The first written mention of the town of Düsseldorf (at this time called Dusseldorp in the local Low Rhenish dialect), situated on the east bank of the Rhine River twenty-one miles (thirty-four kilometers) northwest of Cologne, dates back to 1135.

Under Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa the small town of Kaiserswerth to the north of Düsseldorf had become a well-fortified outpost, where soldiers kept a watchful eye on every movement on the Rhine.

Düsseldorf in 1186 had come under the rule of the Counts of Berg.

The sovereign Count Adolf VIII of Berg on August 14, 1288, grants the village on the banks of the Düssel the charter of Town privileges; it becomes the capital.

...Berg, and ...

Rachel Ruysch, who had been inducted  into the painters' guild in The Hague in 1701, had been invited in 1708 to work for the court in Düsseldorf and serve as court painter to Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine; she will remain working for him and his wife from until the prince's death in 1716.

Ruysch will live eighty-five years and her dated works establish that she had painted from the age of fifteen until she was an octogenarian.

About a hundred paintings by her are known.

The background of the paintings are usually dark.

Ruysch is also noted for her paintings of detailed and realistic crystal vases.

Born in The Hague, Ruysch had moved to Amsterdam when she was three when her father Frederik Ruysch, a famous anatomist, and botanist, was appointed a professor there.

He has gathered a huge collection of rarities in his house.

She had assisted her father decorating the prepared specimen in a liquor balsamicum with flowers and lace.

Ruysch had been apprenticed at fifteen to Willem van Aelst, a prominent Delft painter, known for his flower paintings.

In 1693 she had married a portrait painter, Juriaen Pool (1666–1745), with whom she has ten children.

Her sister Pieternel is married to Jan Munnicks, a young man who draws flowers in the Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam.

Ruysch is extremely pious.

Ferdinand, despite his victory over the French at Krefeld and the brief occupation of Düsseldorf, is compelled by the successful maneuvering of larger French forces to withdraw across the Rhine.

The French occupation (1794–1801) and annexation (1801) of Jülich (French: Juliers) during the French revolutionary wars had separated the two duchies of Jülich and Berg, which since 1614 had both been ruled in personal union by the Wittelsbach dukes of Palatinate-Neuburg.

In 1803 the heir of Palatinate-Neuburg, the Bavarian elector Maximilian Joseph, had separated the remaining Duchy of Berg from his other Bavarian territories and granted it to his cousin William of Palatinate-Zweibrücken-Birkenfeld-Gelnhausen as administrator, whereby it had come under the rule of a junior branch of the Wittelsbachs.

In 1806, in the reorganization of Germany occasioned by the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, Maximilian I Joseph, now King of Bavaria, cedes Berg to Napoleon in return for the Principality of Ansbach.

On March 15, 1806 the French Emperor had put Berg under the rule of his brother-in-law Joachim Murat, including territories of the former Prussian Duchy of Cleves east of the Rhine river.

Murat's arms combine the red lion of Berg with the arms of the duchy of Cleves.

The anchor and the batons had come to the party due to Murat's positions as Grand Admiral and as Marshal of the Empire.

As the husband of Napoleon's sister Caroline Bonaparte, Murat also has the right to use the imperial eagle.

On July 12, 1806, Murat joins the Confederation of the Rhine and assumes the title of a grand duke.

His lands are further enlarged by the annexation of the County of Mark, the Prince-Bishopric of Münster, the Imperial city of Dortmund and numerous minor territories of the Lower Rhenish-Westphalian Circle.

The honorary epithet of Großvater der Comics ("Grandfather of Comics") will be posthumously bestowed in Germany on Wilhelm Busch.

After initially studying mechanical engineering and then art in Düsseldorf, Antwerp, and Munich,Busch  had turned to drawing caricatures.

An early pioneer next to Rodolphe Töpffer in the art of combining words and pictures to tell often humorous stories in sequential panels, one of his first picture stories, Max and Moritz (published in 1865), is an immediate success and will achieve the status of a popular classic and perennial bestseller.

Max and Moritz, as well as many of his other picture stories, are regarded as one of the main precursors of the modern comic strip.

Max and Moritz, for instance, will inspire Rudolph Dirks to create the Katzenjammer Kids in 1897.