Eckhart Tolle, a spiritual teacher and author, has had a profound impact on millions of people around the world with his teachings on mindfulness, presence, and the power of the present moment. Through his books, lectures, and retreats, Tolle has inspired countless individuals to embark on a journey of self-discovery and inner transformation.

Born in Germany in 1948, Tolle experienced a turbulent and challenging early life. He struggled with anxiety, depression, and a deep sense of unhappiness. However, at the age of 29, he had a transformative spiritual experience that forever changed the course of his life. He describes this moment as a profound awakening, a sudden realization of the eternal Now and a dissolution of the egoic self.

Following his awakening, Tolle immersed himself in the study and exploration of various spiritual traditions, philosophy, and psychology. He combined the wisdom from these disciplines with his own personal insights to develop a unique approach to spiritual awakening and personal growth.

Tolle’s teachings revolve around the concept of presence, which he defines as the state of being fully engaged in the present moment, free from the incessant chatter of the mind. He emphasizes that true happiness and inner peace can only be found by living in the present moment rather than dwelling on the past or anxiously anticipating the future.

One of Tolle’s most influential works is his book “The Power of Now,” published in 1997. In this seminal work, he explores the concept of presence in depth, offering practical advice on how to cultivate mindfulness and overcome the grip of the egoic mind. The book became an international bestseller and struck a chord with readers from all walks of life, leading to Tolle’s rise to global prominence.

Tolle’s teachings resonate with people because they offer a profound shift in perspective. He challenges the notion that our identity is defined by our thoughts, emotions, and external circumstances. Instead, he invites individuals to reconnect with their inner essence, the unchanging presence that lies beyond the fluctuations of the mind.

Through his teachings, Tolle encourages individuals to observe their thoughts and emotions without judgment, to transcend the ego’s incessant need for identification, and to embrace a state of inner stillness and peace. He suggests that this shift in consciousness not only leads to personal fulfillment but also has the potential to bring about a collective transformation, leading to a more peaceful and harmonious world.

Apart from “The Power of Now,” Tolle has also authored other notable books, including “A New Earth” and “Stillness Speaks,” which further explore the themes of presence, awakening, and spiritual enlightenment. His teachings have been widely praised for their simplicity, clarity, and transformative power.

In addition to his books, Tolle has reached a vast audience through his public lectures and retreats, where he imparts his teachings and engages in insightful dialogues with attendees. His ability to communicate complex spiritual concepts in a relatable and accessible manner has made him a sought-after speaker, drawing large crowds eager to learn from his wisdom.

Eckhart Tolle’s impact extends far beyond the realm of spirituality. His teachings have influenced individuals from various backgrounds, including psychologists, therapists, and even business leaders, who have incorporated his principles into their work to foster greater well-being and success.

In a world characterized by constant distractions, information overload, and a prevailing sense of disconnection, Eckhart Tolle’s teachings offer a much-needed antidote. By reminding us of the transformative power of presence and the beauty of the present moment, Tolle inspires individuals to lead more meaningful, fulfilling lives.

Ultimately, Eckhart Tolle’s contribution to the field of spirituality and personal growth is immeasurable. His teachings have touched the lives of millions, empowering them to transcend their limiting beliefs, find inner peace, and awaken to their true nature. In a fast-paced world yearning for deeper meaning and connection, Tolle’s teachings continue to be a guiding light, leading individuals towards a more conscious and awakened existence.

Portrait of Katharina von Bora by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1526 Oil on panel

Katharina von Bora, after her wedding Katharina Luther, also referred to as “die Lutherin”, was the wife of Martin Luther, German reformer and a seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation. Beyond what is found in the writings of Luther and some of his contemporaries, little is known about her.

