After studying at the academies in Stuttgart and Munich, Hermann Pleuer initially became one of the most important representatives of Impressionist landscape painting in southern Germany. Its representatives in France had mostly devoted themselves to describing modern leisure activities in urban recreational areas that had been made accessible by the railroad. In 1875, Claude Monet's famous depictions of Gare Saint Lazare in Paris became groundbreaking for the painterly and aesthetic development of such an ordinary motif that would become a symbol of modernity. In the course of the expansion of Stuttgart's Westbahnhof, Pleuer began his own interpretation of this novel motif in 1896. In doing so, he put strong focus on the mechanical-technical aspect, as can be seen in a large number of drawings, sketches, and studies in the inventory of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. He depicts the locomotives’ gears and engines, the tools, signal boxes and switches, as well as the station’s architecture with great precision The drawings were often made on site and served as preliminary studies for the paintings. The viewpoint in the middle of the tracks, with the approaching trains coming towards the viewer, shows the painterly joy of experimentation, through which the dynamics of the modern means of transportation become tangible from an unusual perspective. The electric light and its reflection on the metal of the tracks, as well as the clouds of smoke from the locomotives, which create an impressive effect at dusk, provide further modernist elements. Pleuer's fascination with the railroad theme, for which he would become famous, is largely owed to its symbolic significance for an accelerated modern life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when mobility at a higher speed became possible through industry and technology. [KT]