Totentanz Death Marches By postcard

Totentanz Death Marches By postcard: This vintage art is part of otto wirsching's dance of death/ Vom Totentanz Anno, circa 1915. This was the most significant of the many “death dances” produced during the First World War, He was greatly influenced by the Dance of death woodcuts of the old German masters of the Renaissance. His choice of images, however, is distinctly modern: in his the figure of Death, in the traditional form of a skeleton, confronts a variety of contemporary figures who will meet their doom as a result of the devastation of this new war. Overall Wirsching's, Vom Totentanz is a grim indictment of the evil of war and man’s innate inhumanity to man. By alluding so directly to the hallowed stylistic tradition of the German Totentanz, Wirsching’s philosophical message is all the more damning. this particular woodcut depicts a man looking out of a window from a museum or office, troops appear to be marching by outside, a flag is waving in the breeze and there is an anatomical skeleton in the foreground behind him and a parot and a stuffed lion of other wildcat nearby, the significance of this particulatr scene in the context of a dance of death excapes me to be honest but makes an interesting scene none the less.