Laying out the March Dead

Laying out the March Dead (German: Aufbahrung der Märzgefallenen) is an oil painting by the German artist Adolph Menzel, from 1848. It shows a crowd of people on Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt. The figures are attending the Coffin Laying of civilians who died during the Berlin March Revolution. Menzel attended the ceremony and during the event – or shortly afterward – he began work on the first studies for the painting. The lower left corner of the painting is not executed in oil paint, which is why most scholars consider it to be unfinished. Art historians disagree about the possible political or aesthetic motives of the painter for this. The painting belongs to the group of revolutionary paintings that were rarely created in Germany. Menzel did not follow the guidelines of traditional history painting with his painting. On the one hand, art critics categorized it as "historical painting of the present", on the other hand, the classification as "historical painting" was rejected altogether. The Laying out of the March Fallen initially played no role in public perception, as it remained in the painter's artist's studio. Shortly before the turn of the century, it was sold to a private gallery in Zurich and only came into the possession of the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 1902, which made it accessible to the public for the first time.