Die drei starken [The three strong ones]

This sculpture consists of the figures of an old woman with a rosary, a young mother with a baby in her arms and in between them, an Austrian soldier who is protecting them all. The sculpture suggests that these three individuals, whether soldiers or women, were the 'backbone' of the Austria during the First World War. They display great strength and tenacity, through their love, duty and faith to their country. The figures have a monumentality despite their small scale, with the soldier in particular, wearing a tin helmet and holding a rifle against his left leg, conveying a sense of dignity, strength and robustness.
The work was created by Josef E. Unterholzer (1896-1930) a stonemason and sculptor who served in the Austrian Army. In 1914 Unterholzer travelled to France where he apprenticed himself to a stonemason and made tombstones. He was also introduced to the sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) who accepted him as a pupil until the outbreak of the war. In 1914 he returned to Austria, enlisted in the Army and in 1918 became a prisoner of war. He continued to make small scale wooden sculptures while a POW. Unterholzer gave the sculpture to a fellow prisoner of war, Victor Pollak, who emigrated to Australia in 1939. An exhibition of Unterholzer's work was held at the Kunstlerhaus, Vienna in 1925. He is reputed to have obtained a number of commissions for small and large scale sculpture in bronze and marble as well as executing bronze medallions.