With its bloodthirsty images—"If the thunder of death greets me, If my open veins flow"—the God addressed repeatedly in Schubert's Gebet während der Schlacht (Prayer During the Battle, D. 171) sounds less like a Christian God than a pagan deity, perhaps Thor or Wotan. The poem by the poet-warrior Theodor Körner that Schubert set is one of a number of Körner settings from March 1815 on the subject of battle and death. That Körner was both Schubert's friend and a warrior who fell in battle two years earlier may have been part of the song's inspiration. That Napoleon had returned from banishment on Elba and was gathering a new army and that Schubert's Austria was preparing to meet them in battle may have been another part of the inspiration. And that the song does not pray to the Christian God, Schubert seems to have been rejecting in 1815 may have cinched the deal. The poem "Gebet während der Schlacht" itself is in six verses, with the last line of the first verse serving as the first line of the second verse, the last line of the second verse serving as the first line of the third verse, and so on until the last line of the sixth verse repeats the opening line of the poem. Schubert's setting of it takes the first verse with its battle imagery as an introduction, illuminating the imagery with furious tremolos, rushing scales, and dissonant chords, and then sets the remaining five verses to heroic strophic music.

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