Best of ...
… Räuber-Kneißl-Tour
About Bavarian ‚Robin Hood‘ and his homeland
You might think they’re getting out of hand: anniversaries – almost one after the other, usually triggered by our number-obsessed calendar system – man-made, bureaucratically timed, sometimes a bit of an effort. And yet: they are welcome occasions. To celebrate, to remember, to pause for thought. To reflect on the past – and as motivation for a positive view of the future.
Two such anniversaries this year have prompted me to finally realise an idea that has been maturing inside me for a long time: a series of pictures with snapshots from the Dachau hinterland – an area where I have now lived for almost 20 years (ten, at most). The trigger? A flyer in the letterbox – ‘150 years of Räuber Kneißl’. Aha, I thought. If that’s not a sign.
So I have created my own personal ‘best of’ from many a captured view through the camera lens – a photographic Räuber-Kneißl tour through places along which a cycle path named after the Upper Bavarian folk hero runs today. And even if I am slowly reaching the limits of our number system with the number of photos I have taken (think smiley here, cookie avoidance prevents it): All of the selected 50 or so shots shown in the show above were taken in a landscape that has more to tell than meets the eye.
Gentle hills, quiet forests and wide corridors with peaceful biotopes – they are not only picturesque and score points with their unobtrusive charm, they also tell a geological story: the last ice age formed them when huge glaciers from the Alps washed boulders and gravel into the foreland. This is how this moraine-rich backdrop was created, which once attracted artists and today attracts cyclists and also draws me out again and again with my camera.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, Mathias Kneißl once lived and later fled through this very neighbourhood, perhaps passing a building that still stands there today or possibly even passing one of the mighty avenue trees that grow there today.
The ‘robber Kneißl’, born in 1875, grew up in difficult circumstances, was stigmatised, persecuted and ultimately executed. His life? Not a heroic epic, but not just a crime story either – rather a sad chapter of social marginalisation. A tragic fate of his time.
What if Mathias Kneißl had been born a hundred years later?
Of course, even if times have changed – we are still not completely rid of marginalisation, prejudice and the famous pigeonholing. Who doesn’t know the stories from many a social committee or from the neighbourhood? Of jam-making, cross-border fruit collectors with a pronounced need to communicate or the garden-zoo-demolishing troublemaker from across the road – often only active because good-naturedness is often mistaken for weakness or ignorance.
What do they say in Bavaria?
‘Nothing for unguat.’ And: ‘The main thing is to be healthy!’ (I would have liked to insert a winking smiley here)
But seriously:
Economically, Kneißl-Hias would certainly have had it easier these days – the path to crime would probably not even have been an issue. Who knows – perhaps his creative potential would have been recognised early on. Perhaps he would have become an artist? I don’t think that’s unlikely. He loved music, enjoyed dancing – he was an imaginative, creative carpenter with a flair for form and function. Perhaps the founder of a sustainable furniture start-up from regional forestry? Or an instrument maker with his own YouTube channel. Perhaps his sense of rhythm would even have led him into the music industry.
Or today he would simply be a sensitive spirit with a camera (instead of a rifle) in his luggage, travelling through the Dachau hinterland on an e-bike and photographing the foothills of a terminal moraine from the last Würm glacial period – on a cycle path that perhaps bears the name of Prince Regent Luitpold instead of his own, because he didn’t even have to turn down many a request for clemency.
Perhaps he would have been on his way to Dachau, where the
‘Best of Kunstrefugium’ exhibition was taking place in the water tower
from 29 May to 15 June 2025
and would be very enthusiastic about my fine art photography series ‘Best-of-Räuber-Kneißl-Tour’.
(Nonsense – that would be called ‘Best of Prinzregent-Luitpold-Tour’ – or whatever … smiley)
Maybe he would also like to take part in one of my workshops. Who knows…
(One of them would have to be renamed first…)
But now I’m looking forward to numerous visits to the exhibition and a lively exchange!
My four exhibited works all show excerpts from the old town of Dachau, captured with a moving camera and artistically staged. Who recognizes it?
With an eye for the extraordinary in the everyday, I want to transform cityscapes and facades into lively, painterly compositions. Architecture is not documented, but reinterpreted – as a surface, rhythm and abstract play of colors. This creates images that invite a new view of our built environment – positive and open, not just for the architecture, but for all the people who pass by…
Printed on wonderfully soft, deep matt FineArt paper, laminated on Dibond and discreetly framed with an elegant shadow gap, the works unfold their full effect – naturally much more impressive in nature than on an illuminated glass monitor.
If you are interested in my FineArt pigment prints, I would also be happy to do commissioned work – perhaps of your own personal favorite place, building or whatever… – not just for the occasion of an anniversary or two
(Another smiley – the last one. For now.):
Die ausgewählten Gartenmotive hatten es jüngst sogar zu einer internationalen Auszeichnung geschafft.
