Emotionalisierung durch Bilder am Beispiel deutscher und dänischer Grabinschriften

The article examines the emotive influence of visual elements on the reception of German and Danish grave inscriptions. The material basis of analysis are photos of tombstones from the 19th and 20th century from cemeteries in Saxony and Copenhagen. The methodological basis is the theory of multimodal text and the starting point of the analysis is the typology of image-text relationships, which is supplemented by further observations. The study analyzes representatives of different semantic classes of visual components from different time periods. Among the most expressive and impressive sculptural representations are those with references to eschatology and the person of the deceased. In their use, two distinct strategies can be noted: the strengthening of mourning mood and the repression of the picture of death.