Karl wilhelm gentz biography of donald

I have been working on European history in the later nineteenth century, and specifically the role of religious and apocalyptic ideas in shaping real-world politics in in that supposedly modern and technological age. I’ll be doing several posts on that topic in coming weeks, but let me just introduce the theme here. What I have to say is highly appropriate for the Palm Sunday weekend.

Even at the end of the nineteenth century, European elites were much more deeply immersed in messianic, millenarian and apocalyptic ideas than we commonly give them credit for, and those beliefs had still greater resonance among ordinary people. Contrary to stereotype, we easily find the strong survival in that era of “medieval” religious ideas that we often dismiss as long extinct. Those ideas emerged, for instance, in attitudes towards Islam, and “crusader” rhetoric was much in evidence in attitudes towards the Ottoman Empire. It is not surprising then that the language of holy war and crusade was still so powerful during the First World War era, a theme I addressed in my 2014 book The Great and Holy War.

Still, only a century ago, Christian Europe still had a lively ideology of holy war.

Just as a sample of these trends, I offer a celebrated German painting of the era, “Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia enters Jerusalem in 1869,” by the Orientalist artist Karl Wilhelm Gentz. I reproduce a tiny image of it (public domain) but you can see a detailed version here.

Here is the background. In 1870-71, Prussia defeated France in war, leading to the proclamation of the Prussian King Wilhelm I as the Emperor of a new Germany. His son and heir was Friedrich Wilhelm, the Crown Prince depicted here.

Germany in that age had a fair claim to lead Europe in terms of intellectual, scientific and cultural achievement. The Crown Prince was a paragon of advanced liberalism, who wanted to combine German technology and science with British pol

Karl Wilhelm Gentz was a German painter.

Karl Wilhelm Gentz ​​was the second child of the businessman Johann Christian Gentz. Initially enrolled at the Berlin Friedrich Wilhelms University, he decided to study painting when he was 21 years old. He attended the renowned Atelier Kloeber and in 1845 studied for nine months at the Antwerp Academy of Art, after which he went via London to the art metropolis Paris in 1846. There he entered Paul Delaroche's student studio, which was then under the direction of Charles Gleyre. In 1847 he traveled to Spain and Morocco. In February 1848 he returned to Paris, where he painted The Prodigal Son in the Desert, a life-size figure. In 1850 he then went to Egypt and Sinai via Marseille and Malta. His way back took him through Asia Minor, the Greek archipelago, Constantinople and Vienna.

In 1852 he lived temporarily in Berlin. It was there that his first pictures of oriental life were created: the slave market and the Egyptian school. Not satisfied with this, Gentz ​​went back to Paris and this time joined Thomas Couture's atelier. During this time he painted two religious pictures with life-size figures, Christ and Magdalena with Simon and Christ among the tax collectors.

Back in Berlin in 1858, he created a long series of oriental, mostly Egyptian depictions, which, thanks to their characteristic conception and brilliant coloring, met with unanimous approval at the major exhibitions of the Berlin Art Academy. The overall oeuvre of the painter is very large.

Between 1874 and 1890 Gentz ​​was a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin. In 1881 he was appointed professor by Kaiser Wilhelm I. Gentz ​​was regarded as a colorist of the first order, who knew how to depict the effects of sunlight with great mastery. He was later able to expand his field of study through several trips to Egypt and Palestine.

Wilhelm Gentz ​​died in Berlin in 1890 at the age of 67 and was buried in the Old St. Matthew Cemetery in

1Arndt, Ernst Moritz (1769-1860): patriotic author and historian. Born on the island of Rügen, he studied at the University of Greifswald, where in 1806 he was appointed professor of history. He expressed strongly anti‑Napoleonic views (esp. in his Geist der Zeit, 1806) and attached himself to Blücher, Gneisenau, and notably Friedrich Karl vom Stein (q.v.), whose amanuensis in St Petersburg he became. Appointed a professor at Bonn in 1818, he soon fell foul of the Carlsbad Decrees in 1819 and was suspended until 1840. In 1848, he was a member of the Frankfurt Parliament. He was noted for his Francophobia and anti-Semitism. He died at Bonn.

2Arnim, Bettina von, née Elisabeth Brentano (1785-1859): writer; hagiographer of Goethe. Born Elisabeth Brentano in Frankfurt am Main, the sister of the poet Clemens Brentano, the granddaughter of Sophie von La Roche, the sister-in-law of Karl Friedrich von Savigny and linked by close friendship with the Grimm brothers (q.v.). Her main publications were based on her association with Karoline von Günderrode (Die Günderode, 1840) and with Goethe (Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde, 1835). In 1811, she married Ludwig Achim von Arnim (q.v.). They lived at Wiepersdorf, in Brandenburg, and had seven children. After his death in 1831, she settled in Berlin, where she died.

3Arnim, Ludwig Achim von (1781-1831): Romantic poet, dramatist and novelist. Born at Berlin, he studied at Halle and Göttingen, followed by a grand tour of Italy, France and the British Isles. A close friend of Clemens Brentano and of the Grimm brothers (q.v.), he was in 1805 in Heidelberg, where the first volume of Des Knaben Wunderhorn appeared (I-III, 1806-08). He edited the periodical Zeitung für Einsiedler (1808), to which AWS contributed. After his marriage to Bettina Brentano (q.v.) in 1811, he lived at Wiepersdorf, where he died. He wrote the novels Gräfin Dolores (1810) and Die Kronenwächter (1817

The Orient—including present-day Turkey, Greece, the Middle East, and North Africa—exerted its allure on the Western artist’s imagination centuries prior to the turn of the nineteenth century...

Philippe-Jacques van Bree (1786 - 1871)

Gentile Bellini at the court of Mahomet II

Oil heightened with gold on panel 

58.5 x 73.5 cm; 23 by 29 3/4 in

Private collection

Sultan Mohammed II, famous conqueror who besieged and captured Constantinople in 1453, was an avid collector of works of art. He brought the famous Venetian painter Gentile Bellini (circa 1429-1507) in Constantinople, on the occasion of the peace agreements signed between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire in 1479. On that occasion, the famous Bellini executed portrait Mahomet II, now preserved in the National Gallery in London. More Sultan Mohammed II, (See below)

Philippe-Jacques van Bree (1786 - 1871), scholar of his brother Mattheas, was born at Antwerp in 1786. He studied at Antwerp, in Paris (where he became a scholar of Girodet), and at Rome; and also visited Germany and England. He employed himself on historical, fancy, and architectural subjects. Of the last, the Belgian Government purchased his 'View of the Interior of the Church of St. Peter at Rome,' and presented him with a gold medal in addition to the price. He was made conservator of the Museum at Brussels, where he died in 1871. More on Philippe-Jacques van Bree

Gentile Bellini (1429–1507) 

The Portrait of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, 1480.

Oil on canvas

Height: 69.9 cm (27.5 in). Width: 52.1 cm (20.5 in).