BEST OF ...
… Räuber-Kneißl-Tour
About Bavarian ‚Robin Hood‘ and his homeland
You might think they’re getting out of hand: anniversaries – almost one after the other, usually triggered by our number-obsessed calendar system – man-made, bureaucratically timed, sometimes a bit of an effort. And yet: they are welcome occasions. To celebrate, to remember, to pause for thought. To reflect on the past – and as motivation for a positive view of the future.
Two such anniversaries this year have prompted me to finally realise an idea that has been maturing inside me for a long time: a series of pictures with snapshots from the Dachau hinterland – an area where I have now lived for almost 20 years (ten, at most). The trigger? A flyer in the letterbox – ‘150 years of Räuber Kneißl’. Aha, I thought. If that’s not a sign.
So I have created my own personal ‘best of’ from many a captured view through the camera lens – a photographic Räuber-Kneißl tour through places along which a cycle path named after the Upper Bavarian folk hero runs today. And even if I am slowly reaching the limits of our number system with the number of photos I have taken (think smiley here, cookie avoidance prevents it): All of the selected 50 or so shots shown in the show above were taken in a landscape that has more to tell than meets the eye.
Gentle hills, quiet forests and wide corridors with peaceful biotopes – they are not only picturesque and score points with their unobtrusive charm, they also tell a geological story: the last ice age formed them when huge glaciers from the Alps washed boulders and gravel into the foreland. This is how this moraine-rich backdrop was created, which once attracted artists and today attracts cyclists and also draws me out again and again with my camera.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, Mathias Kneißl once lived and later fled through this very neighbourhood, perhaps passing a building that still stands there today or possibly even passing one of the mighty avenue trees that grow there today.
The ‘robber Kneißl’, born in 1875, grew up in difficult circumstances, was stigmatised, persecuted and ultimately executed. His life? Not a heroic epic, but not just a crime story either – rather a sad chapter of social marginalisation. A tragic fate of his time.
What if Mathias Kneißl had been born a hundred years later?
Of course, even if times have changed – we are still not completely rid of marginalisation, prejudice and the famous pigeonholing. Who doesn’t know the stories from many a social committee or from the neighbourhood? Of jam-making, cross-border fruit collectors with a pronounced need to communicate or the garden-zoo-demolishing troublemaker from across the road – often only active because good-naturedness is often mistaken for weakness or ignorance.
What do they say in Bavaria?
‘Nothing for unguat.’ And: ‘The main thing is to be healthy!’ (I would have liked to insert a winking smiley here)
But seriously:
Economically, Kneißl-Hias would certainly have had it easier these days – the path to crime would probably not even have been an issue. Who knows – perhaps his creative potential would have been recognised early on. Perhaps he would have become an artist? I don’t think that’s unlikely. He loved music, enjoyed dancing – he was an imaginative, creative carpenter with a flair for form and function. Perhaps the founder of a sustainable furniture start-up from regional forestry? Or an instrument maker with his own YouTube channel. Perhaps his sense of rhythm would even have led him into the music industry.
Or today he would simply be a sensitive spirit with a camera (instead of a rifle) in his luggage, travelling through the Dachau hinterland on an e-bike and photographing the foothills of a terminal moraine from the last Würm glacial period – on a cycle path that perhaps bears the name of Prince Regent Luitpold instead of his own, because he didn’t even have to turn down many a request for clemency.
Perhaps he would have been on his way to Dachau, where the
‘Best of Kunstrefugium’ exhibition was taking place in the water tower
from 29 May to 15 June 2025
and would be very enthusiastic about my fine art photography series ‘Best-of-Räuber-Kneißl-Tour’.
(Nonsense – that would be called ‘Best of Prinzregent-Luitpold-Tour’ – or whatever … smiley)
Maybe he would also like to take part in one of my workshops. Who knows…
(One of them would have to be renamed first…)
But now I’m looking forward to numerous visits to the exhibition and a lively exchange!
My four exhibited works all show excerpts from the old town of Dachau, captured with a moving camera and artistically staged. Who recognizes it?
With an eye for the extraordinary in the everyday, I want to transform cityscapes and facades into lively, painterly compositions. Architecture is not documented, but reinterpreted – as a surface, rhythm and abstract play of colors. This creates images that invite a new view of our built environment – positive and open, not just for the architecture, but for all the people who pass by..
Printed on wonderfully soft, deep matt FineArt paper, laminated on Dibond and discreetly framed with an elegant shadow gap, the works unfold their full effect – naturally much more impressive in nature than on an illuminated glass monitor.
If you are interested in my FineArt pigment prints, I would also be happy to do commissioned work – perhaps of your own personal favorite place, building or whatever… – not just for the occasion of an anniversary or two
(Another smiley – the last one. For now.):