Caspar David Friedrich in Greifswald

This begins with a visit to the Caspar David Friedrich Center. It was set up in Friedrich's birthplace, a large, two-storey brick building with a discreetly decorated façade. Caspar David and his siblings grew up here, the children of a soap and light founder and his wife, who had moved from Neubrandenburg to open a workshop in Greifswald for the production of soap and tallow candles. The workshop can be visited today as part of the permanent exhibition; it is located in the cellar rooms. The mighty Gothic cathedral of Greifswald, where Caspar David was baptized as a child, is just opposite, only a few steps away from Friedrich's home.

The interior of the church is filled with impressive brightness. And of artistic carpentry work carried out by Caspar David's brother Christian. Pastor Tilman Beyrich shows them to me – and tells me that Caspar David himself had ambitions in church design as a young man, but that nothing came of it. The pastor has other interesting stories to tell about the Friedrichs. "The soap boiling workshop made such bad noises by boiling animal tallow that the parish took the Friedrich family to court," he smiles. „But then the parties came to an agreement and also entered into business relations.“ Father Friedrich supplied the cathedral with his candles and everyone was happy.

Friedrich's love of large ships

„Greifswald is the largest open-air museum dedicated to Caspar David Friedrich“, Anett Hauswald, head of the city's Department of Culture, tells me later, „and a place where authenticity and aura mix“. Genuine and atmospheric. I put this to the test at Greifswald's museum harbor, where the masts of the sailing boats rise very authentically into the sky, but at the same time create an atmosphere similar to that in Friedrich's painting Greifswald Harbor with the boat masts in front of the Greifswald city skyline. Ships were Friedrich's passion. „The most beautiful thing ever produced by human wit: ships with swelling sails crossing the ever-moving surface (of the sea), he once recorded in writing.

At the end of my tour of the Greifswald Open-Air Museum, I walk along the towpath that leads along the River Ryck out of the city to the Greifswald Bodden. Friedrich also painted it. The only difference is that today it is rarely used as a towpath, but mainly as a cycle and walking path. And that canoeists and rowers, among others, train on the water. But one thing is certain: even after almost 250 years, Caspar David Friedrich is still alive in Greifswald like nowhere else.