page_title: Friedrich Eckenfelder
section_title: Youth
hierarchical_section_title: Friedrich Eckenfelder / Biography / Youth
caption_attribution_description: English: Marie Junginger.
context_page_description: Friedrich Eckenfelder was a Swiss-German impressionist painter, best known for his portrayals of farm horses and for townscapes with a background of the Swabian Alps. He was born and raised in modest circumstances, but his talent was discovered at an early age, so that he was able to receive training as a painter and later to enroll in the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. There he became one of the founding members of the Munich Secession.
  Eckenfelder's preferred choice of subject emerged early on. By 1878, at the end of his basic education, he was referred to in a document as an "animal painter". After the First World War and the resulting changes in society and art, Eckenfelder moved back to Swabia. He was named an honorary citizen of Balingen in 1928, a street was named for him in 1931, a gallery devoted to his work was established in the town museum in 1978, and the banqueting hall of the town community centre was named in his honour.
context_section_description: Friedrich Eckenfelder was born in Bern, the second child of the housekeeper Rosina Vivian and the shoemaker Johann Friedrich Eckenfelder, who had moved from Balingen to Basel when he was appointed journeyman shoemaker in 1859 and there met his future wife. They moved together to Bern while still unmarried, then when Rosina was again pregnant in 1865, the family moved to Balingen and they were married there on 18 July 1865. The children were declared legitimate through marriage and declared citicens of Württemberg through their mother. The boy's talent for drawing was discovered in elementary school and advanced training was recommended, which he received from 1875 in Professor Oskar Hölder's drawing class in Rottweil.
  The fourteen-year-old boy was raised in Rottweil at his teacher's home as well as with the family of a senior forestry official named Junginger, one of Hölder's friends. There he met Marie Junginger, fourteen years his senior, who was working as a portrait painter after training with Hölder. Eckenfelder and Junginger went to Munich together in 1878, and Eckenfelder began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in October. In late December 1878, Maria became pregnant. She gave birth to their son Friedrich Junginger on 19 September 1879 in Munich. Eckenfelder's family tried to conceal this "misstep"; from the age of six months, the boy was raised by his grandparents, as if he were their own child. The younger Friedrich was deeply affected when he was eventually told that the man he had had a brotherly relationship with was in fact his father.
caption: Marie Junginger
  pencil sketch by Eckenfelder in 1884
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