Pro Patria

The spirit of the American soldier is celebrated in this beautifully-rendered sculpture of a young man draped in a flag. While the piece reflects both aspiration and valor, the artist, Henry Hering, suggested that the man reaching upward in exultation may also be interpreted as a soldier grasping for the olive branch of peace. The sculpture sits on the steps of the World War Memorial in downtown Indianapolis.  The phrase pro patria means “for country” in Latin; a famous ode by the Roman poet Horace (1st c. B.C.E.) has the line “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” which means “it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.” The line from Horace is also used, sarcastically, as the title of a poem by Wilfred Owen about the horrors of World War I, published in 1920. The dual implication of the phrase may well have been intentionally used by the artist, who would have been well familiar with both poems.

Henry Hering was an American sculptor born in New York City. He was a student of Augustus Saint-Gaudens at Cooper Union and of Philip Martiny at the Art Students League of New York. He then went to Paris where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1928 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member and became a full Academician in 1937. Hering is well known for his work as an architectural sculptor. Much of his work consists of allegorical figures done in the Beaux-Arts tradition, although a few of his later works, such as the detailing in Severance Hall and the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge in Cleveland, Ohio, were done in the Art Deco style. Hering’s reputation as a sculptor decreased as International Modernism dispensed with architectural, figurative and allegorical work. As with many other such artists, Hering’s oeuvre is now being reexamined in a more positive light.