Other German-American artists worked at the Covington Mutter Gottes Kirche. The centennial Jubilee publication of the church history mentions that the painter Krainhagen created murals above the church windows. (Figure 20, Interior view of the Mutter Gottes Kirche). His name does not appear in any listing of Covington- or Cincinnati-based artists. At a Mass of Thanksgiving and a banquet on March 8, 1891, several of the artists, including Johann Schmitt, joined the congregation in a celebration of the Golden Jubilee of the church. The cost of the 1890 interior decoration was $31,000.00.[5]

     The wooden altars in the church were built by the Schroeder Brothers of Cincinnati, who operated a very successful studio in that city for many decades. Johann Friedrich and Johann Heinrich Schroeder were listed as members of the Cincinnati Society of Christian Art in 1867. They designed and built innumerable altars for German-American churches throughout North America. The German-language newspaper Der Cincinnati Volksfreund published an article by a local reporter, who described his visit to the Schroeder studio at the corner of Linn and Betts streets in 1864. Admiring several religious statues, the reporter informs the reader that "the works were created by the young, ambitious artist Heinrich Schroeder, who only recently returned from studies at the Royal Academy of Art in Munich".[6] One year later, in 1865, the Cincinnati Volksfreund again reports on the artistry of the Schroeders by describing a high altar destined for Cincinnati's St. Anthony church: "The altar is a beautiful, forty-six ft. high structure in pure gothic style".[7] The same article mentions that Heinrich Schroeder had studied sculpture in Munich and teamed up with his brother Friedrich, an equally accomplished artist, to establish a studio in Cincinnati, where they carve both in wood and stone. The 1898 obituary of Heinrich Schroeder, who had changed his name to Henry, in the Catholic Telegraph of August 5, pays tribute to the artist as "one of the foremost sculptors of religious subjects and builders of altars in the country. He was born in Neukirchen, Germany, in 1837 and first came to this country when he was fifteen years old. After a few years in Cincinnati, he returned to Germany to study sculpture first in Muenster, Westphalia, and later in Munich. His last work, the altar in the Good Shepherd Chapel at the Soldier's Home in Dayton, Ohio, is numbered among his best efforts."[8]

     The story of Henry Schroeder parallels to some extent the career of Brother Cosmas Wolf, who might conceivably have been a fellow student at the Munich Royal Academy of Art. Wolf returned to the U.S. in 1862, and Heinrich did so two years later. It would be interesting to find out if the two men knew each other in Germany. They most certainly had a working relationship during the years of Cosmas Wolf's residence in Covington. 

     Not all of the nineteenth century German-American church artists, who worked at the Mutter Gottes Kirche in Covington, have been identified. There is a possibility that Wilhelm Lamprecht painted in the church vault and that a number of lesser- known decorators contributed murals. The exterior and interior of this unique edifice suffered greatly in a fire on September 25, 1986. In an unprecedented community effort, restoration was undertaken after 1.5 million dollars had been raised. Dr. Paul Tenkotte, historian and archivist of the church, led the restoration team. Today the building stands as a reminder of nineteenth as well as twentieth century efforts for the creation of beauty and religious devotion. (Figure 21, marker outside the Covington Mutter Gottes Kirche, paying tribute to Johann Schmitt).

     Aside from the beautifully decorated Mutter Gottes Kirche in Covington, there are numerous small German churches in the area of Kenton County in Northern Kentucky. Seventeen miles south of Covington on a hilltop above the hamlet of Morning View, the small church of St. Mary of the Assumption was built in 1869 by German Catholic settlers. ( Figure 22, exterior view of St. Mary of the Assumption, Morning View, KY ).The Morning View river valley attracted Germans from the Rhineland. Their small church was originally known as St. Benedict and was visited monthly by the Benedictine Brothers of St. Joseph Priory of Covington on horseback until the spring of 1873.[9] The original wooden gothic altar and Johann Schmitt's painting of Mary's Assumption are still in place but badly in need of repair. There is no money available for the installation of air-conditioning, which would halt the deterioration of the Schmitt canvas. (Figure 23, Johann Schmitt, St. Mary's Assumption, altarpiece, Morning View, KY, St. Mary's church).

