There can be no doubt that Wilhelm Lamprecht played a pivotal role in the relations between Munich and American nineteenth century church art. Unfortunately his life and career are documented with conflicting accounts. He is listed in two leading European artist indexes. The entries are identical: They identify Lamprecht's birthplace as Altenschoenbach near Wuerzburg and the date of his birth as 1838. They state that the painter attended the Munich Royal Academy of Art between 1859 and 1867, when he left for North America "where he decorated many churches in Boston, Brooklyn, Cincinnati, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia with frescoes, altar- and ceiling paintings. He returned to Germany in 1901 and died there in 1922."[13] An article in the Munich newspaper Der Stadtanzeiger of March 26, 1920, pays tribute to the artist on the occasion of his Golden Wedding anniversary. In contrast to the terse, factual paragraphs in the two aforementioned artist dictionaries, the Munich article informs the reader that the "ceiling- and wall paintings, frescoes and altarpieces in the U.S. have assured this truly German master unforgettable glory in the history of American art." The same article mentions that Lamprecht's oldest son, a native of he United States, has followed in his father's footsteps to become a well-known, prolific painter. Research has not turned up verification of such a person.

    The Munich newspaper also describes a meeting between the young art student Wilhelm Lamprecht and Abbot Boniface Wimmer of St. Vincent in Latrobe, Pennsylvania: The story by the Munich reporter, who did not sign his name, tells of this meeting, which supposedly took place while Boniface Wimmer was on a visit to Munich in 1866. At that time the Abbot sat for a painted portrait by Lamprecht. After the painter had sent the finished work to St. Vincent, it pleased everyone so much that Boniface Wimmer offered the young artist the job of decorating the newly erected Benedictine Abbey church of St. Mary's in Newark, New Jersey, with ceiling- and wall paintings. Lamprecht accepted, and thus began his illustrious career in North America.

    This account has been firmly denied by Brother Nathan M. Cochran, O.S.B., curator of the St. Vincent art gallery, who has done extensive research in the Archabbey's archives. He is convinced that the Wimmer portrait was painted by Lamprecht from a photograph. (The matching photograph is still in the archives, so is the portrait.) Brother Nathan believes that Lamprecht was already working in New York City early in the year 1867. When he had finished a job there, he came to Cincinnati to join Cosmas Wolf, who subsequently took him to Newark's St. Mary's Abbey.[14]St. Mary's had originally been established as a Benedictine monastery by Boniface Wimmer in 1857. By 1854 the Bavarian missionary and later Archabbot of St. Vincent had sent his monks to missions and parishes in four states, although he was reluctant to send a monk to a big city and preferred to found religious communities in rural areas. Lamprecht's paintings at Newark's St. Mary's Abbey have been restored as part of the church renovation of the 1980's. They are currently undergoing another round of restoration/preservation. [15]

   To add to the conflicting accounts of Wilhelm Lamprecht's career, there have recently been entries in U.S. art historical writings that claim a presence of the artist in Cincinnati as early as 1853. They place Lamprecht as a student in Munich in the 1860's before he returned to the U.S. in 1867. These publications also declare that Lamprecht had been living in this country as late as 1906.[16] This is surely a misrepresentation of the events in the painter's life. Unfortunately, these are some of the obstacles confronting a researcher when dealing with German-American nineteenth century church artists. However, such obstacles should not detract anyone from appreciating the accomplishments of an artist as talented as Wilhelm Lamprecht. Not only did he leave a legacy of superb religious art, he also painted historical figures. His depiction of the French missionary Jacques Marquette was the subject of a one-cent stamp in 1898 marking the Trans-Mississippi Exposition.[17]

    The Covington Altar Building Stock Company was located in a small Kentucky town, where a number of the church decorators, working for the Company, lived with their families. Their commissions required them to travel a great deal, and they became itinerant artists. In a strange twist of fate, they fulfilled the romantic dreams of the German Nazarenes for a reawakening of the medieval custom of the artist as a traveling man, making all of Europe his domain. Such dreams had not materialized for the Nazarenes, whose hero had been Albrecht Duerer and his Wanderschaft in the late fifteenth century. The founders of the Nazarene movement Friedrich Overbeck and Franz Pforr stayed in Rome, once they had settled there after their student days in Vienna. Duerer also represented for the Nazarenes the perfect example of the medieval practice of apprenticeship. As a young man Duerer was apprenticed to the Nuernberg artist Michael Wolgemut, where he learned panel painting and woodcut illustration before he embarked on his travels to the Lowlands and to Italy.[18]

   The German-American church artists, like their Nazarene predecessors, pursued a strict adherence to a devout Christian faith and practiced the art of fresco painting that had been revitalized by Friedrich Overbeck, Franz Pforr, and Peter Cornelius. The Covington Altar Building Stock Company also followed the example of the Nazarenes in promoting the custom of apprenticeship. A local Covington boy learned the trade of altar building, gilding and painting at Br. Cosmas Wolf's workshop and became one of America's leading Impressionist painters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Frank Duveneck was fourteen years old in 1862 when Br. Cosmas and Johann Schmitt began to teach him according to the medieval master/apprentice custom.