Heinrich Theodor Wehle

Heinrich Theodor Wehle, or Hendrich Božidar Wjela, in Sorbian (7 March 1778 in Förstgen, Görlitz – 1 January 1805, Bautzen) was a German-Sorbian landscape painter and etcher.

Life and work
His father, Johann Wehle, was a pastor. His mother, Rahel Dorothea, was a daughter of Heinrich Gottlob Rieschke, the financial administrator of Görlitz. In 1782, his family moved to Kreba, when his father was assigned to the parish there.

He received his first lessons around 1790, at the local drawing school. Later, he studied with the landscape engraver, Christoph Nathe. Finally, he attended the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where he learned history painting from Giovanni Battista Casanova, and continued his landscape studies with Johann Christian Klengel. His academic achievements led to his being hired as a draftsman at the Chalkographische Gesellschaft zu Dessau, a publishing company, in 1799. As an enthusiastic horseman, he sold many of his works for only a few Thalers, to rent horses at the stables outside Dessau.

In 1801, at the invitation of Russia's new Tsar, Alexander I, he took a position at the Imperial Academy of Arts. Soon, he received a commission to accompany an expedition to Russia's Asian possessions, led by the naturalist, Count Apollo Mussin-Pushkin, to document the exotic landscapes. They arrived in Georgia in 1802, and continued on to Persia.

As it turned out, he was not sufficiently fit to cope with the rigors of travelling in that area, and was forced to leave the expedition. He decided to return to Germany, but died in Bautzen before reaching his hometown. He was buried in Kreba, next to his father. A street in Bautzen is named after him.