tried genre, an example of which is the Pilgrims entering Rome, now in the Munich gallery. He also executed portraits, and twice had sittings from Thorwaldsen (Pinakothek and Schack collections). But his fame rests on the frescoes representing scenes from the Old and New Testaments in the Allerheiligencapelle, and the episodes from the life of St Boniface and other German apostles in the basilica of Munich. Here he holds rank second to none but Overbeck in monumental painting, being always true to nature though mindful of the traditions of Christian art, earnest and simple in feeling, yet lifelike and powerful in expression. Through him and his pupils the sentiment of religious art was preserved and extended in the Munich school.
Peter Hess (1792–1871)—afterwards von Hess—was born at Düsseldorf and accompanied his younger brother Heinrich Maria to Munich in 1806. Being of an age to receive vivid impressions, he felt the stirring impulses of the time and became a painter of skirmishes and battles. In 1813–1815 he was allowed to join the staff of General Wrede, who commanded the Bavarians in the military operations which led to the abdication of Napoleon; and there he gained novel experiences of war and a taste for extensive travel. In the course of years he successively visited Austria, Switzerland and Italy. On Prince Otho’s election to the Greek throne King Louis sent Peter Hess to Athens to gather materials for pictures of the war of liberation. The sketches which he then made were placed, forty in number, in the Pinakothek, after being copied in wax on a large scale (and little to the edification of German feeling) by Nilsen, in the northern arcades of the Hofgarten at Munich. King Otho’s entrance into Nauplia was the subject of a large and crowded canvas now in the Pinakothek, which Hess executed in person. From these, and from battlepieces on a scale of great size in the Royal Palace, as well as from military episodes executed for the czar Nicholas, and the battle of Waterloo now in the Munich Gallery, we gather that Hess was a clever painter of horses. His conception of subject was lifelike, and his drawing invariably correct, but his style is not so congenial to modern taste as that of the painters of touch. He finished almost too carefully with thin medium and pointed tools; and on that account he lacked to a certain extent the boldness of Horace Vernet, to whom he was not unaptly compared. He died suddenly, full of honours, at Munich, in April 1871. Several of his genre pictures, horse hunts, and brigand scenes may be found in the gallery of Munich.
Karl Hess (1801–1874), the third son of Karl Christoph Hess, born at Düsseldorf, was also taught by his father, who hoped that he would obtain distinction as an engraver. Karl, however, after engraving one plate after Adrian Ostade, turned to painting under the guidance of Wagenbauer of Munich, and then studied under his elder brother Peter. But historical composition proved to be as contrary to his taste as engraving, and he gave himself exclusively at last to illustrations of peasant life in the hill country of Bavaria. He became clever alike in representing the people, the animals and the landscape of the Alps, and with constant means of reference to nature in the neighbourhood of Reichenhall, where he at last resided, he never produced anything that was not impressed with the true stamp of a kindly realism. Some of his pictures in the museum of Munich will serve as examples of his manner. He died at Reichenhall on the 16th of November 1874.
HESS, HEINRICH HERMANN JOSEF, Freiherr von
(1788–1870), Austrian soldier, entered the army in 1805 and was
soon employed as a staff officer on survey work. He distinguished
himself as a subaltern at Aspern and Wagram, and in 1813, as a
captain, again served on the staff. In 1815 he was with Schwarzenberg.
He had in the interval between the two wars been
employed as a military commissioner in Piedmont, and at the
peace resumed this post, gaining knowledge which later proved
invaluable to the Austrian army. In 1831, when Radetzky
became commander-in-chief in Austrian Italy, he took Hess as
his chief-of-staff, and thus began the connexion between two
famous soldiers which, like that of Blücher and Gneisenau, is a
classical example of harmonious co-operation of commander and
chief-of-staff. Hess put into shape Radetzky’s military ideas, in
the form of new drill for each arm, and, under their guidance,
the Austrian army in North Italy, always on a war footing,
became the best in Europe. From 1834 to 1848 Hess was
employed in Moravia, at Vienna, &c., but, on the outbreak of
revolution and war in the latter year, was at once sent out to
Radetzky as chief-of-staff. In the two campaigns against King
Charles Albert which followed, culminating in the victory of
Novara, Hess’s assistance to his chief was made still more
valuable by his knowledge of the enemy, and the old field-marshal
acknowledged his services in general orders. Lieut.-Fieldmarshal
Hess was at once promoted Feldzeugmeister, made a member of
the emperor’s council, and Freiherr, assuming at the same time
the duties of the quartermaster-general. Next year he became
chief of the staff to the emperor. He was often employed in
missions to various capitals, and he appeared in the field in 1854 at
the head of the Austrian army which intervened so effectually
in the Crimean war. In 1859 he was sent to Italy after the early
defeats. He became field-marshal in 1860, and a year later, on
resigning his position as chief-of-staff, he was made captain of the
Trabant guard. He died in Vienna in 1870.
See “General Hess” in Lebensgeschichtlichen Hinrissen (Vienna, 1855).
HESSE (Lat. Hessia, Ger. Hessen), a grand duchy forming a
state of the German empire. It was known until 1866 as Hesse-Darmstadt,
the history of which is given under a separate heading
below. It consists of two main parts, separated from each other
by a narrow strip of Prussian territory. The northern part is the
province of Oberhessen; the southern consists of the contiguous
provinces of Starkenburg and Rheinhessen. There are also
eleven very small exclaves, mostly grouped about Homburg to
the south-west of Oberhessen; but the largest is Wimpfen on
the north-west frontier of Württemberg. Oberhessen is hilly;
though of no great elevation it extends over the water-parting
between the basins of the Rhine and the Weser, and in the
Vogelsberg it has as its culminating point the Taufstein (2533 ft.).
In the north-west it includes spurs of the Taunus. Between
these two systems of hills lies the fertile undulating tract known
as the Wetterau, watered by the Wetter, a tributary of the
Main. Starkenburg occupies the angle between the Main and
the Rhine, and in its south-eastern part includes some of the
ranges of the Odenwald, the highest part being the Seidenbucher
Höhe (1965 ft.). Rheinhessen is separated from Starkenburg by
the Rhine, and has that river as its northern as well as its eastern
frontier, though it extends across it at the north-east corner,
where the Rhine, on receiving the Main, changes its course
abruptly from south to west. The territory consists of a fertile
tract of low hills, rising towards the south-west into the northern
extremity of the Hardt range, but at no point reaching a height of
more than 1050 ft.
The area and population of the three provinces of Hesse are as follow:
| Area. | Population. | ||
| sq. m. | 1895. | 1905. | |
| Oberhessen | 1267 | 271,524 | 296,755 |
| Starkenburg | 1169 | 444,562 | 542,996 |
| Rheinhessen | 530 | 322,934 | 369,424 |
| Total | 2966 | 1,039,020 | 1,209,175 |
The chief towns of the grand duchy are Darmstadt (the capital) and Offenbach in Starkenburg, Mainz and Worms in Rheinhessen and Giessen in Oberhessen. More than two-thirds of the inhabitants are Protestants; the majority of the remainder are Roman Catholics, and there are about 25,000 Jews. The grand duke is head of the Protestant church. Education is compulsory, the elementary schools being communal, assisted by state grants. There are a university at Giessen and a technical high school at Darmstadt. Agriculture is important, more than three-fifths of the total area being under cultivation. The largest grain crops are rye and barley, and nearly 40,000 acres are under vines. Minerals, in which Oberhessen is much richer
