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Friday 1 February 2013

A new type of memorial?

This pic is from the National Art Gallery in Copenhagen, which my partner and I visited over Christmas.  It is called 'A Victorious Danish Soldier' (after the first Schleswig-Holstein War), by H.W. Bissen.  According to the accompanying plaque, this is the first war memorial to depict only a common soldier, rather than an officer, general or member of the royalty or nobility.  The date of its execution (1850-51) is surely not coincidental.  The First Schleswig-Holstein War (a rather bizarre, stuttering conflict won eventually by the Danes) broke out in the aftermath of the revolutionary movements of 1848.

"I found the source of the irritation!"