The Fifth Horseman
60" x 48". On the left bottom of the horse's saddle blanket is the word "DORA," the concentration camp where Isidor Hirschberger, the artist's father, died as a slave laborer in an underground factory.
Artist's Comment
For every evil under the sun
There is a remedy or there is none
If there be one, seek till you find it
If there be none, never mind it.
Docent Guide
"And now I saw a pale horse, and its rider's name was Death. And there followed after him another horse whose rider's name was Hell. They were given control of one-fourth of the earth, to kill with war and famine and disease and wild animals." Revelations 6:8
In the Book of Revelations of the Christian Bible, there is the story of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They symbolize four elements of destruction: Famine, Pestilence, War and Death.
The Horsemen are riders on four horses that have very distinct color characteristics from one another. The four horses are white, red, black, and pale. The Fifth Horseman accompanies the Fourth Horseman, and the name of the Fifth Horseman is said to be Hades or Hell. The Fifth Horseman operates in the shadows of the Fourth. Common belief, especially during the Reformation, was that one could not defend oneself or one's faith against those things that you are unable to discern with your physical senses. But do try to understand that the war that will be waged against you by the Fifth Horseman will occur on a different plane. It is a plane that the physical senses are not able to discern. And despite this apparent handicap, the Fifth Horseman will not have pity on you, and will show mercy to none.
Hirschberger's The Fifth Horseman" depicts, using the flat inverse perspective of medieval icons, a horseman with a whip. He is seated on a horse with the same flat perspective, almost as if a carousel horse, implying the cycle of violence associated with this figure goes "round and round," and repeats itself in human history. The horseman holds a can of blue Zyklon B gas, Prussic Acid used at Auschwitz and Maidanek Death camps. The 'B' in "Zyklon B" stood for the blue color it had when going through chemical change, which, according to scholars on this matter, left some blue discoloring on the walls of the gas chambers. Under the horses feet are the names of the death camps where mass killing, using this gas as well as carbon monoxide, were used. Hirschberger's depiction suggests the veracity of the legend of the Fifth Horseman, especially that this being was lurking somewhere in German society and came to the surface with the rise of NSDAP-The Nazi Party. For the principal victims, the Jews, no system based on faith was sufficient to ward off the Holocaust.
Hirschberger includes as a didactic a Mother Goose rhyme:
"For every evil under the sun
There is a remedy of there is none
If there be one, seek till you find it
If there be none, never mind it."
By using this quote, the artist reveals the dangerous language and images that can be found in fairy tales, as well as a metaphor for the intensity of the Germans in solving "their problem" of the Twentieth Century, the presence of the Jews, Gypsies and "others" who did not conform to "Aryan ideals."
The most famous depiction of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is an engraving by the German Renaissance artist, Albrecht Durer, who lived in Nuremberg, the same city that gave rise to the Nazi rallies during 1933 and 1934.