I found it very difficult to suddenly depart [from Berlin] since this year I had risen completely in the landscape and life and hardly needed awareness to access this place.

as quoted in: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: ein Künstlerleben in Selbstzeugnissen, Andreas Gabelmann; Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany 2010, p. 41 (transl. Claire Albiez ) | As Kirchner had been busying himself with nature images since the Summer of 1913, the outbreak of World War 1. brought him back to reality; as he describes here