THE WATZMANN BY FREDERIK SØDRING (1809–1862)

FREDERIK SØDRING (1809- 1862)
The Watzmann (2,713m - 8,901ft)
Germany (Bavarian Alps)


In Berchtesgaden mit dem Watzmann Öl auf Leinwand,1830, oil on canvas, Private collection

The mountain
The Watzmann (2,713m - 8,901ft) is a mountain in the Bavarian Alps south of the village of Berchtesgaden. It is the third highest in Germany, and the highest located entirely on German territory. Three main peaks array on a N-S axis along a ridge on the mountain's taller western half: Hocheck (2,651 m), Mittelspitze (Middle Peak, 2,713 m) and Sьdspitze (South Peak, 2,712 m).
The Watzmann massif also includes the 2,307 m Watzmannfrau (Watzmann Wife, also known as Kleiner Watzmann or Small Watzmann), and the Watzmannkinder (Watzmann Children), five lower peaks in the recess between the main peaks and the Watzmannfrau.
The entire massif lies inside Berchtesgaden National Park.
The Watzmann Glacier is located below the famous east face of the Watzmann in the Watzmann cirque and is surrounded by the Watzmanngrat arête, the Watzmannkindern and the Kleiner Watzmann. The size of the glacier reduced from around 30 hectares (74 acres) in 1820 until it split into a few fields of firn, but between 1965 and 1980 it advanced significantly again and now has an area of 10.1 hectares (25 acres). Above and to the west of the icefield lie the remains of a transport-bomber that crashed in October 1940.
Amongst the other permanent snow and icefields the Eiskapelle ("Ice Chapel") is the best known due to its easy accessibility from St. Bartholomä. The Eiskapelle may well be the lowest lying permanent snowfield in the Alps. Its lower end is only 930 metres high in the upper Eisbach valley and is about an hour's walk from St. Bartholomä on the Königssee. The Eiskapelle is fed by mighty avalanches that slide down from the east face of the Watzmann in spring and accumulate in the angle of the rock face. Sometimes a gate-shaped vault forms in the ice at the point where the Eisbach emerges from the Eiskapelle. Before entering there is an urgent warning sign that others have been killed by falling ice. In the east face itself is another icefield in the so-called Schöllhorn cirque, called the Schöllhorneis, which is crossed by the Kederbach Way (Kederbacher-Weg). The cirque and icefield are named after the Munich citizen, Christian Schöllhorn, who was the first victim on the east face. On 26 May 1890 he fell at the upper end of the icefield into the randkluft and was fatally injured. Another small nameless snowfield is located several hundred metres below the Mittelspitze also in the east face.

The artist
Frederik Hansen Sødring was a Danish landscape painter and founder of an endowment. Sødring spent some time living in Norway with his parents before studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen beginning in 1825. There he initially studied under Jens Peter Moller, but his greatest influence was from Johan Christian Dahl. In Sodring's first exhibition, he displayed two paintings. Between 1829 and 1831 Sodring travelled to Norway and Germany, taking time to study in Munich. He continued to work, sending several paintings back to Denmark. These travels influenced Sшdring's later works. Upon his return, he continued to paint, exhibiting landscapes from the Rhine, Southern Germany, and Tyrol. In 1832, he was painted by Christen Kobke; the portrait is now part of the Hirschsprung Collection. He established a scholarship, to be awarded at the annual Charlottenborg Exhibition, and provided funds to support elderly landscape artists and widows of such painters.


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A blog by Francis Rousseau