Germany's national war memorial is housed in the former royal guard house of the Prussians. The neoclassic building from 1819 was the first commission the famed Karl Friedrich Schinkel received in Berlin. The sole image inside is that of a woman cradling her son, though the son is an adult and has presumably lost his life on the battlefield. The sculpture is an enlargement of a pieta by Berlin artist Käthe Kollwitz. The inscription in front of the sculpture reads To the victims of war and tyranny. Above it is an open skylight that was added in 1931, when the building first became a war memorial.