Friedrich Schwinge

He was born to Hermann Diedrich Schwinge, a greengrocer, and his wife, Caroline Maria Dorothea née Hansen.

He was unable to find suitable work, so he sang and acted in small parts at theaters in Kiel.

From 1879 to 1884, he was enrolled at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he studied with Johann Peter Theodor Janssen, Eugen Dücker, Hugo Crola and Heinrich Lauenstein.

The year 1897 also saw the creation of one of his largest projects: a series of dioramas for the "Vegetationshalle" at the Internationale Gartenbauausstellung [de] (International Horticultural Exhibition), held at Hamburg's Planten un Blomen park.

A few months later, he married Martha Christine Margarethe Hüttmann, the daughter of a coal dealer, who was twenty-five years his junior.

He was apparently responsible for several other smaller thefts involving Schwinge's paintings that had occurred over the previous months.