I. Introduction

Not only in the seventeenth, but also in the nineteenth century, painters depicted scenes from the Thirty Year's War. [1] If one seeks the reasons for this in art-historical research concerning history painting, it becomes obvious that this subject has received little consideration there - in complete contrast to the reception of the Middle Ages, the Reformation, Frederick the Great, the Napoleonic Wars, and the founding of the German Empire in 1870/71. Two reasons exist for the small amount of interest in portrayals of the Thirty Year's War in history paintings - the first is the relatively minor role of this subject in history paintings and the second is the primary interest at that time in subjects of broader national history, which were sought in the Middle Ages and in contemporary history, particularly in the founding of the German Empire in 1870/71. If one undertakes a systematic search, however, many paintings can surprisingly be found which relate the events of the Thirty Year's War. [2]

II. The Development of History Painting in the Nineteenth Century

The Holy Roman Empire, in which approximately 25 million people lived in 1800, had no intellectual center, no capital city; in short, it did not form a nation. The binding holding this structure together was at best the common language; an unified national identity, which would have expressed itself in a "national culture," was lacking as much as prominent contemporaries such as Herder, Goethe, and Schiller sought to cultivate one. After the Wars of Liberation of 1813/15, the romanticists drew on the national sentiment which had emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century. They attempted in their way to shape the essence of the nation, which for them meant creating and developing the awareness of that which was considered "national." In doing so, they turned to the Middle Ages, during which they saw the realization of German unity and German culture in bloom. Statues of Dürer and Gutenberg, Boniface and Luther were erected and buildings were restored - in 1842, the expansion of the Cologne cathedral was completed. Folk tales and folksongs were collected, as Herder and his friends in Strasbourg had done in the 1770s.

Contemporary painters also made their contribution to these efforts with their history paintings, in which they protrayed subjects which expressed of the political and historical culture of their time. A history painting evoked the memory of a piece of common culture and offered identification with great national figures, with heroes. If the painters at the end of the eighteenth century still preferred objects of the antiquity, they began, however, in the first decades of the nineteenth century to take up historical themes and literary events of national history, whether it be as monumental frescoes or the painting of residences, palaces, castles, private homes, city halls, churches, museums, or meeting halls. National sentiment and national awareness were also institutionalized at art academies, particularly in Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Munich.

At first, Düsseldorf was the center of secular and religious history painting, but as of the middle of the century, the Munich Academy overtook the leading roll, bringing with it a change in direction. Around 1840, there was a departure from romantic-nazarene painting, whose representatives had been Schadow in Düsseldorf and Cornelius in Munich. With the rise of history as a science in the 1830s and 1840s, realistic history painting grew increasingly important. The final impetus toward this new orientation was provided by two Belgian painters, Louis Gallait and Edouard de Bièfve. Their large-format paintings dealt with historical material which was related to the young Belgian nation's newly won independence (1830). With their paintings, first shown in Berlin in late autumn 1842 and then in many other German cities in a travelling exhibition, they expressed the sentiment of their time. In 1843, the author and historian Franz Kugler described their effect as follows: [3]

And because in recent times, the common feeling of the people, the national consciousness has been awakened in all joyfulness in Germany, so must these two paintings, in which a related sentiment can be recognized, also be accepted by us with such decisive applaud, perhaps with more than that of their own fatherland, particularly because they brought us something which we had more or less been lacking.

The painter Karl von Piloty, who in 1856 at the age of 29 was endowed with a chair for painting technique in Munich, had also studied the new colorism during study trips to Brussels, Antwerp, and Paris. Piloty provided impetus to "fatherland" history painting based on Belgian examples as did the Association of German Art Societies for Historical Art, founded in Dresden in 1855. This association stated the acquistion of significant history paintings, which were then to be auctioned off among its members, as its objective in its final bylaws of 1857. After the founding of the German Empire, history painting experienced a further upswing. With the 1890s and the Era of Secession came the end of a painting style which "had served as an expression for the concept of history prescribed by the Wilhelminian age. [4] The secessionists, that is the painters in opposition to the academy and court, i.e. Liebermann, Corinth, Slevogt, established themselves next to the traditionalists who had gathered together under the banner of the President of the Academy, Anton von Werner, and his patron, the Emperor.

