Erlkönig

The street art piece of a man riding a horse in front of Brandenburg Gate | center |symbolizes, in my opinion, the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great, an outdoor sculpture cast in bronze at the eastern end of “Unter den Linden” in Berlin, honoring King Frederick II of Prussia. One of my favorite poems has always been the Erlkönig by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Whenever I saw the sculpture of Frederick the Great, I pictured the father on his horse riding through the night, his son in his arms, surrounded by a host of natural dangers that are invisible for him but seen by his feverish son. The father tries to calm the boy with logical explanations for what the son sees – a wisp of fog, rustling leaves, shim-mering willows. At the end of the poem the child shrieks that he has been attacked. The father rides faster to his destination, but when he reaches it, his son is dead. My picture expresses a modern version of Erlkönig.