Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 190, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1916 — Sculptor's Prophecy. [ARTICLE]

Sculptor's Prophecy.

Suddenly, in the midst of his work, Arnold Ronnebeck, who was designing the decorations for municipal bridges In Berlin, was overwhelmed by a strange and unaccountable feeling of sadness. It was not like a mood, but rather like a deep shadow cast over him and his w’ork. He was under contract to do the work, but he could not keep at it. Finally he yielded to what was for him a mysterious impulse, and let his feelings have their way with him. No one was more astonished than he when he had finished, roughly but with simple power, a figure of the crucified Christ and the mourning women. He could not explain it. He wrote to a friend: “I felt I had to do it. I could find no other symbol to express my sense of tragedy. But as soon as it was done I felt relief, and I am working again.” Did the war fling the shadow of the cross over the sensitive soul of the artist, and was his mood born of the inner knowledge that there was tol be another crucifixion, and that again throughout the world there would be women mourning at the foot of the cross upon w’hich humanity was.bleeding?—Christian Herald.