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Popular Culture Review
that it is April 30, the night of the popular European festival in which people for
centuries have greeted the arrival of spring by dancing around a bonfire and
jumping through the flames. It is a pagan tradition still celebrated today in the
Harz Mountain range. After Charles the Great defeated the Saxons, the Church
forbade the festival, calling the dance around the fire a Hexentanz (dance of the
witches). This verdict makes the festival, especially the dance, attractive for the
Gothic scene. As is well known, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy interpreted the
Walpurgis Night musically in Opus 60: Die erste Walpurgisnacht (The First
Walpurgis Night), and Johann Wolfgang Goethe m