Born into a noble but poor family on 29 January 1499 in Lippendorf, Katharina was only five when she was sent away to school and eventually took vows to become a nun. After several years of religious life, Katharina became interested in the growing reform movement and grew dissatisfied with her life in the monastery. At some point, copies of Luther’s fiery pamphlets attacking celibacy and monastic orders may have inspired Katharina and others to reject their vows and leave the cloister. Conspiring with several other nuns to flee in secrecy, she contacted Luther and begged for his assistance. On Easter Eve, 4 April 1523, Luther sent Leonhard Köppe, a city councilman of Torgau and merchant who regularly delivered herring to the monastery. Katharina and 11 of her fellow nuns hid in a wagon and escaped from their Cistercian convent. Once the wagon arrived in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, she was taken in by the family of none other than Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Martin Luther, as the script reads, depicted by Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1526

Katharina had a number of suitors, including Wittenberg University alumnus Jerome (Hieronymus) Baumgärtner (1498–1565) of Nuremberg and a pastor, Kaspar Glatz of Orlamünde. None of the proposed matches resulted in marriage. She told Luther’s friend and fellow reformer, Nikolaus von Amsdorf, that she would be willing to marry only Luther or von Amsdorf himself.

In terms of marriage prospects, Martin Luther wasn’t necessarily a natural pick. The middle-aged theology professor was known to be loud, argumentative, and judgmental. He was always on the road, came from a common family, and didn’t have enough money to buy a wedding ring. The pope himself had compared the German theologian to a wild boar, declared him a heretic, and ordered all of his writings burned.

Philipp Melanchthon, one of Luther’s closest friends, was shocked at the idea of Luther marrying. He believed a wedding would cause a scandal that could severely damage the Reformation and its cause. On the other hand, Luther’s father supported his son, as did Cranach. After pondering the matter for some time, Luther decided that “his marriage would please his father, rile the pope, cause the angels to laugh, and the devils to weep.” The result was the joining of a 42-year-old former monk and a 26-year-old former nun in holy matrimony on June 13, 1525.

Martin Luther marries Katharina von Bora. Painting by Wilhelm Linnig d.J. um 1880. Eisenach. Wartburg. ©Bildarchiv-Foto-Marburg / Rolf-W.Nehrdich

By all accounts, it was a happy and affectionate marriage. Luther wrote that he loved waking up to see pigtails on the pillow next to him. He also admired Katharina’s intellect, calling her “Doctora Lutherin.”

The couple took up residence in the “Black Cloister” (Augusteum), the former dormitory and educational institution for Augustinian friars studying in Wittenberg, given as a wedding gift by the reform-minded John, Elector of Saxony, who was the brother of Luther’s protector Frederick III, Elector of Saxony.

Katharina immediately took on the task of administering and managing the monastery’s vast holdings, breeding and selling cattle and running a brewery to provide for their family, the steady stream of students who boarded with them, and visitors seeking audiences with her husband. In times of widespread illness, Katharina operated a hospital on site, ministering to the sick alongside other nurses.

Three paintings of Katharina Von Bora, the wife of Martin Luther.

The Luthers’ 21-year marriage was an arrangement unusual for their era. While Luther spent his time teaching, preaching, and writing, Katharina worked tirelessly to keep the family business running. After marrying Luther, Katharina turned a three-story former monastery building into the 16^th-century equivalent of a hotel, dormitory, and conference center.

While local students and visiting professors boarded in the rooms upstairs, paying top rates for access to Luther’s ideas and prestige, Katharina invested the income in a growing portfolio that eventually included a large farm, multiple gardens, fish ponds, and fruit orchards. Letters and account books show the Luthers owned more cows and pigs than anyone in Wittenberg, a town of several thousand at the time. On top of all that, Katharina ran a household brewery that produced 8,800 pints of ale each year.

Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora, image via https://goo.gl/cEpbvv

Luther called her the “boss of Zulsdorf,” after the name of the farm they owned, and the “morning star of Wittenberg” for her habit of rising at 4 a.m. to take care of her various responsibilities. He also called her “Lord Katie” in some of the 21 surviving letters he wrote to her.

Martin Luther, his wife Katharina and their children at home, image via https://goo.gl/cEpbvv

Although we know little of Katharina’s own views about her unusual life, we do know that she loved her husband deeply. After his death in 1546, she wrote: “He gave so much of himself in service not only to one town or to one country, but to the whole world. Yes, my sorrow is so deep that no words can express my heartbreak, and it is humanly impossible to understand what state of mind and spirit I am in . . . I can neither eat nor drink, not even sleep . . . God knows that when I think of having lost him, I can neither talk nor write in all my suffering.”