III. The Thirty Year's War in History and Genre Painting

An inventory of the well-known paintings of the Thirty Year's War, although some of these can no longer be located or exist today only as photographs or reproductions of the originals, shows that the treatment of this subject began at the Berlin Academy toward the end of the eighteenth century. One of the earliest paintings originated from Friedrich Georg Weitsch (1758-1828), who was the Director of the Berlin Academy and court painter as of 1797. In the face of the French threat in 1800, the Prussian King Frederick William III, demanded that art place itself in the service of the "fatherland" and ordered the erection of a "gallery of fatherland-historical portrayals." [5] Weitsch followed this directive with his oil painting Gustavus Adolphus outside Berlin, which he presented at the Berlin Art Exhibition in 1800. The painting depicts an event from Berlin's history. In the exhibition catalogue, the historical context is briefly expounded upon: "Twice, the king of Sweden, who fought and died for spiritual freedom in Germany, conferred with the then Elector of Brandenburg, George William, on the outskirts of Berlin." The first discussion occurred before, the second after the capture of Magdeburg. At the first meeting, the fortresses of Spandau and Küstrin were handed over to Gustavus Adolphus so that from there, he could send his troops toward Magdeburg. After the Swedish king was unable to prevent its capture by Tilly, the Elector demanded the return of Spandau. As a result, Gustavus Adolphus appeared outside Berlin with cannons. Weitsch painted a delegation of ladies-in-waiting with the Electress of Brandenburg at its forefront. She is seeking to create a favorable atmosphere for her husband within the Swedish camp. Gustavus Adolphus is stepping out of a tent surrounded by his generals. Berlin is recognizable in the background and over it, "the arch of peace." Threatening storm clouds hang over the Swedish camp.

Daniel Chodowiecki (1726-1801) also belongs to the early Berlin artists, who dealt with the Thirty Year's War. His history paintings were repeatedly distributed by means of popular prints. Of his 18 etchings for the German Monthly Journal between 1795 and 1800, four prints were devoted to the Thirty Year's War: the envoys of the Protestant estates before the Emperor in Vienna, Frederick V of the Palatinate, the sparing of the town of Landshut by Gustavus Adolphus, and Wallenstein's camp. In 1798, Chodowiecki submitted a print to the Berlin exhibition which shows Tilly in the house of a gravedigger in Leipzig after the capture of Magdeburg. As he discovers pictures on the walls of skeletons, bones, and skulls, he raises his arms in fright. The artist makes reference here to a description in Friedrich Schiller's History of the Thirty Year's War, in which he wrote: "Upon looking at the painted skulls and skeletons with which the owner had decorated his house, Tilly paled. Leipzig experienced merciful treatment above all expectation." [6] With this, Chodowiecki confronts the commander of the Imperial troops with the death he had already brought to Magdeburg and which he would bring to other cities in the future.

In Düsseldorf, where genre painting had been developing since ca. 1830, the first genre paintings of the Thirty Year's War were created by Carl Friedrich Lessing (1808-1880) and Wilhelm Camphausen (1818-1885) in 1835 and 1838. Such paintings presented, for example, burning houses or soldiers returning from battle. In 1848, Lessing painted a genre scene from the Thirty Year's War with a political reference entitled Siege: On a hill, soldiers have stopped at a cemetery in front of a church in ruins. They are preparing themselves for the next battle and are waiting for the enemy who is approaching in the background; a monk is kneeling next to a dying soldier. Adolph Menzel (1815-1905) had already dealt with the Thirty Year's War in 1836. His genre painting Chess Match follows in the tradition of seventeenth-century Dutch guardroom paintings, in which card-playing, dicing, trick-track and chess are depicted. Menzel painted two officers (?) spending their off-duty time playing chess. While one of them rests both arms on the rapier standing before him, the other, whose weapon hangs on the wall, has his right hand laying on his right knee. He seems deeply absorbed in the game.

Toward the end of the 1830s, the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, the leader of the Protestants, began to appear in German history painting. The predominant genre that had predominanted until this point was now supplemented with Protestant- and Catholic-oriented political contents. For the most part, the great issues depicted here now constituted the arsenal for the struggle for the political unity of the nation, whereby a focal point can be recognized in the 1830s and 1840s. Thus, Adolph Menzel was commissioned, for example, by the Hessian Art Society in 1847 to paint Gustavus Adolphus Receives His Spouse Outside the Castle in Hanau in January 1632. With this painting, Menzel made reference to regional history in that Gustavus Adolphus had allied himself with Hesse-Kassel on 12 August and with Saxony on 11 September 1631; on 17 September of the same year, Tilly's army was defeated near Breitenfeld. In 1631/32, Marie Eleonore visited her spouse at his winter quarters in Hanau, where they saw each other in January 1632. Menzel painted the moment in which Marie Eleonore alights from a sleigh and is passionately taken into the arms of her husband in front of the Hanau castle. The scene shows the happy king, who shortly thereafter is snatched away from his loving wife because of his self-sacrifice in the struggle for Protestantism.

