Okertal valley trail

The long-distance trail Baltic Sea – Wachau – Adriatic leads us through the Okertal valley here. You can easily hike up the valley and back down again. (About 1.5 hours each way.) Don’t worry about getting bored, as the valley changes with your direction of view. There’s also a bus every two hours or so.

Some enthusiast should really research Johann Philipp Ganz (1746–after 1800)! We don’t even know his exact date of death. We only know that he came from Eisenach, is said to have trained in Vienna, the centre of art, and worked as a painter, etcher, and publisher in Hanover and Göttingen. He was given the title of court copper engraver in Hanover, but what duties did this actually involve? He might have earned his living with portraits, which he also engraved. His sheets are usually small. It must have been a life in the shadow of the already ageing court painter Johann Georg Ziesenis the Younger, of Wilhelm Thielo the Younger, who had been in Hanover since 1761, or of Johann Heinrich Brandt. Soon the younger artists Johann Heinrich Schröder and Johann Heinrich Ramberg, appointed in 1792, set the tone in Hanover. But the enthusiasm for the Harz mountains of Johann Friedrich Weitsch in nearby Brunswick, Christian Andreas Besemann and Johann Christian Eberlein from Göttingen must have reached Ganz as well. Perhaps he also became aware of the geological and artistic explorations by von Trebra, Kraus and Goethe, and wanted to take part as a publisher?

Ganz began his first series in 1785 with a depiction of the Schnarcher Rocks, which even included a geological explanatory sheet. Our print of the granite rock near the Marienwand belongs to the second series, which appeared only seven years later. It comprised three sheets; the other two show gypsum and marble, so again, his focus was on geology.