While fleeing the plague in Wittenberg in 1552, Katharina died in Torgau after a terrible accident with her wagon and horses. She was 53 years old.

By the time of Katharina’s death, the surviving Luther children were adults. After Katharina’s death, the Black Cloister was sold back to the university in 1564 by his heirs. Hans studied law and became a court advisor. Martin studied theology but never had a regular pastoral call. Paul became a physician. He fathered six children and the male line of the Luther family continued through him to John Ernest Luther, ending in 1759.

Margareta Luther, born in Wittenberg on December 27, 1534, married into a noble, wealthy Prussian family, to Georg von Kunheim (Wehlau, July 1, 1523 – Mühlhausen, October 18, 1611, the son of Georg von Kunheim (1480–1543) and wife Margarethe, Truchsessin von Wetzhausen (1490–1527)) but died in Mühlhausen in 1570 at the age of thirty-six. Her descendants have continued to modern times, including German President Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) and the Counts zu Eulenburg and Princes zu Eulenburg und Hertefeld.

Rudolf Epp, Selbstporträt

Rudolf Epp (July 30, 1834 – August 8, 1910) was a German realist painter, associated with the Munich School.

Rudolf Epp was born in 1834 in Eberbach am Neckar, the son of a decorative painter. After he had started drawing from his own initiative and was artistically active, he was first taught by the landscape painter Karl Ludwig Seeger. He then studied at the Grand Ducal Baden School of Art Karlsruhe as a student of Johann Wilhelm Schirmer and Ludwig Des Coudres and attended the Academy of Arts in Dusseldorf.

Due to his obvious talent he was on leave by the then regent and later Grand Duke Friedrich I of Baden from military service. A Grand Ducal contract and additional funds allowed Epp a study trip to the Black Forest. Around 1859 he made numerous landscape studies in the area around Freiburg im Breisgau and Landstuhl.

Rudolf Epp is representative of many of these artists who soon fell into oblivion and to this day are summarized under the generic term of the “Munich School”. Epp has managed to remain true to his artistic forms of expression and not to succumb to the artificial and exaggerated clichés of the bourgeois consumer class. His motifs are lifelike and describe life at the end of the 19th century without distinction. This makes them attractive to this day and to art and cultural historical valuable testimonials. He was a constantly seeking and progressive in his development master, who did not freeze after five decades of painting in artistic routine, as is often the case with successful painters, but remained stylistically varied. The number of his works is in the hundreds. Many motives he painted several times.

In 1862 he married Katharina, b. Steibl. After the death of the director he moved to Munich in 1863, which was considered the center of art. Carl Theodor von Piloty, who would become director of the academy from 1874 to 1886, invited him there. In Munich, Epp quickly gained a good reputation as a sought-after painter.

In 1868 his son Franz Ritter von Epp was born; 1870 followed the birth of the daughter Helene, 1871, the second daughter, Augusta Anna was born. She remained unmarried until Epps’s death and lived in her parents’ home. Augusta Anna served her father as a model for various portraits and figural representations.

Main component of his artistic work are mainly smaller genre pieces. The fine moods and the skilful combination of finely colored landscape and unaffected natural figures give his paintings a special artistic statement. The humorous picture statements and the lovingly complementary picture details were very well received by the public. The art of Rudolf Epps was also appreciated overseas and a considerable number of his paintings were already sold during his lifetime in the US and found not only as originals but also as reproductions. Motifs after Epp adorned around 1890 the first magazines. Colored postcards (lithographs) with Epp motifs were distributed both in Europe and in North America. Some of his paintings were part of the special commission Linz and went into the possession of the Federal Republic of Germany after the Second World War. Even today, Epp’s motifs as art prints and templates for tapestries enjoy great popularity.