The commanders on the Catholic side were also portrayed several times in history painting beginning in the 1840s. After Gustavus Adolphus, Wallenstein was the most often depicted army commander in history paintings about the Thirty Year's War, followed by Tilly, Pappenheim, and Piccolomini. [7] In 1842, Karl Nahl (1819-1878) presented his painting, Wallenstein and Seni. This subject had already been addressed by Johann Hermann Kretscher (1811-1890), whose work, commissioned by the Magdeburg Art Society, could be viewed at the Kassel Art Society in 1838. In the 1850s, Julius Schrader (1815-1900), Hermann Freihold Plüddemann (1809-1868), Georg Wilhelm Volkhart (1815-1876), and Karl von Piloty took up the subject Wallenstein and Seni as the Schiller cult reached new heights both in 1855, owing to the fiftieth anniversary of his death, and in 1859, the one hundredth anniversary of his birth. Von Piloty's student, Hans Makart (1840-1884), also addressed this theme in the 1860s. In 1862, Julius Scholtz (1825-1893), a former student of the Dresden Academy, created on commission from the Association for Historical Art General Wallenstein's Last Banquet at the City Hall in Pilsen on 12 January 1634, for which Schiller's Wallenstein served as a model. Scholtz, who had produced a small oil painting (74 x 114 cm) on this subject in 1859, depicted the Intrigue Game Behind the Scenes in a monumental painting (160 x 265 cm). [8] Here he portrayed the protagonists - Wallenstein's followers, Terzky and Illo, as well as the supporters of the Imperial party with Octavio Piccolomini - with the stylistic devices of the new concept of art, thereby showing his support of both colorism and realism at a time when they had not yet gained a foothold at the Dresden Academy. The importance attached to this painting can be recognized in that it was displayed not only in Dresden, Breslau, Frankfurt on the Main, and Cologne, but also at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867, where it was introduced as a part of German painting, which was then considered representative.

In the 1830s, a series of paintings by Feodor Dietz with scenes from the Thirty Year's War also originated at the Munich Academy: in 1835, his first oil painting The Death of Max Piccolomini as well as Pappenheim's Death near Lützen in 1632. The former received an award from Grand Duke Leopold of Baden and was bought by the Munich Art Society. Dietz may have been inspired by an artists' ball at the Royal Court Theater in Munich on 2 March 1835. The artists' masquerade ball, of which more would follow, was based on the theme "Wallenstein's Camp." The participants arrived in costumes of Wallenstein's soldiers and with their immersion in the past, they helped stage history theatrically. The ball took place in the form of camp life, for which the prologue to Schiller's Wallenstein trilogy provided the framework. Dietz dressed himself as Piccolomini's cuirassier, Fähnrich, for the costumed parade through the streets of Munich. For his painting The Death of Max Piccolomini, he used Schiller's tragedy, Wallenstein's Death. Dietz, whose family came from Baden, was often inspired by Schiller, who at this time, as well as in the revolutionary year 1848 and afterwards, was "on the lips of everyone as a political and national author." [9] Thus in 1859, Jacob Grimm, the eldest of the two Grimm brothers, stated in his famous speech at the festivities on the one hundredth anniversary of Schiller's birth: "'Wallenstein' and 'Tell' were created for German freedom." [10] Theodor Fontane also reported in his autobiography that he donated the cash prize he had won for reciting a ballad at the Berlin Tunnel Society to the Schiller celebrations in Berlin. [11]

In Munich in 1843, H. Glindemann responded to the new call for the portrayal of the "tragic moment" in historical events with his painting Gustavus Adolphus Falls in the Battle of Lützen. This painting will be discussed here in detail in order to show with its example how an artist attempted to illustrate what was considered to be a central event in a literary work. Glindemann, who portrayed the Swedish king as a martyr, recreated that highly dramatic account in Schiller's History of the Thirty Year's War in which the king, at the head of the Steinbock cavalry regiment, hastens away from it to restore order to his left flank.

