was nigh and the only way to secure a golden ticket to the pearly gates was through repentance. Hopefully Notke’s painting heeded its own warning.
Fast forward over 200 years after Bach’s Lübeck jaunt to 1942 and a Palm Sunday that dawned like a vision straight out of hell. Overnight, the British Royal Air Force had conducted its first bombing campaign against a civilian city, resulting in over 140 tons of explosives being dropped on the port town.
The fire ripped through the streets, destroying over twenty percent of Lübeck including a large portion of St. Mary’s Church and Notke’s fresco. “Danse Macabre” (also called “Totentanz”) had met its spiritual maker.
The roots of Notke’s massive frieze are almost as grim as the story of its demise. While details of the life of the German painter and sculptor are scant, what is known is that he was one of the most influential artists of his day in the Baltic region. He spent most of his career based in Lübeck, which was a booming port town that served as the home base for the trade alliance between the area’s key players.
In the mid-15th century, Lübeck was recovering from a bad bout of the Black Plague so, naturally, the powers that be asked the city’s top artist to create a large frieze in the “dances of death” tradition for the interior of St. Mary’s Church. Perhaps they were trying to reassure their population that the Grim Reaper chose his victims democratically, or maybe they just wanted to scare them into the pews each Sunday.
Either way, Notke was ready to unveil his masterpiece in 1463. And there was no doubt that “Danse Macabre” was a masterpiece.
Spread out across four walls of a room that came to be known as the “Totentanz,” or “Dance of Death”, Chapel, the fresco was 98 feet wide and six-and-a-half feet tall. It was not only physically imposing to its viewers, but it was also surely a little eerie as figures from their own community were depicted within.
While death is never a joyful topic of contemplation, “Danse Macabre” offers up a touch of comedy with its heaping of horror. Against the backdrop of a recognizable Lübeck, the composition is something of a grisly conga line.
Figures, often holding hands, are lined up in a row with skeletons who seem to be having a grand ol’ time showing off their dance moves alternated with living figures from all walks of life who look far less happy.
Wearing hollow-eyed grimaces that belie their frolicking energy, each bag of bones shows off its personality in the way it chooses to wear a simple white cloth while reaching out for its human neighbors. There are popes and emperors, merchants and society ladies, peasants and even a baby. The message is clear: regardless of your age, your class, or your role in society, nobody will escape this merry convoy of death.
Notke’s fresco was celebrated as a powerful and cutting-edge work of art. Unfortunately, artists in his day had not quite perfected the art and science of the fresco. By the turn of the 18th century, “Danse Macabre” was not looking so good. In 1701, authorities hired the artist Anton Wortmann to make an exact replica of the 238-year-old fresco on canvas in order to preserve the city’s treasure.
So Notke’s masterpiece lived on. The skeletons danced as Bach soaked up the teachings of the premier organist (and then allegedly turned down his job offer after it came with the provision that he would marry Buxtehude’s daughter).
They watched as marzipan was invented in the city (earning it the nickname the “marzipan capital of the world”), and then as the novelist Thomas Mann was born and grew into one of Lübeck’s favorite sons. And the dance of death raged on as WWII broke out.
Even the British powers that be admitted that Lübeck was not a significant military target. While the port city was used to deploy German troops and arms to the Russian front, it was a relatively small town and by no means the most important mark the RAF could have chosen.
“It was not a vital target, but it seemed to me better to destroy an industrial town of moderate importance than to fail to destroy a large industrial city,” Arthur Harris, the head of the Bomber Command, wrote in his memoir. “However, the main object of the attack was to learn to what extent a first wave of aircraft could guide a second wave to the aiming point by starting a conflagration.”
It was a success. Or as Churchill put it in a telegraph to Roosevelt, “Results are said to be best ever.”
The city was decimated. “The damage is really enormous, I have been shown a newsreel of the destruction. It is horrible. One can well imagine how such a bombardment affects the population,” Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, wrote in his diary. (He went on to add, “Thank God, it is a North German population, which on the whole is much tougher than the Germans in the south or south-east.”)
The inferno that raged through the streets of Lübeck swept through St. Mary’s Church, destroying the “Danse Macabre” canvas and sending the cathedral’s heavy bells crashing nearly 400 feet to the ground. Today, they remain where they fell as a memorial to the horrors the city experienced that day.
The city was broken, and Goebbels realized he could use this to his advantage. The tide of war was turning against the Germans and the propagandist knew that his countrymen were beginning to lose hope. In 1944, he released a movie intended to steel the will of the German people against the hardships they had faced and those yet to come.
Die Degenhardts features a normal family from Lübeck who enjoys consuming all the culture their city has to offer, including family trips to St. Mary’s to enjoy “Danse Macabre.” But then, the enemy bombs the city and decimates those works of art that show the best of the German creative mind. (The movie is more concerned with cultural destruction than that of human life.)
“The Totentanz functions in Die Degenhardts in the context of the Second World War much like the original frieze in the aftermath of the Black Plague,” Mary-Elizabeth O’Brien writes in Nazi Cinema as Enchantment: The Politics of Entertainment in the Third Reich. “Despite its macabre subject, this work did not aim to instill fear in the viewer. Instead, it was meant to offer comfort and hope; it frames death in a meaningful order and gives sense to the position of powerlessness. It provides an anchor in a horror-filled existence while suggesting that eternal peace will be the just reward for the righteous.”
After World War II ended, St. Mary’s Church was rebuilt, as was much of the city that was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2009. While Notke’s masterpiece could not be saved, black-and-white photos of it still exist from before the bombs dropped, and the church memorialized its message in two new stained glass windows that take Notke’s work as their theme.
The tall swirls of color may not have the exact same effect as the massive frieze that lined the walls of the chapel for 480 years, but their message to viewers is the same: watch your back because the skeletons of death are always dancing somewhere nearby.