Rudolf Epp was active as a painter until old age, he died in 1910 in Munich. His estate was several years in the Lenbachhaus, the luxurious mansion of his 1904 deceased painter friend Franz von Lenbach in Munich. Part of his estate was auctioned in 1914 by Hugo Helbing in Munich.

The Rudolf-Epp-Straße in Eberbach is named after him.

Bayerische Wirtsstube, 1897

Works of Rudolf Epp are in numerous public collections, u. a. Mannheim Art Gallery, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Kunsthalle Bremen, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum (Cologne) and Neue Pinakothek (Munich). Three works are also owned by the Widener University Art Collection & Gallery, Chester, Pennsylvania.

Johann Julius Hecker (December 2, 1707 – June 24, 1768) was a German educator who established the first Realschule and Prussia’s first teacher-education institution.

Hecker was born to a family of educators in Werden, then part of Prussia. As a young man, he formed an interest in theology and was drawn to pietism and the ideas of August Hermann Francke. After completing the gymnasium in Essen, he studied theology, ancient languages, medicine, and natural sciences at the University of Halle. In 1729 he became a teacher in the Francke Pädagogium, teaching every subject, including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, religion, history, arithmetic, botany, anatomy, physiology, and chemistry.

In 1735, Prussian king Frederick William I appointed Hecker to the position of pastor and school inspector for the Militärwaisenhaus in Potsdam, a home and school for the children and orphans of military personnel. A sermon that Hecker delivered in 1738 so impressed Frederick William that he appointed Hecker to be the first pastor of the new Trinity Church in Berlin, which was consecrated in 1739.

In his role as pastor of Trinity Church, Hecker started six four-class elementary schools for education of the local populace. The schools were initially financed from Hecker’s personal funds, a school lottery, and private donations.

In 1747 he founded the first Realschule, the “Economic-mathematical Realschule” in Berlin, in which young people who were not suited for a traditional classical education could obtain a practical education to prepare them for careers in fields such as business, manufacturing, and the fine arts. The school emphasized visual and hands-on instruction, including visits to factories and artisans’ workshops, instead of rote learning. In 1748, Hecker established a seminary for the training of teachers, the first such institution in Prussia.

Frederick William’s son Frederick II (known as Frederick the Great), who became king of Prussia in 1740, was a proponent of Hecker’s work. With the king’s encouragement, Hecker started a garden near his school. In addition to vegetables, herbs, and fruit trees, the garden included a mulberry plantation for the purpose of silk production.

Hecker’s educational work was a major influence on the formulation of Prussia’s first general school law, issued by Frederick II in 1763, which formed the basis for a system of state-supported primary schools.

Hans Spemann (born June 27, 1869, Stuttgart, Württemberg – died Sept. 12, 1941, Freiburg im Breisgau, Ger.), German embryologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1935 for his discovery of the effect now known as embryonic induction, the influence exercised by various parts of the embryo that directs the development of groups of cells into particular tissues and organs.

Spemann, initially a medical student, attended the universities of Heidelberg, Munich, and Würzburg and graduated in zoology, botany, and physics. He worked at the Zoological Institute of Würzburg (1894–1908), held a professorship at Rostock (1908–14), was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin (1914–19), and occupied the chair of zoology at Freiburg (1919–35).

Hans Spemann was born in Stuttgart, the eldest son of publisher Wilhelm Spemann and his wife Lisinka, née Hoffman. After he left school in 1888 he spent a year in his father’s business, then, in 1889–1890, he did military service in the Kassel Hussars followed by a short time as a bookseller in Hamburg. In 1891 he entered the University of Heidelberg where he studied medicine, taking his preliminary examination in 1893. There he met the biologist and psychologist Gustav Wolff who had begun experiments on the embryological developments of newts and shown that, if the lens of a developing newt’s eye is removed, it regenerates.

In 1892 Spemann married Klara Binder with whom he had two sons. In 1893–1894 he moved to the University of Munich for clinical training but decided, rather than becoming a clinician, to move to the Zoological Institute at the University of Würzburg, where he remained as a lecturer until 1908. His degree in zoology, botany, and physics, awarded in 1895, followed study under Theodor Boveri, Julius Sachs and Wilhelm Röntgen.

