Memorial Service for Kaiser Friedrich at Kösen

Friedrich III became German emperor in March 1888 already dying of throat cancer, and he died on 15 June, after 99 days on the throne. German liberals had pinned their hopes on him, and he had spoken out against the antisemitism rising in the country, which gave him a particular meaning for a Jewish painter like Liebermann. This picture sets a memorial service for him in a beech wood outside Kösen, a small spa town in central Germany. Liebermann was not there. He built the scene afterwards from studies of the trees made on an earlier visit. He may also have had in mind a picture of the same grove painted in 1868 by the Berlin painter Adolph Menzel. The mourners are tiny beside the trunks. Flagbearers wait by a gap in the trees, a choir in white stands next to them, and the leaves close over the sky.