Herbert Knotel was the mid-twentieth centurys acknowledged master painter of military costume. His father, the celebrated Richard Knotel (1857-1914), was both a successful military artist and the worlds -greatest authority on military dress and equipment, being the first to carry through a scientific study of the entire history of that subject. His working library contained over 9,000 books and endless files of methodically screened and arranged reference material. Trained as his successor, young Herbert Knotel assisted him in the preparation of his famous Grosse Uniformkunde a series of 1,060 colored plates with accompanying texts, covering the armies of most of the civilized world from the seventeenth century until 1914.In 1914 Herbert Knotel came to full manhood, serving as a squad leader and being wounded during the Tannenberg campaign. Subsequently commissioned, he fought through World War I as a cavalry officer on the eastern front, learning the true aspect of fighting men of many nations. Ever afterwards he could give his paintings a realistic edge of dust, sweat, mud, sun glare, and danger, and depict horses and horsemen with a skill few other military artists have possessed.Through the years between the two world wars he carried forward and expanded his fathers work, updating and enlarging his 1896 Handbuch der Uniformkunde, extending the Grosse Uniformkunde series, producing the well-known DeutscheUniformen cigarette card books, and taking an important part in the management of the Berlin Zeughaus Museum.His reference library survived British and American bombing raids on Berlin, only to be destroyed by Russian artillery fire durina the Battle of Berlin. Cramming his most valuable books into suitcases, he and his wife managed to escape. Afterward, his publishing career shattered, he slowly built up a new career as an artist.

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