Rheinhold

Wolfgang Hugo Rheinhold (1853-1900) Hugo Rheinhold was born in 1853 in the Prussian town of Oberlahnstein as the son of the prosperous Jewish trader Rheinhold Seligmann. The name Seligmann was removed from the birth certificate, presumably to protect Hugo from anti-Semitic accusations. In 1874, Rheinhold left for San Francisco to tray his luck in international trade. He returned to Germany four years later and married his childhood sweetheart in Hamburg. When she died after a year, Rheinhold decided to bid trading farewell and moved to Berlin to study philosophy.Rheinhold only decided to become an artist in 1886. After lessons from Max Kruse and Ernst Herter he went to Berlin’s Art College. Very little of his work is known. His widely acclaimed magnum opus is Am Wege, a life-size marble sculpture of a saddened mother suckling her child.