For his Ph.D. thesis under Boveri, Spemann studied cell lineage in the parasitic worm Strongylus paradoxus, for his teaching diploma, the development of the middle ear in the frog.

Spemann-Mangold transplantation experiment

Spemann’s name will always be associated with his work on experimental embryology. He made himself a master of micro-surgical technique and, working on the relatively large eggs of amphibians he discovered in 1924, together with Hilde Mangold, the existence of an area in the embryo, the portions of which, upon transplantation into an indifferent part of a second embryo there organized (induced) secondary embryonic primordia. The name «organizer center» or «organizer» was therefore given by him to those parts. For this discovery of the organizer effect in embryonic development, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1935.

Later Spemann showed that different parts of the organization center produce different parts of the embryo. The anterior parts of it tend to produce parts of the head, and the posterior parts of it parts of the tail. Further, tail organizers, when they are grafted into the head region of another embryo, may produce heads instead of tails, the reason being that they are influenced by the head organizer in their new environment.

Earlier Spemann had transplanted the optic cups of new embryos into the outermost layer of the region of the abdomen and had found that they induced the production, in this new situation, of a lens of the eye. This was interpreted as being evidence of the existence of secondary organizers which operate after the induction exerted by the primary organizer has been completed.

By these and other experiments of a similar kind Spemann laid the foundations of the theory of embryonic induction by organizers, which led later to biochemical studies of this process and the ultimate development of the modern science of experimental morphogenesis. He described his researches in his book Embryonic Development and Induction (1938).

Spemann died at Freiburg on September 9, 1941.

Karl Freiherr von Drais (born on 29 April 1785 in Karlsruhe – died on 10 December 1851 in Karlsruhe as well) was a German forest official and significant inventor in the Biedermeier period.

Drais was a prolific inventor, who invented the Laufmaschine (“running machine”), also later called the Velocipede, Draisine (English) or draisienne (French), also nicknamed “the hobby horse” or “dandy horse”. This was his most popular and widely recognized invention. It incorporated the two-wheeler principle that is basic to the bicycle and motorcycle and was the beginning of mechanized personal transport.

Karl von Drais on his original Laufmaschine, the earliest two-wheeler, in 1819

This was the earliest form of a bicycle, without pedals. His first reported ride from Mannheim to the “Schwetzinger Relaishaus” (a coaching inn, located in “Rheinau”, today a district of Mannheim) took place on 12 June 1817 using Baden’s best road. Karl rode his bike; it was a distance of about 7 km (4.3 mi). The round trip took him a little more than an hour, but may be seen as the big bang for horseless transportation. However, after marketing the Velocipede it became apparent that roads were so rutted by carriages that it was hard to balance on the machine for long, so Velocipede riders took to the sidewalks and moved far too quickly, endangering pedestrians. Consequently, authorities in Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and even Calcutta banned its use, and after its brief moment in the limelight, the dandy-horse quickly faded into oblivion.

Drais also invented the earliest typewriter with a keyboard (1821). He later developed an early stenograph machine which used 16 characters (1827), a device to record piano music on paper (1812), the first meat grinder, and a wood-saving cooker including the earliest hay chest. He also invented two four-wheeled human powered vehicles (1813-1814), the second of which he presented in Vienna to the congress carving up Europe after Napoleon’s defeat. In later years he developed a foot-driven human powered railroad vehicle (1840) whose name “Draisine” is used even today for railroad handcars.

Drais was unable to market his inventions for profit because he was still a civil servant of Baden, even though he was being paid without providing active service. As a result, on 12 January 1818, Drais was awarded a grand-ducal privilege (Großherzogliches Privileg) to protect his inventions for 10 years in Baden by the younger Grand Duke Karl. Grand Duke Karl also appointed Drais Professor of Mechanics. This was merely an honorary title, not related to any university or other institution. Drais retired from the civil service and was awarded a pension for his appointment to Professor for Mechanical Science.

