The volcanic eruption in 1815 in what is now Indonesia causes the skies over Europe to darken for more than a year, bringing cold, rain, failed harvests, and famine. In Germany, the Rhine region is particularly hard hit.
The collective experience of this devastating natural event fuels the emergence of so-called Schwarze Romantik (or Dark Romanticism) – a subgenre of the Romantic movement in painting and literature, with themes that range from the dream state, the fantastical, witchcraft and the supernatural, to eroticism and death.