Neue Deutsche Todeskunst

Neue Deutsche Todeskunst ('new German death art') is a German dark music movement of the late 1980s and 1990s that fused neoclassical composition, gothic rock and darkwave with settings of German poetry and philosophy. Named in 1991 in the magazine of the label #Danse Macabre#, it describes acts such as *Das Ich*, *Goethes Erben*, *Lacrimosa* and *Relatives Menschsein*, who set texts by Gryphius, Goethe, Nietzsche and Gottfried Benn to piano, strings and electronics. Sung entirely in German and staged theatrically, the movement treated death, faith and metaphysics as serious art rather than gothic decoration.