Иeing the fervent radical, Drais gave up his title of Baron in 1849б and dropped the “von” from his name. Subsequently, after the revolution collapsed, he was in a very bad position. The royalists tried to have him certified as mad and locked up. His pension was confiscated to help to pay for the “costs of revolution” after it was suppressed by the Prussians.

Karl Drais died penniless on 10 December 1851 in Karlsruhe. The house in which he lived last is just two blocks away from where at that time young Carl Benz was raised.

Carl von Linde in 1868

Carl von Linde was a German engineer (born on June 11, 1842 – died on November 16, 1934). Linde was best known for his refrigeration and gas separation technologies.

Carl von Linde was the first person to extract oxygen gas from the air, making it a commercially viable product and thus launching the industrial gas industry. He also developed modern refrigeration.

The discovery of oxygen and investigation of its role in chemical reactions was of crucial importance in changing the science of chemistry. Initially, however, the discovery had little impact outside the laboratory since oxygen could be produced only in the lab and in limited quantities by chemical or electrolytic means. It was the achievement of Carl von Linde in 1902 to take oxygen from the air itself, and he was soon extracting it in quantities approaching 1,000 cubic feet per hour. Oxygen became a common commodity that was supplied to hospitals and industries and was later used in rocket fuel.

Born in Berndorf, Germany as the son of a German-born minister and Swedish mother, was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, but took another direction entirely. Von Linde’s family moved to Münich, Bavaria in 1854 and eight years later he started a course in engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland, where his teachers included Rudolf Clausius, Gustav Zeuner and Franz Reuleaux.

Cylinders of oxygen being loaded on a tractor-trailer truck (1914) owned by the Linde Air Products Company. Photo credit Praxair, Inc.

In 1864, he was expelled before graduating for participating in a student protest, but Reuleaux found him a position as an apprentice at the Kottern cotton-spinning plant in Kempten. Linde stayed only a short time before moving first to Borsig in Berlin and then to the new Krauss locomotive factory in Munich, where he worked as head of the technical department. Von Linde married Helene Grimm in September 1866; their marriage lasted 53 years and they had six children.

In 1868 Linde learned of a new university opening in Munich (the Technische Hochschule) and immediately applied for a job as a lecturer; he was accepted—at the age of 26—for the position. He became a full professor of mechanical engineering in 1872, and set up an engineering lab where students such as Rudolf Diesel studied.

His research there on heat theory, from 1873 to 1877, led to his invention of the first reliable and efficient compressed-ammonia refrigerator. The company he established to promote this invention was an international success: refrigeration rapidly displaced ice in food handling and was introduced into many industrial processes.

Carl von Linde in 1925

After a decade Linde withdrew from managerial activities to refocus on research, and in 1895 he succeeded in liquefying air by first compressing it and then letting it expand rapidly, thereby cooling it. He then obtained oxygen and nitrogen from the liquid air by slow warming. In the early days of oxygen production, the biggest use by far for the gas was the oxyacetylene torch, invented in France in 1904, which revolutionized metal cutting and welding in the construction of ships, skyscrapers, and other iron and steel structures.

In 1897, Linde was appointed to the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown and ennobled in accordance with its statutes.

In addition to Linde’s technical and engineering abilities, he was a successful entrepreneur. He formed many successful partnerships in Germany and internationally, working effectively to exploit the value of his patents and knowledge through licensing arrangements.

One company formed to use Linde’s later patents was the Linde Air Products Company, founded in Cleveland in 1907. In 1917 Linde Air Products joined with four other companies that produced acetylene, among other products, to form Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation. In 1992, Linde Air again became an independent company—Praxair.

Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1865

Franz Xaver Winterhalter (20 April 1805 – 8 July 1873) was a German artist best known for his airy, idealized portraits of European royalty that were influenced by the Rococo and Neoclassical painting.

