Auszug zum Kampf - Departure For Battle

Auszug zum Kampf – Departure for Battle

Created around 1940 for the monumental Soldatenhalle planned by architect Wilhelm Kreis in Berlin, Arno Breker’s Auszug zum Kampf (Departure for Battle) was conceived as part of an enormous sculptural program for the proposed military memorial complex. The relief depicts a procession of warriors on foot and horseback, carrying swords and banners as they advance toward battle.

Breker arranged the figures in a compressed, highly rhythmic composition of bodies, weapons, horses and standards. Classical forms are combined with the monumental heroic language characteristic of his work during this period. Contemporary plans envisioned reliefs on the Soldatenhalle’s flanking structures at approximately six metres high and eighteen metres long, turning the departure of the warriors into an architectural spectacle on an immense scale.

The building for which the work was intended was never constructed, and the relief program remained unfinished. A plaster model of Auszug zum Kampf is documented from 1940, but no completed monumental version was installed. The work survives principally through archival photography, including a series photographed by Charlotte Rohrbach around 1944. Those photographs were later confiscated by U.S. military intelligence authorities in 1945–46 and eventually entered the collection of the Library of Congress.

This edition has been meticulously restored from the surviving photographic record, with contrast, tonal depth and surface clarity carefully refined while preserving the grain and character of the original archival image. Printed on museum-grade matte paper to retain the monumental quality and historic texture of the source.

This edition is exclusively offered through Thuleism. No comparable high-resolution restored edition is widely available elsewhere.