The church is especially famous for one of Europe’s oldest murals, a fresco called "The Dance of Death." Like the church itself, the precise age of the mural is unknown but it is generally believed that it dates back to 1448, the year when the "Black Death" hit Berlin.
Medieval Totentanz (German for Dance of Death), Murals can be found in several old European churches. They are a late-medieval allegory on the universality of death: no matter one's station in life, the dance of death unites all. The mural consists of the personified death leading a row of dancing figures from all walks of life to the grave—typically with an emperor, king, youngster, beautiful girl, all skeletal. They were produced to remind people of how fragile their lives were and how vain the glories of earthly life were.
Unfortunately, when we visited the church in 2007, the mural was under massive reconstruction and could only be watch from far away through a glass window. (Picture bottom left). The church was raising funds for the reconstruction and every donor put a little mosaic stone one a replica of the mural.(Picture bottom right). The author of the German wikipedia article on the church created a fantastic reconstruction of the mural (Picture above).
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