In Fall of the Fatherland, a pen and ink drawing of 1809 by Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810), the "fallen fatherland" of the work's title is traditionally understood as the dead young man, buried under the land upon which his widow guides a plow with the help of Amor. Conventionally, the image has been interpreted as early evidence of growing nationalist sentiment among German lands in response to Napoleon's occupation. Virtually unknown during Runge's lifetime with its first publication dated to 1841, the image situates the tragic consequences of the Napoleonic occupation not on a battlefield of wounded soldiers and fallen horses but rather within the context of a catastrophic loss to the family. Thus, while not disregarding the long-standing nationalist reading of the work, this thesis argues for a new interpretation of Runge's Fall of the Fatherland that emphasizes the arabesque as a carrier of critical meaning. The artist's modern and subjective use of the arabesque is examined within the context of two late eighteenth century treatises. Further, Fall of the Fatherland is investigated for its articulation of changing notions of family and marriage in bourgeois Hamburg at the start of the nineteenth century, particularly the growing incongruence between private and public spheres. Like the arabesque which travels both inside and outside of the pictorial space, the bourgeois family traversed a boundary between public and private, its public obligations in tension with the realm of domesticity.