Ritter, Tod und Teufel (Postcard)

by Albrecht Dürer, 1513

Matte card with blank back for a message.

Used as artwork on:
Abigor - Channeling the Quintessence of Satan (1999)
Absurd - Raubritter (2004)
Gravewurm - Funeral Empire (2009)
Benighted in Sodom - A Derelict Heaven (2006)

What would we otherwise know to name which amid the desolation and weariness of contemporary culture could awaken some comforting expectation for the future? We peer in vain for a single, powerful, branching root, for a spot of fertile and healthy soil: everywhere dust, sand, ossification, decay. Here a desperate, isolated man could not choose a better symbol than the knight with Death and the Devil, as Dürer has drawn him for us, the knight in armour with the hard iron gaze, who knows how to make his way along his terrible path, without being dismayed at his horrific companions, and yet without any hope, alone with his horse and hound. Such a Dürer knight was our Schopenhauer: he lacked all hope, but he wanted the truth. There is no one like him.
- excerpt from The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1872