The year World War I began, the sculptor Ernst Barlach cast "The Avenger" (1914), a powerful and ambiguous work showing an onrushing figure with a sword raised high. The sculpture's enlivened dynamism conjures the ominous patriotic tensions that seethed in Germany in the months leading to the war. The following year Barlach volunteered for the German reserve infantry,
Yet the title of the sculpture seems a kind of chastisement to Barlach's older self. The artist served just three months in the military before being discharged due to a heart ailment that was no doubt worsened by the battlefield horrors he witnessed.
Returning to civilian life a committed pacifist, his subsequent artistic trajectory was defined by the experience as he railed against man's inhumanity to man.