Centuries-old oaks stretching their branches imploringly into the sky, white chalk cliffs above emerald green seas, dark towers of clouds on the agitated Baltic Sea and the admonishing ruins of Eldena Monastery are just a few of the romantic destinations of longing.

In the Footsteps of North German Romanticism

The easiest way to experience romance is to take anticyclical routes: if you go out when everyone else is still asleep, you can see how beautiful the fog hangs over the river valley. If you come to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in spring, fall and winter, you experience a fabulously vast land in the flat, soft light. If you hike along the Baltic coast in a storm, you'll be surprised that the changes between sun and clouds can actually look as boisterous as they do in a romantic painting from the 19th century.

Some of the most famous works by the Romantic painter hang in the Pomeranian State Museum in Greifswald. The original locations that Friedrich captured in his paintings are not far away:

The Eldena monastery ruins, for example, whose red brick walls he painted in a wide variety of light moods and seasons, sometimes setting them in the Giant Mountains, sometimes in a green thicket. The real ruin still stands on the outskirts of Greifswald and seems to have hardly changed.

The view that Friedrich captured around 1820 with the "Meadows near Greifswald" is also almost unchanged to this day. The churches of St. Mary, St. Nicholas and St. Jacobi still form the silhouette of the Hanseatic city. Friedrich was born there in 1774 as the son of a soap boiler. Since 2004, his birthplace has housed the Caspar David Friedrich Center.

On the beach of Vierow on the Greifswald Bodden, Friedrich sketched a fishing boat. The coast of Rügen can be seen on the horizon. There, the great painter found another favorite motif at the time with the chalk cliffs.