Caspar David Friedrich (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic or megalithic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. 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 was born in the Pomeranian town of Greifswald at the Baltic Sea, where he began his studies in art as a young man. He studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden. He came of age during a period when, across Europe, a growing disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise to a new appreciation of spirituality. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a reevaluation of the natural world, as artists such as Friedrich, J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) and John Constable (1776–1837) sought to depict nature as a "divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization". More...

• 1660 – Birth of physician Friedrich Hoffmann
• 1837 – Birth of dramatist and revolutionary Georg Büchner
• 1877 – Birth of expressionist painter Gabriele Münter (pictured)

• ... that Hans Dieter Beck (pictured), a co-head of the publisher C. H. Beck, rode a bicycle to work until he was 92?
• ... that John Beaglehole described the appointment of Johann Reinhold Forster as naturalist on Cook's second voyage as "one of the Admiralty's vast mistakes"?
• ... that Maria Einsmann claimed to be her own husband, Josef, when she registered the births of her companion Helene Müller's two children in 1921 and 1930?
• ... that Theresia Bauer was named science minister of the year four times?
• ... that while Germans murdered millions of prisoners of war during WWII, the survival ratio of Jewish POWs was generally tied to the army or nation they served with, and not to their ethnicity?
• ... that on 26 December 1724 J. S. Bach directed the first performance of Christum wir sollen loben schon, BWV 121, based on a hymn written by Martin Luther in 1524?
• ... that the main cemetery of Mainz was established in 1803 and became the model for the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris?
• ... that German-born physician Pablo Busch (pictured) was labelled a "witch or curandero" by indigenous tribes in Bolivia?
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A Fischbrötchen (listen) (pl. "Fischbrötchen", lit. fish bread roll) is a sandwich made with fish and other components such as fresh white or dried onions, pickles, remoulade, creamy horseradish sauce, ketchup, or cocktail sauce. It is commonly eaten in Northern Germany, due to the region's proximity to the North Sea and Baltic Sea.