ECKERNFÖRDE, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, on a fjord of the Baltic, 20 m. by rail N.W. from Kiel. Pop. (1905) 7088. It has a good harbour, fishing, trade in agricultural products, and manufactures of tobacco, salt and iron goods. There are a technical school of building and a Protestant teachers' seminary. Eckernförde is mentioned as far back as 1197. It was taken by Christian IV. of Denmark in 1628 from the Imperial troops. In 1813 the Danes were defeated here, while in 1849 the harbour was the scene of the blowing up of the Danish line-of-battle ship "Christian VIII." and of the surrender of the frigate "Gefion" after an engagement with the German shore batteries. The place lost most of its trade after the union with Germany in 1864, and suffered severely from a sea-flood in 1872. In the immediate neighbourhood is the village of Borby, much frequented for sea-bathing. ECKERSBERG, KRISTOFFER (1783-1853), Danish painter, was born in south Jutland. He became successively the pupil of Nikolaj Abildgaard and of J.L. David. From 1810 to 1813 he lived at Paris under the direction of the latter, and then proceeded, as an independent artist, to Rome, where he worked until 1816 in close fellowship with Thorwaldsen. His paintings from this period--"The Spartan Boy," "Bacchus and Ariadne" and "Ulysses"--testify to the influence of the great sculptor over the art of Eckersberg. Returning to Copenhagen, he found himself easily able to take the first place among the Danish painters of his time, and his portraits especially were in extreme popularity. It is claimed for Eckersberg by the native critics that "he created a Danish colour," that is to say, he was the first painter who threw off conventional tones and the pseudo-classical landscape, in exchange for the clear atmosphere and natural outlines of Danish scenery. But Denmark has no heroic landscape, and Eckersberg in losing the golden commonplaces scarcely succeeds in being delightful. His landscapes, however, are pure and true, while in his figure-pieces he is almost invariably conventional and old-fashioned. He was president of the Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Charlottenburg.