“The German spirit will work itself out of the storm and the clouds,” (1) Caspar David Friedrich said in October 1806 on the occasion of the quartering of the first French troops in Dresden. That year, battle and storm were still associated with the idea of a new freedom, the social utopia of a united Germany liberated from feudalism. By 1819, when Friedrich turned his attention to this reception painting for the Dresden Academy, which was required from him after having been appointed as a new member in 1816, the political situation had changed. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the conservative forces that aimed to restore pre-Revolution monarchal power relations in Europe had gained strength. Restoration reached its apogee with the Carlsbad Decrees in 1819 and the so-called “persecution of demagogues.” If one assumes, with Karl-Ludwig Hoch, that Friedrich’s critical political stance toward the Dresden court was reason for his late appointment as a member of the Academy, (2) it seems remarkable that when requested to submit his reception painting he chose a pictorial subject so blatantly related to the prevailing political circumstances.

The contrast between the massive boulder in the center of the painting, which radiates constancy, and the wild raging of bushes bent by the wind, broken off tree trunks, and clouds blown apart by the storm in Friedrich’s painting Megalithic Tomb in Autumn (3) creates a dynamic that can be understood as the expression of the artist’s political views. Friedrich was very familiar with the motif of the megalithic tomb from his Pomeranian homeland; he was acquainted with its interpretation as a symbol of a heroic prehistory from the solemn poems by the Rügen priest, Ludwig Gotthard (Theobul) Kosegarten. (4) The megalithic tomb near Gützkow was a motif that Friedrich returned to all his life, from his drawing of 1801 (5) to his sepia drawing from the period around 1837 (Private Collection).

Megalithic Tomb can be regarded as a symbol of a reactionary utopia. In a time of entrenched political relations, the storm presents itself as a call to take action, and the sky tearing open above the monument as a promise for the future.

Holger Birkholz, in: exh. cat. Hamburg 2023, p. 278.

(1) Cited in Schubert 1855, p. 186.
(2) Hoch 1985, p. 66.
(3) Börsch-Supan/Jähnig 1973, pp. 363 f., no. 271.
(4) Kosegarten 1788, pp. 384–88.
(5) Tree Study with Two Views of the Megalithic Tomb near Gützkow, pencil, 226 x 363 mm, Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, inv. no. 1934–10; Grummt 2011, vol. 1, pp. 294 f., no. 296 verso.