Der Rugard auf Rügen

Rügen had been Swedish for nearly 170 years and Prussian for only six when Schinkel travelled north in 1821. He was the Prussian state architect by then, and his new theatre on the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin opened that same year. On the island he climbed the church tower at Bergen and took the view northeast across the Rugard, a low hill carrying the earth ramparts of a medieval Slavic stronghold, out to the bay called Prorer Wieck. The hill he saw is bare. Trees were planted on it from about 1830 by Wilhelm Malte the first, prince of Putbus, and it has been wooded ever since. Three landscapes came out of that journey, all painted on paper and later laid down on canvas. The other two, a view of Stettin and one of the Stubbenkammer cliffs, were lost in the Second World War.