The adventurous life of the longing images by Caspar David Friedrich – compellingly narrated by Florian Illies. No German painter evokes such emotions as Caspar David Friedrich: His evening skies remain icons of longing to this day, inspiring Samuel Beckett to Waiting for Godot and Walt Disney to Bambi – however, Goethe was so enraged by the mysterious melancholy of his paintings that he wanted to smash them on the edge of the table. In his extensive journey through time, Florian Illies tells the story of Friedrich's images for the first time: Countless of his most beautiful paintings have been destroyed, first in his birthplace and then in World War II, while others, like the chalk cliffs on Rügen, emerge from the fog of history a hundred years after Friedrich's death. Illies recounts how Friedrich's paintings ended up at the Russian Tsar's court, among winter tires in a Mafia auto repair shop, and in the kitchen of a social housing unit in Hesse. Revered by Hitler as much as by Heinrich von Kleist, hated by Stalin as much as by the 68ers – Friedrich serves as a lens through which 250 years of German history become visible.