Graphic

Graphics from the 2nd half of the 19th century depicting views of Szczecin often found their way as illustrations to sightseeing or commemorative publications, providing information on buildings and places worth seeing. At the same time, as magazine illustrations, they informed about important events in the cultural and political life of the city. One of them is a woodcut from 1874 made by an unknown artist. The engraving from W. Aarland's xylographic workshop depicts a tomb monument in the form of a bust of the Szczecin poet and writer Robert Eduard Prutz (1816-1872) together with a fragment of the Niemierzyn cemetery. Prutz was born in the capital of Pomerania as the son of a merchant. He attended St Mary's Grammar School in Szczecin and studied philosophy, history and philology in Berlin, Wrocław and Halle. He wrote lyrical, erotic, political works, comedies and historical dramas, worked as a publicist and playwright. He was the director of the municipal theatre in Hamburg, a lecturer in Berlin, a professor at the University of Halle, and co-founder of the Deutsches Museum magazine on German literature, art and public life. Known for his radical views, he was regarded as politically suspect, and his works were censored. For this reason, he constantly changed his place of residence. In 1857, he finally settled in his native Szczecin. He was buried in the now non-existent cemetery in Niemierzyn (Nemitz). A year after his death, the people of Szczecin honoured his memory by erecting, with their own money, a gravestone monument to him, designed by Wilhelm Wulff of Berlin, with the cooperation of the Szczecin foundry C. Voss & Sohn in Szczecin. A woodcut with Prutz's grave monument was published in 1875 in the Leipzig magazine Die Gartenlaube - Illustrirtes Familienblatt, which was the forerunner of modern magazines and the first major popular German newspaper.

Małgorzata Peszko