- Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (8 December 1815 – 9 February 1905) was a German Realist artist noted for drawings, etchings, and paintings. Along with Caspar David Friedrich, he is considered one of the two most prominent German painters of the 19th century, and was the most successful artist of his era in Germany. First known as Adolph Menzel, he was knighted in 1898 and changed his name to Adolph von Menzel.
- During Menzel’s life, his paintings were appreciated by Otto von Bismarck and William I, and after his death they were appropriated for use as electoral posters by Adolf Hitler.
- Menzel was born to German parents in Breslau, Prussian Silesia (now Wrocław, Poland), on 8 December 1815.
- The artist [Adolph Menzel] had a deep sympathy for the Prussian king [Frederick the Great]. In one of his letters to Johann Jakob Weber, he said that it was his intention to represent the monarch as a man who was both hated and admired—simply as he was, in other words, as a man of the people.
- After his death in 1905 in Berlin, his funeral arrangements were directed by the Kaiser, who walked behind his coffin.