Uferböschung mit Bäumen, im Hintergrund eine Burgruine 

Franz Kobell made this pen and ink drawing of a riverside landscape with a ruined castle in the background, but we don't know exactly when. It’s an evocative image, typical of the Romantic era, when ruins were a popular motif. But why ruins? In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Germany was not yet a unified nation. It was a patchwork of principalities, kingdoms, and free cities. These territories looked back to a mythic, medieval past for a sense of shared identity, and the ruined castles of robber barons and feudal lords were a potent symbol of that heritage. Here, Kobell gives us not a grand, intact castle, but a ruin overtaken by nature, a nostalgic reminder of a lost era. To fully understand the artwork, we can delve into the historical context and the cultural associations of ruins in the German Romantic movement. Doing so enriches our understanding of art as something that is contingent on socio-political and institutional contexts.