The Railroad Viaduct

In April 1914 Kirchner moved into a flat and studio on Koernerstrasse in Steglitz, then a suburb south of Berlin, right beside the cutting the Wannsee railway runs through. This is the view from his window, looking down at the road bridge at Friedenau, with rails, roadway and buildings compressed into one tight net of lines. He had spent recent summers on the Baltic island of Fehmarn painting dunes and bathers, and a fragment of one of those landscapes is still there on the back of this canvas. He turned it round and put the city on the other side. War was declared four months after he moved in. Kirchner went into the army as a driver in 1915, broke down that autumn and was discharged, and his Berlin street pictures stop around then.