Adolf Friedrich von Schack

Schack was born at Brüsewitz near Schwerin. Having studied jurisprudence (1834–1838) at the universities of Bonn, Heidelberg and Berlin, he entered the Mecklenburg state service and was subsequently attached to the Kammergericht in Berlin. Tiring of official work, he resigned his appointment, and after travelling in Italy, Egypt, and Spain, was attached to the court of the grand duke of Oldenburg, whom he accompanied on a journey to the East. On his return, he entered the Oldenburg government service, and in 1849 was sent as envoy to Berlin. In 1852, he retired from his diplomatic post, resided for a while on his estates in Mecklenburg and then travelled in Spain, where he studied Moorish history. In 1855, he settled at Munich, where he was made member of the academy of sciences, and here collected a splendid gallery of pictures, containing masterpieces of Bonaventura Genelli, Anselm Feuerbach, Moritz von Schwind, Arnold Böcklin, Franz von Lenbach, etc., and which, though bequeathed by him to the Emperor William II, still remains at Munich and is one of the noted galleries in that city. He died at Rome in April 1894, aged 78. His museum opened in 1848 and remains open as a public art museum, the Schackgalerie.

Geschichte der dramatischen Literatur and Kunst in Spanien (3 vols. 1845–1846, 2nd ed. 1854), Poesie and Kunst der Araber in Spanien and Sicilien (1865, 2nd ed. 1877), which are valuable contributions to literary history.

See his autobiography, Ein halbes Jahrhundert, Erinnerungen and Aufzeichnungen (3 vols. 1887, 3rd ed. 1894). Cf. further the accounts of Schack by F. W. Rogge (1883), E. Zabel (1885), E. Brenning (1885), W. J. Mannsen (from the Dutch, 1889), and also L. Berg, Zwischen zwei Jahrhunderten (1896).