A warrior in Roman armour with hammer and short sword marches towards an abyss. Mythical beasts have sunk their teeth into his naked torso. Rudolf Schlichter first painted the motif in 1932, when he was in close contact with the radically anti-democratic New Nationalists led by writer Ernst Jünger (1895–1998). Initially Schlichter used the painting to criticise the liberal political forces of the Weimar Republic. Only in the 1937 version did he reinterpret the warrior as an image of resistance to the National Socialist regime.