"His noble steed," wrote Schiller, "carries him as quick as lightning over the trenches; but the crossing becomes more difficult for the troops following him and only a few horsemen, among them Franz Albert, Duke of Saxony-Lauenburg, were fast enough to remain at his side. He headed straight for those places where his foot soldiers were the most heavily attacked and in surveying the battlefield to spy out any weakness of the opposing army where he could direct his attack, he approaches the enemy lines too closely. An Imperial lance corporal notices everyone reverently making room for the approaching rider and quickly orders a musketeer to aim at him. 'Fire at him,' he calls, 'that must be a high-ranking man.' The soldier fires and the king's left arm is shattered." [12]

Glindemann moved Gustavus Adolphus into the center of the composition and at his side, mostly hidden, is the Duke of Saxony-Lauenburg. The king rode a bay horse in the battle - the preserved horse with a withers' height of 146 cm is located today at the Livery Stable in Stockholm. Nevertheless, Glindemann painted the king on a noble white horse. Why he placed him on a white horse is explained perhaps with Christian animal symbolism, according to which Christ is identified with the rider of a white horse as the "Faithful and Honest One." On the right side of the painting, the musketeer can be seen, who, pointing to the king, gives another musketeer the fatal order to fire. This second musketeer has just let off his shot at the king as the flash from the muzzle indicates. The king's left hand is still holding the horse's reins, just before his left arm is shattered by the musketball. Atop his rearing horse, the Swedish king gazes towards heaven as if he wants to tell God that he, like Christ, has also done his duty, i.e. defending Protestantism.

In 1848, Eduard Geselschap (1814-1878), who was then living in Düsseldorf, took up the "Rethelian" subject The Discovery of Gustavus Adolphus' Corpse. Like Alfred Rethel, Geselschap also depicted the moment in which the dead king is discovered by his soldiers. Here too, the light of a lantern illuminated the body.

At least with Piloty, the Catholic interpretation of history can be considered reliable because he emphasized historical memory in his painting and at the same time, referred to the Bavarian dynasty's contributions to history. In Munich, history painting had already been cultivated under Louis I in order to legitimize his rule. Maximilian II, who had succeeded his father, Louis I, in 1848, maintained this tradition. He demanded the study of historical sources and the correct reproduction of period dress. This precise reproduction, which went as far as the "uniform button realism" of Anton von Werner, was an essential characteristic of nineteenth-century history painting. A medieval wood-carver who created a scene from a saint's life, also a historical image, always placed his figures in contemporary dress.

In Karl von Piloty, the king found his painter. Piloty portrayed Elector Maximilian I as an influential ruler both in and beyond Bavaria. In 1850 during the reign of Maximilian II, Piloty first dealt with the Thirty Year's War. His painting The Battle of the White Mountain depicts the moment during which the Imperial-Bavarian army is assembled kneeling outside the headquarters' tent. Surrounded by officers, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria appears as the defender of the Catholic faith. His left hand rests on a book (the Bible?) and spread out on a cloth in front of him lies the battle plan for the attack on Prague. A monk, probably Father Dominicus, holds a picture of the Virgin Mary in his left hand and calls those present to prayer to ask for God's blessing on the Catholic army and its leaders. In later years, Piloty varied this theme. In 1853, he painted on commission from Maximilian The Founding of the Catholic League in 1609, which was meant to be one of 30 paintings for the planned "Maximilianeum." Using ideas from Gallait and Bièfve, he portrayed the protagonists of the Imperial Catholic estates, who, in response to the Protestant Union created a year earlier in Auhausen near Nördlingen, founded the League in Munich in July 1609. Standing prominently on a staircase, Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria, the initiator of the defensive alliance concluded for nine years, can be seen together with Archduke Leopold of Austria, surrounded by the Bishops of Würzburg, Augsburg, and Regensburg. The League commander, Tilly, kneels before him on the staircase. In keeping with the intentions of realistic painting, Piloty painted possibly the most famous of all history paintings about the Thirty Year's War, namely Seni in front of Wallenstein's Corpse, in 1855 on the fiftieth anniversary of Schiller's death. This scene is incidentally not found in Schiller's drama. The viewer participates in Wallenstein's dramatic last hours. In 1861, Wallenstein on the Campaign to Eger followed, which shows Wallenstein sitting in a litter as he is carried past a cemetery looking reflectively at two gravediggers who are preparing a grave. In the background on the right side of the painting, a city can be seen towards which the procession moves. In allusion to the imminent murder of the commander in Eger (25.2.1634), this picture constitutes a variation of the theme Wallenstein's Death from 1855: Wallenstein's own grave is being dug and the gravediggers are looking at him prophetically; his litter is surrounded by conspirators.

