Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel was born on July 22, 1881 in Wunsiedel in Upper Franconia. He attended the arts and crafts school in Munich. At the age of 16, he immigrated to Naples, stayed in Italy for almost a year and made his living by copying. In 1898 he came to Vienna and joined Josef Hoffmann, Alfred Roller and Gustav Klimt. In the same year, he became a student of the Vienna Academy and studied with August Eisenmenger and Christian Griepenkerl. William Unger taught him etching.
In 1906 he went to Munich, where he worked for Carl von Marr, but already in 1907 he returned to Vienna. In 1911 he was appointed professor at the school of applied arts in Frankfurt am Main, where he became the spokesman for modern artistic endeavours, but without being able to assert himself. Based on this knowledge, he turned his back on Frankfurt and came back to Vienna to take up permanent residence there.
In addition to Viennese exhibitions, he also provided exhibitions in Berlin, Munich, Düsseldorf and other places wih his works.
He has had international successes since 1910, which can be documented by the numerous prizes and awards at home and abroad. A highlight in Jungnickel's oeuvre is the series of ten colour woodcuts with animals from the Schönbrunn zoo, which he created with an imperial subsidy and for which he received the graphic design award in Rome in 1911.
The year 1938 marked a turning point in Jungnickel's life: his expressive animal pictures were called "degenerate" and shown in 1939 at the "Degenerate Art" exhibition. In the same year he emigrated to Yugoslavia and stayed there until 1952. After his return, he lived in Villach and Vienna, where he died on February 14, 1965.