Born in a small village in Germany’s Black Forest, Franz Xaver Winterhalter left his home to study painting at the academy in Munich. Before becoming court painter to Louis-Philippe, the king of France, he joined a circle of French artists in Rome. In 1835, after he painted the German Grand Duke and Duchess of Baden, Winterhalter’s international career as a court portrait painter was launched. Although he never received high praise for his work in his native Germany, the royal families of England, France, and Belgium all commissioned him to paint portraits. His monumental canvases established a substantial popular reputation, and lithographic copies of the portraits helped to spread his fame.

Winterhalter’s portraits were prized for their subtle intimacy, but his popularity among patrons came from his ability to create the image his sitters wished or needed to project to their subjects. He was able to capture the moral and political climate of each court, adapting his style to each client until it seemed as if his paintings acted as press releases, issued by a master of public relations.

After attending school at a Benedictine monastery in St. Blasien, Winterhalter left Menzenschwand in 1818 at the age of 13 to study drawing and engraving. He trained as a draughtsman and lithographer in the workshop of Karl Ludwig Schüler in Freiburg im Breisgau. In 1823, at the age of eighteen, he went to Munich, sponsored by the industrialist Baron von Eichtal. In 1825, he was granted a stipend by Ludwig I, Grand Duke of Baden and began a course of study at the Academy of Arts in Munich with Peter von Cornelius, whose academic methods made him uncomfortable. Winterhalter found a more congenial mentor in the fashionable portraitist Joseph Stieler. During this time, he supported himself working as lithographer.

Grand Duke Leopold of Baden by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Winterhalter entered court circles when in 1828 he became drawing master to Sophie Margravine of Baden, at Karlsruhe. His opportunity to establish himself beyond southern Germany came in 1832 when he was able to travel to Italy in 1833–1834, with the support of Grand Duke Leopold of Baden. In Rome he composed romantic genre scenes in the manner of Louis Léopold Robert and attached himself to the circle of the director of the French Academy, Horace Vernet. On his return to Karlsruhe he painted portraits of the Grand Duke Leopold of Baden and his wife, and was appointed painter to the grand-ducal court.

Nevertheless, he left Baden to move to France, where his Italian genre scene Il dolce Farniente attracted notice at the Salon of 1836. Il Decameron a year later was also praised; both paintings are academic compositions in the style of Raphael. In the Salon of 1838 he exhibited a portrait of the Prince of Wagram with his young daughter. His career as a portrait painter was soon secured when in the same year he painted Louise Marie of Orleans, Queen of the Belgians, and her son. It was probably through this painting that Winterhalter came to the notice of Maria Amalia of the Two Sicilies, Queen of the French, mother of the Queen of the Belgians.

Barbe Dmitrievna Mergassov Madame Rimsky-Korsakov (1864), oil on canvas, 117 × 90 cm, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

In Paris, Winterhalter quickly became fashionable. He was appointed court painter of Louis-Philippe, the king of the French, who commissioned him to paint individual portraits of his large family. Winterhalter would execute more than thirty commissions for him.

This success earned the painter the reputation of a specialist in dynastic and aristocratic portraiture, skilled in combining likeness with flattery and enlivening official pomp with modern fashion.

However, Winterhalter’s reputation in artistic circles suffered. The critics, who had praised his debut in the salon of 1836, dismissed him as a painter who could not be taken seriously. This attitude persisted throughout Winterhalter’s career, condemning his work to a category of his own in the hierarchy of painting. Winterhalter himself regarded his first royal commissions as a temporary intermission before returning to subject painting and the field of academic respectability, but he was a victim of his own success, and for the rest of his life he worked almost exclusively as a portrait painter. His success in this field made him rich. Winterhalter became an international celebrity enjoying Royal patronage.