After German unity was achieved in 1871, painters no longer needed to allude to it. For history painting, that meant a change in perspective: Henceforth, paintings with contemporary historical themes were sought, for example, from the German Empire, in particular as Anton von Werner masterly conceived them. Additionally, an interest in Gustavus Adolphus and his self-sacrifice for the Protestant cause remained, especially among the liberal bourgeoisie. In general though, the Thirty Year's War quickly receded into the background in the 1870s, in comparison to the Reformation, the Wars of Liberation, and the war scenes of the Hohenzollern nation.

In 1857, Feodor Dietz painted Gustavus Adolphus on his Deathbed. The painting originated at a time when the Kulturkampf in Baden, where two-thirds of the population was Catholic and one-third Protestant, had intensified. Different than Piloty's portrayal of Wallenstein, Dietz presented the death of his commander theatrically, placing himself in the tradition of "lamentation paintings". With this, he referred at the same time to a scene from Schiller's History of the Thirty Year's War, according to which the body was brought to Weissenfels,

"in order [to be] handed over to the lamentation of his troops and the last embrace of his queen. Still numb from the stunning blow, the leaders stand in dull astonishment around his bier..." [13]

In Dietz' painting, the officers stand reverently at the head of their dead commander. Two are kneeling in front of the coffin crying. Gustavus Adolphus' wife, Queen Marie Eleonore, stands opposite and is restrained from giving in to her pain and throwing herself over her dead spouse by her lady-in-waiting. Her six-year-old daughter, Christine, presses herself fearfully against her mother. In 1858, Frederick I of Baden bought this painting at the German Public Art Exhibition in Munich and awarded the artist with a decoration from the House of Baden.

In 1876/77 Werner Schuch visited the Dusseldorf academy at which time he created his painting Gustav Adolphus' funeral procession which was then acquired by the Society for Historical Art in 1877. In 1632, Gustavus Adolphus' body remained at first in Weissenfels for several weeks in order to be brought to the Baltic Sea coast in a ceremonial funeral procession. In Wittenberg, the coffin spent one night in the castle church and then spent several months at the castle in Wolgast until the Baltic Sea was free of ice. In June 1633, the funeral procession reached Swedish soil. The painter, who varied the theme of Gustavus Adolphus' death, represents with this work the Kulturkampf's anti-Roman, anti-Catholic tradition of those years. Schuch paid tribute to the heroic death of the king, who was brought back to his native country with great sympathy.

While portrayals of the war and its tragic heroes were the focal point of history painting until the last decades of the nineteenth century, the peace treaty first came into the field of vision of history painters relatively late. Beginning in the 1880s, events were selected, in which the Peace of Westphalia played a central role. At the Berlin Art Exhibition of 1880, the painting The Proclamation of the Peace of Westphalia in Osnabrück by the Dresden Academy-trained history painter, Leonhard Gey, could be viewed. The mural painted in the auditorium of the Royal Grammar School in Osnabrück in the same year was destroyed in the Second World War. In both, the proclamation of the peace from the steps of the Osnabrück Town Hall is depicted. Amid the cheers of the crowd, the treaty is read aloud; people are embracing each other, white doves are circling around the steps as a symbol of peace. In 1886, the city of Nuremberg gave its mayor Paul Ritter's painting The Nuremberg Town Hall Courtyard during the Westphalian Peace Banquet in 1649 in return for his twenty-five years of service to the city. In Nuremberg on 25 September 1649, the peace and celebration banquet for the Imperial and Swedish commissioners and the Imperial Estates was held in the town hall's large assembly room with Count Palatine Karl Gustavus. Between 1895 and 1902, Fritz Grotemeyer, a student of Anton von Werner and native-born resident of Münster, - one of those traditionalists who was mentioned at the beginning of this essay - painted the monumental work The Peace Negotiations in the Town Hall Chamber in Münster in 1648 for the conference room of Münster's wine tavern. Grotemeyer correctly reproduced the wood-panelled inner room and the dress of the time - dignitaries from Münster were used, though, as models for the heads of the participants. The envoys sit and stand next to each other in small groups and discuss the treaty. In the center of the composition, the Great Elector's envoy, Count Sayn-Wittgenstein, stands holding a map in his hands and presents the territorial demands of his sovereign to the Spanish envoy, the Count of Peñaranda. The artist did not, however, follow the historical account to the letter. The peace negotiations did not take place in the town hall chamber in Münster, nor did the envoy from the Electorate of Brandenburg present his position there. These events occurred in Osnabrück. The "glorification of the Electorate of Brandenburg's rise as a European Great Power" is consequently the subject of this picture and in that regard, is also to be viewed as "homage to the Prussian King and German Emperor William II, [14] whose favorite was Grotemeyer's teacher, Anton von Werner. The Emperor must also have regarded the painting similarly because he awarded the painter an Imperial decoration for it.

