greatest influences on him and his artistic style. Also during his travels in Russia his son Nikolaus was born on 20 August 1906, starting a two-year fight with the mother, Rosa Schwab, for the custody of the child, which Barlach was finally granted. After returning from Russia, Barlach's financial situation improved considerably, as he received a fixed salary from the art dealer Paul Cassirer in exchange for his sculptures. The formative experiences in Russia and the financial security helped him to develop his own style, focusing on the faces and hands of the people in his sculptures and reducing the other parts of the figures to a minimum. He also began to make wood carvings and bronzes of figures swathed in heavy drapery like those in early Gothic art, and in dramatic attitudes expressive of powerful emotions and a yearning for spiritual ecstasy. He also worked for the German journal Simplicissimus, and started to produce some literature. His works were shown on various exhibitions. He also spent ten months in Florence, Italy in 1909 and afterwards settled in 1910 in Güstrow in Mecklenburg, where he spent the rest of his life. In the years before World War I, Barlach was a patriotic and enthusiastic supporter of the war, awaiting a new artistic age from the war. This support for the war can also be seen in his works, as for example the statue Der Rächer (The Avenger), from December 1914. His awaited new artistic age came for him when he volunteered to join the war between 1915 and 1916 as an infantry soldier. After three months of service he was discharged due to a heart ailment, returning as a pacifist and a staunch opponent of war. The horror of the war influenced all of his subsequent works. Popularity Barlach's fame increased after the war, and he received many awards and became a member in the prestigious Preußische Akademie der Künste (Prussian Art Academy) in 1919 and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München (Munich Art Academy) in 1925. Barlach rejected a number of honorary degrees and teaching positions. In 1925 he also met Bernhard and Marga Böhmer for the first time. He received the Kleist Prize for drama in 1924 for his Die Sündflut (The Flood), in which he projects his personal mysticism onto the story of Noah and the Ark. In 1926 he wrote Der blaue Boll (translated as Squire