The Lone Soldier
In her book “Elizabeth in Rugen” (1904), Elizabeth von Arnim, writes of finding a grave of a Finnish soldier who died in 1806 in a wood on the island of Rugen. She wonders who he was and why he was buried in an isolated spot way from other graves. “What had this man done or left undone that he should have been shut out from the company of those who are buried in churchyards”. (1) Six years after the soldier died, the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich painted “The Chasseur in the Forest” which shows a lone French cavalryman walked into, and dwarfed by, a dark, threatening forest . Simon Schama points out its significance to a German viewer; the raven in the foreground “is singing its song of death to the isolated French chasseur” and the “hapless chasseur” is being pulled into “nowhere good”.(2)
Could Friedrich have been inspired by the lonely grave? He was born at Griefswald opposite the island of Rugen and visited it on a number of occasions including in 1806. (3) It would be good to think that the soldier had not died totally in vain.
(1) Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth in Rugen (1904, Virago edition 1990 ), 177-9.
(2) Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (1995), plate 13 and p107.
(3) William Vaughan, Helmut Borsch-Supan and Hans Joachim Neidhart, Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840: Romantic Landscape Painting in Dresden (1972), 110.
In her book “Elizabeth in Rugen” (1904), Elizabeth von Arnim, writes of finding a grave of a Finnish soldier who died in 1806 in a wood on the island of Rugen. She wonders who he was and why he was buried in an isolated spot way from other graves. “What had this man done or left undone that he should have been shut out from the company of those who are buried in churchyards”. (1) Six years after the soldier died, the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich painted “The Chasseur in the Forest” which shows a lone French cavalryman walked into, and dwarfed by, a dark, threatening forest . Simon Schama points out its significance to a German viewer; the raven in the foreground “is singing its song of death to the isolated French chasseur” and the “hapless chasseur” is being pulled into “nowhere good”.(2)
Could Friedrich have been inspired by the lonely grave? He was born at Griefswald opposite the island of Rugen and visited it on a number of occasions including in 1806. (3) It would be good to think that the soldier had not died totally in vain.
(1) Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth in Rugen (1904, Virago edition 1990 ), 177-9.
(2) Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (1995), plate 13 and p107.
(3) William Vaughan, Helmut Borsch-Supan and Hans Joachim Neidhart, Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840: Romantic Landscape Painting in Dresden (1972), 110.
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