The Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg is now showing nine paintings by Caspar David Friedrich in the New Pavilion in Berlin-Charlottenburg. But how did these works actually end up in the collection? King Frederick William III of Prussia was an early patron of the artist and acquired a total of six paintings by Friedrich at the Berlin Academy exhibitions between 1810 and 1816. Today, they are among the key works of German Romantic painting, but at the time of their purchase, some of them were considered radically modern. Friedrich's first two acquisitions were the ‘Mönch am Meer’ and the ‘Abtei im Eichwald’, which can be seen today in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. They were purchased at the request of Crown Prince Frederick William. The sensitive 15-year-old intuitively sensed the emotional power of Friedrich's paintings. As his mother, Queen Louise, had died only weeks before, he was receptive to the feelings of loneliness and forlornness they conveyed. Just two years later, in the autumn of 1812, King Frederick William III acquired another key work, ‘Morgen im Riesengebirge’, which was painted after a trip by the artist to the Giant Mountains. The king was particularly impressed by the closeness to nature in the depiction of the rising morning mist. He had the painting hung in the new extension of the Kronprinzenpalais, where his children lived, as one of his first two acquisitions. In the same year, Frederick William III purchased the ‘Gartenterrasse’, which had been painted shortly before and was integrated into the decor of the neighbouring Prinzessinnenpalais. Two further paintings, including the ‘Ansicht eines Hafens’, were acquired in 1816 as birthday presents for the now 21-year-old crown prince. He had them hung in his newly furnished apartment in the Berlin Palace. Fourteen years later, the prince visited Caspar David Friedrich in his Dresden studio. He did not acquire any further works by the artist. But this was not the end of the acquisition story. Much later, in 1934, a seventh work by Friedrich was discovered in Wilhelmsthal Palace near Kassel, which at the time belonged to the Prussian Palace Administration: the painting ‘Nebel im Elbtal’, painted around 1821. In the 1960s and 1970s, the then West Berlin Palace Administration was able to significantly expand its collection of Friedrich's works. Its curator, the great Friedrich expert Helmut Börsch-Supan, succeeded in acquiring five more paintings by the artist.