Elisabeth of Bavaria, Empress of Austria (1865), oil on canvas, 255 × 133 cm, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Over the course of his career, the artist was commissioned to paint Empress Eugenie, Princess Leonilla, and Queen Victoria, among others. However, he is most commonly associated with his renderings of Elizabeth “Sissi,” Empress of Austria, in which he showcases her expensive garments and flowing brown hair. Born on April 20, 1805 in Menzenschwand, Germany, Winterhalter studied at the Academy of Arts in Munich under the painter Peter von Cornelius. His was employed as drawing master to Sophie Margavine of Baden, and was soon after to serve as court painter King Louis-Phillipe of France. In 1841, Winterhalter served as the official court painter to Queen Victoria, producing a number of images of the queen and her family which were distributed across Britain. At the height of his career, the artist received an overwhelming number of commissions and many of his portraits were executed by his assistants. Winterhalter died on July 8, 1873 in Frankfurt, Germany at the age of 68. His work is currently held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery of London, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Portrait of Caspar David Friedrich, Gerhard von Kügelgen c. 1810–20

Caspar David Friedrich, (born on September 5, 1774, Greifswald, Pomerania [now in Germany] – died on May 7, 1840, Dresden, Saxony), was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. His vast, mysterious, atmospheric landscapes and seascapes proclaimed human helplessness against the forces of nature and did much to establish the idea of the Sublime as a central concern of Romanticism.

Friedrich’s paintings characteristically set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs “the viewer’s gaze towards their metaphysical dimension”.

Friedrich studied from 1794 to 1798 at the Copenhagen Academy, one of the most progressive art schools of the day. Though he was taught by many painters, the school did not offer a course in painting. He settled at Dresden and became a member of an artistic and literary circle that included the painter Philipp Otto Runge and the writers Ludwig Tieck and Novalis.

The Tetschen Altar, or The Cross in the Mountains (1807)

His drawings in sepia, executed in his neat early style, won the poet J.W. von Goethe’s approval and half of the prize from the Weimar Art Society in 1805. His first important oil painting, The Cross in the Mountains (c. 1807; also called the Tetschen Altarpiece), established his mature style, characterized by an overwhelming sense of stillness and isolation, and was an attempt to replace the traditional symbology of religious painting with one drawn from nature.

Other symbolic landscapes, such as The Sea of Ice (1822; also called The Wreck of the Hope; now lost), which makes reference to Sir William Parry’s polar expedition, reveal his fatalism and his attitude toward Nature. Though they were based on close observation of the landscape, his works were colored by his imaginative response to the atmosphere of the Baltic coast and the Harz Mountains, which he found both awesome and ominous.

Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (1818)

On 21 January 1818, Friedrich married Caroline Bommer, the twenty-five-year-old daughter of a dyer from Dresden. The couple had three children, with their first, Emma, arriving in 1820. Physiologist and painter Carl Gustav Carus notes in his biographical essays that marriage did not impact significantly on either Friedrich’s life or personality, yet his canvasses from this period, including Chalk Cliffs on Rügen—painted after his honeymoon—display a new sense of levity, while his palette is brighter and less austere. Human figures appear with increasing frequency in the paintings of this period, which Siegel interprets as a reflection that “the importance of human life, particularly his family, now occupies his thoughts more and more, and his friends, his wife, and his townspeople appear as frequent subjects in his art.”

Around this time, he found support from two sources in Russia. In 1820, the Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich, at the behest of his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, visited Friedrich’s studio and returned to Saint Petersburg with a number of his paintings, and exchange that began a patronage that continued for many years.

The Sea of Ice (1823–24)

With dawn and dusk constituting prominent themes of his landscapes, Friedrich’s own later years were characterized by a growing pessimism. His work becomes darker, revealing a fearsome monumentality. The Wreck of the Hope (also known as The Polar Sea or The Sea of Ice (1823–24)) perhaps best summarizes Friedrich’s ideas and aims at this point, though in such a radical way that the painting was not well received. Completed in 1824, it depicted a grim subject, a shipwreck in the Arctic Ocean; “the image he produced, with its grinding slabs of travertine-colored floe ice chewing up a wooden ship, goes beyond documentary into allegory: the frail bark of human aspiration crushed by the world’s immense and glacial indifference.”

In 1835 he suffered a stroke from which he never recovered, and a second stroke in 1837 caused him almost complete paralysis. His reputation was in decline by the time of his death as the Romantic movement gave way to Realism. For a long time his work was forgotten. It was not until the late 1970s that Friedrich regained his reputation as an icon of the German Romantic movement and a painter of international importance.