The Soup Kitchen

There was a severe food shortage in 1816 and 1817, and this brought poverty and hence social problems that the authorities could no longer cope with. The birth rate of illegitimate children rose drastically because most of the people were not by law permitted to marry owing to their financial circumstances. The number of orphans and semi-orphans with no parents to care for them also rose drastically. Against that background the charm with which Waldm�ller has invested his children here must be seen as glossing over reality. Only the realists of the following generation dared to represent conditions in their truly fearful state.