Chronologically parallel to this reception of the Thirty Year's War as a subject of municipal self-portrayal, genre painting emerged again with scenes from this war as it had in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Wilhelm von Diez was the second Academy teacher in Munich, who, along with Piloty, dealt with the Thirty Year's War. Like Chodowiecki, he too depicted Schiller's History of the Thirty Year's War and additionally, Grimmelhausen's Simplicissimus. Considered the "Callot" of nineteenth-century German genre painting about the Thirty Year's War, he did not address any major or national campaigns, any great one-time events of world history, any great dramatic moments of important commanders, rather he focused on the dramatic moments of everyday life. In 1853, von Diez had briefly visited the Munich Academy and as of 1872 he taught there as a professor. Beginning in the 1860s, he created, tending away from classical history paintings, numerous genre scenes in which he emphasized moments of suffering of anonymous figures as well as the fear and cruelty of war: people fleeing, holdups of travelers, bands of soldiers, camp life, cavalry skirmishes, and looting and pillaging. Exaggeratedly speaking, one could say that Piloty illustrated political history, while Diez on the other hand focused on cultural history, which had been winning ground in Germany since the 1850s. Particularly in the 1880s and 1890s, he tackled a series of themes concerned with cultural history, just as genre painters generally developed the majority of their works regarding the Thirty Year's War in these decades.

Wilhelm von Diez was, as the art historian Horst Ludwig put it, the "extreme coloristic pole" at the Munich school. He placed great importance on "finely shaded hues." [15] One of his paintings, which displays this stylistic device, originated in 1888 and depicts the holdup of travelers. The carriage has just been halted and the driver is trying to flee for his life. The painter confronts the viewer with the fate of the travelers, two women with their children, who are standing fearfully in front of the carriage uncertain of what the soldiers will do to them.

In the same year, Diez' student, Wilhelm Carl Räuber, who together with Hei0nrich Breling approached military painting in the style of his teacher, dealt with this motif in his painting Dangerous Country Road. While von Diez captures the moment of suffering and heightens the beholder's suspense by the uncertain end of the holdup, with Räuber, however, the assault has already happened and the beholder is only allowed to see its aftermath: A group of travelers must stop on the country road because an injured/dead individual is lying there and blocking the way. His wagon lies overturned in a ditch, his horse is dead.

In 1889, von Diez painted a scene showing soldiers looting a village. Here too, the painter does not spare the emotions of the observer. Several houses have been set on fire, livestock and people are being carried off - their future remains uncertain. Carl Roux, who taught at the Karlsruhe Academy, had painted a similar scene in 1862, although his soldiers are driving only livestock away from the burning village. Diez presents the observer with war's daily occurrences that much more cruelly.

Carl Friedrich Lessing, Werner Wilhelm Gustav Schuch (1843-1918), and Christian Sell (1831-1883) belong to those painters who also produced genre scenes from the Thirty Year's War during the Gründerzeit, the years of rapid industrial expansion in Germany after 1871. Sell, who had studied at the Düsseldorf Academy from 1851 until 1856, was one of the few history painters who had taken part in the German-Danish War in 1864, the Bohemian campaign in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870/71 as a war illustrator for the Prussian army. Max Todt (1847-1890), a genre painter who also participated in the war, created a series of scenes from the Thirty Year's War after moving to Munich in 1877. Robert Beyschlag, Gabriel Hackl, Eugen Hess, Wilhelm Lindenschmit, and Wilhelm Velten produced further genre scenes from the Munich school.

With the emergence of impressionism and the decline of the German Empire, the era of history painting finally came to an end. The painters now turned to other subjects.

FOOTNOTES