Soldier

ADOLF SCHNIEDER

Born November 8^th, 1884 – Died July 10^th, 1916

He died

For the Fatherland

The dramatic gravestone of Adolf Schnieder, a German soldier who died in World War I, stands in a shaded recess in the Main Cemetery in Frankfurt, Germany.  The center column of the gravestone has a carved bas-relief sculpture and the inscription with the deceased soldier’s name, birth and death date.  The column is flanked on each side by side panels and broken columns with cherubs standing atop.  At the base of the center column is a helmet, rifle, and strap denoting the Adolf Schneider’s service.

The bas-relief sculpture depicts the cloaked and skeletal figure of the Grim Reaper, the personification of Death.  Some believe that the origin of the reaper is from the Greek myth of Charon, the ferryman.  Since ancient times, the imagery of the soul crossing a river was created to explain how the soul went from one realm to the other.  This vivid imagery has long been a part of the symbolism of death in iconography and word.

In Greek mythology, the River Styx wrapped its way around Hades (the Underworld) nine times.  To cross from this life to the next, the dead had to pay with a coin to be ferried from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead.  The toll was placed in the mouth of the deceased to pay Charon, the ferryman.  It was said that if the dead person did not have the coin, he was destined to wander the shores of the River Styx for a century.

Here, the Grim Reaper is holding an hourglass. There are several expressions in the American lexicon that refer to the hourglass and express how fleeting our time on this Earth is, how this temporal life is short. The grand old soap opera, Days of Our Lives, has as their catchphrase, “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”  Life measured by the grains of sand slip through one side of the hourglass to the other in a flash.  The Grim Reaper is signifying that the soldier’s time is up. 

The Grim Reaper’s other hand is raised ominously stopping the equestrian soldier in his tracks.