Born June 17, 1814, in Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, USSR; died Dec. 5, 1879, in Düsseldorf. German painter, representative of the Düsseldorf school.
Hübner studied at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf with W. von Schadow and C. Sohn. In an attempt to impart a social tone to genre painting, he turned to dramatic topical themes, as seen in Emigrants (1846 and 1855). In Silesian Weavers (1844), Hùbner showed the cruel exploitation of workers. F. Engels believed that this painting by “one of the best German painters . . . has made more effectual socialist agitation than a hundred pamphlets might have done” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 2, p. 519).