Hermann Lungkwitz was a 19th-century German-born Texas romantic landscape artist and photographer whose work became the first pictoral record of the Texas Hill Country.
In 1850, the Lungkwitz and Petri families emigrated to the United States, landing first in New York City. They migrated to Wheeling, West Virginia, but decided on the destination of Texas in 1851. In 1852, the two families bought a 320-acre farm for $400 in the settlement of Pedernales, Texas near Fredericksburg and took up farming and cattle ranching. The families remained there until 1864, although Petri drowned in the Pedernales River in 1857. Lungkwitz continued to create paintings of the Texas Hill Country, one of his favorite subjects being Enchanted Rock, of which he painted at least six landscapes: The artist created in great detail in both pencil drawings and paintings. In addition to Gillespie County vistas, his Texas subjects were the German settlements of New Braunfels and Sisterdale, the Hamilton Pool and West Cave at Round Mountain, Marble Falls, and areas around Austin and San Antonio. From 1866–1870, Lungkwitz ran a San Antonio photography studio with Carl G. von Iwonski. In 1870 he accepted an $1,800 a year appointment in Austin as photographer for the Texas General Land Office under commissioner Jacob Kuechler, brother-in-law to Friedrich Richard Petri. He held the position for the entirety of the administration of Governor Edmund J. Davis. His daughter Martha Lungkwitz Bickler also received an appointment as Texas General Land Office clerk in an era were few women worked in state government. In 1877, Martha's husband Jacob Bickler founded the Texas German and English Academy in Austin, where Lungkwitz taught drawing and painting. Bickler became superintendent of Galveston public schools in 1887, and also founded the Bickler Academy in Austin in 1892. Lungkwitz gave private lessons at both Austin and Galveston whenever he visited the Bicklers. In Blanco County, Lungkwitz assisted his daughter Eva and her husband Richard Klappenbach on their sheep ranch near Johnson City.
Lungkwitz married Elisabeth "Elise" Petri, sister of Friedrich Richard Petri. The couple had six children. Elisasbeth died in 1880 and is buried at the Oakwood Cemetery in Austin, Texas. Lungkwitz died in Austin on February 10, 1891, and is buried next to his wife. Lungkwitz is the great-great-grandfather of American photographer Rocky Schenck.
