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    Published : 2025-07-14
    Vol. 73 No. 4 (2025)

    The Dance of Death in the Labyrinth of the World – Theosophical Inspirations of Oskar Kokoschka in His Designs for a Crematorium in Wrocław

    Magdalena Anna Długosz

    https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4357-9094

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.18290/rh25734.7

    Abstract

    In 1912, Max Berg, the city architect of the then German Wrocław approached the young Oskar Kokoschka with a proposal for collaboration. The project concerned the decoration of the Centennial Hall and, above all, the planned crematorium. The realization of the project was initially delayed due to the outbreak of the Great War and the involvement of both artists on the front lines, and ultimately, it was handed over to Berg's successor. The original sketches by Kokoschka, of which several dozen were created over the years, despite their significant importance to the artist and recognition by his contemporaries, remained on paper. This paper aims to trace the sources of inspiration and the circumstances that influenced the formation and evolution of the project over time. It attempts to reconstruct Kokoschka’s philosophical and religious interests of that period based on the analysis of his drawings, private documents, and his library preserved in the Oskar Kokoschka Zentrum in Vienna.

    Keywords:

    Oskar Kokoschka, Max Berg, Jan Amos Comenius, crematorium, dance macabre, theosophy, Wrocław



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    Roczniki Humanistyczne · ISSN 0035-7707 | eISSN 2544-5200 | DOI: 10.18290/rh
    © The Learned Society of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin & The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Faculty of Humanities

    Articles are licensed under a Creative Commons  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)