I am familiar with the death bell from my childhood. Without understanding it, I usually sensed a strange atmosphere. My parents knew most of the people in the village and often knew, or at least had a guess, who the bell was ringing for. Sometimes it seemed like a form of relief, other times the opposite.
I also find this behaviour in your place very strange. Why would anyone ring the death bell for someone several times a day? Nobody dies twice.
I don't know if this is done to stress people out. My thought is rather that if it's done too much, people will start to ignore it. Fake news, so to speak. The actual meaning is lost. Maybe that's why...?
I'm not sure if anyone can ignore the sound of a bell. I think this is a very well-chosen tool. It sticks in your subconscious and stays there. I remember very well how during Covid, maybe shortly after they declared the pandemic in the country, one evening the bell rang at 9:00 while we were sitting at the dinner table. It was that insistent alarm sound that I had never heard before. It was eerie. It reminded me somehow of the plague times of the Middle Ages. Surely the bells were rung the same way back then. And it remains. Stuck in the subconscious, even in the conscious. You think you're ignoring it, but it stays there, it goes deep.
I searched to hear your Totenglocke on YouTube, and the melody is definitely not as piercing to the senses as the traditional one here - 33 single, slow and agonizing strikes, lasting infinitely long.
Yeah, I agree. It’s like that person isn’t following procedure and is just ringing the bell anyhow. It’s weird.