     In Alexandria, Kentucky, ten miles south of Covington, another small German-American church was built during the 1870's. It too was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and the gothic altar was simply a larger version of the Morning View structure. The original church was demolished seventeen years ago, and all of the interior furnishings, including the altar, were sold at an auction. Only one painting by Johann Schmitt, signed and dated 1879, was kept and is now displayed in the vestibule of a new church building[10]. This painting of Mary's Assumption is almost identical to the Morning View depiction of the Virgin born aloft by two angels. (Figure 24, Johann Schmitt, St. Mary's Assumption,Alexandria, KY, 1879) Mary's lovely face and long brown hair are encircled by a halo with twelve stars. Her voluminous blue mantle billows in the breeze, and below her heaven-bound figure a small village is nestled in the hills. The Bavarian mountain flowers, blue Enzian and white Edelweiss, dot the meadow on the hillside. Johann Schmitt frequently included such visual reminiscences of the German homeland in his paintings. They must have appealed to members of the local congregation, who remembered their country of origin with nostalgia.

    The church of St. Joseph in the Hills at Camp Springs, Kentucky, was the mother church of rural Campbell County, which is located east of Kenton County. The Camp Springs parish began as a mission eight years before the Covington Diocese was established in 1853. The first Catholic families came from Germany and Austria and settled in the Four-Mile Valley because of its likeness to the Rhine valley. The German Catholics settled on the hill, and the Lutherans settled in the valley. After a log church was built in 1846, the present stone church was erected by parishioners, who had to haul the stones from the steep hillside.[11]

   Johann Schmitt painted a large mural of St. Joseph with the Christ Child above the high altar of St. Joseph in the Hills. It is signed by the artist and dated 1871. (Figure 25, interior view of the church of St. Joseph in the Hills at Camp Springs, KY).  The church also features three large mural paintings by the Cincinnati artist Leon Lippert, another German-American, who immigrated to the United States in 1880 from a small village near Aschaffenburg at the age of seventeen. He attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati two nights a week, while holding down a day job. For almost twenty years he was a student in Frank Duveneck's Sunday morning life class sessions. His portrait of Duveneck in academic robes, done posthumously, is on permanent display in the museum rooms of the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington. This is the church where the Covington-born Duveneck painted frescoes in the Chapel of the Sacraments. Leon Lippert opened his first studio in Cincinnati in 1887 and made his living as a renowned portraitist until his death in 1947. Early in his career he did a number of Catholic church- paintings, some of them, like those at Camp Springs, Kentucky, may still be admired. The artist lived in Newport, Kentucky, and St. Stephen's Church in this small northern Kentucky town still displays Lippert's Stations of the Cross, painted in oil on copper.[12]

    It is immensely gratifying to recollect the unbroken chain of teacher-pupil relations between nineteenth century German artists and a group of German-Americans. The story begins with the Nazarene painter and muralist Peter von Cornelius and his student Johann von Schraudoph at the Munich Royal Academy of Art. Von Schraudolph in turn taught Wilhelm Lamprecht at the same institution. Once established in North America as an esteemed church artist, Lamprecht engaged the young Covington native Frank Duveneck as his apprentice. Frank Duveneck went to Munich to pursue further studies in religious art, but discovered other venues in portraiture and landscape at the Academy of Art. After he had mastered the new style of Realism and a technique of loose, impressionistic brushstrokes, he introduced them to a younger generation of American painters, among them William Merrit Chase and John Twachtman. They in turn established themselves as pioneers in twentieth century art. The German-American painter Leon Lippert pursued a career path similar to that of his teacher Frank Duveneck. From early religious works he progressed to portraiture and landscape. At mid-nineteenth century, German religious art had been transported across the Atlantic to enrich the lives of immigrants, eager to surround themselves with familiar images in sacred settings. At the close of the century, new themes and methods reached North America from Germany in an exchange no less fruitful as the earlier one. The astounding sequence of events placed the small Kentucky town of Covington in an unexpectedly prominent position.