The artists of Symbolism at the end of the 19th century in Germany were not concerned with the depiction or impressions of reality like the contemporaneous movements of Realism and Impressionism. Instead, they opened up vast, spiritual and universal worlds in their works. The human being and its existence, its becoming and passing with all the psychic sensory content that has shaped it since the beginnings of civilization, are in their focus. In his works, Franz von Stuck succeeds in immortalizing these timeless themes in a fascinating way, using figures from ancient mythology, the Old Testament and other literary sources of inspiration. Towards the end of the 19th century in particular, Europe's advancing modernity, industrialization and cultural refinement gave rise to a spirit that was both a climax and an end. A morbid, decadent desire for the gruesome made paintings such as Arnold Böcklin's "Toteninsel" (Isle of the Dead) very successful in 1880. Motifs of beginning and end, paradise and inferno can also be found in Stuck's work. His playful fauns and mermaids reflect a joyful vitalism, but at the same time there are also depictions of existential threat. His figures are always archetypes, just as contemporary psychology is beginning to discover and seek to find in art and literature. Stuck's work is characterized by a wide range of emotions, whereby the joyful liveliness always outweighs the concern for the brevity of life. Even here, in the paradisiacal state of the two lovers,we find an abysmal side that evokes tense emotions in form of death riding by in the foreground. The oblivious lovers in nature, in which death hides, has been a theme of art since the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and was already depicted by Albrecht Dürer in one of his most famous engravings as a "memento mori". In Stuck's later version, however, there are no moralizing implications; on the contrary, he calls all the more clearly for the enjoyment of the moment - the two lovers do not seem to pay any attention to death. The powerful facet of the immortality of love, which in best case can even endure beyond death, is also shown here in a conciliatory way. [KT]