Artist. He is most remembered for being the artist who designed the “Stars and Bars,” the first flag of the Confederate States of America, as well as the gray Confederate Army uniform. He immigrated from Prussia, now German State of Saarland, entering through New Orleans, Louisiana then to Mobile, Alabama in 1849 to live with a relative. Being a prolific portrait painter, his subjects include Napoleon, Otto Bismarck, President of the Confederate States of America Jefferson Davis, numerous Confederate and Union military officers, United State President Abraham Lincoln and many others. In Germany his family was successful wine makers and tobacco merchants. His talent of drawing was noted at a very young age. Not wanting to follow in his father's profession, he left Germany to study art in the United States. By August 1851, he had joined the faculty of Marion Female Seminary in Perry County, Alabama and established his portrait studio in nearby Marion. Besides being an artist, he had mastered the guitar and violin. He taught art, music and languages. He traveled to Europe to study art at Dusseldorf Academy in Germany, and then to France and Italy before returning to Alabama in 1859. According to a 1917 newspaper article, in February 1861 Marschall was approached by Mary Clay Locket, the wife of a prominent lawyer, to design a flag for the Confederacy. Being that Mrs. Locket's daughter was Alabama Governor Andrew Barry Moore's daughter-in-law, he could not decline. He presented three flags that he had designed, and the “Stars and Bars” was selected as the one. The flag was first raised in Montgomery, Alabama on March 4, 1861, yet the American Civil War began over a month later on April 12, 1861. Both the flag and uniforms that he designed resemble those of the Austrian military. In April 1862, he enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army in Colonel William Byrd's regiment based at Forts Morgan and Gaines at the mouth of Mobile Bay. He was described as 5 feet 7 inches tall, light complexion, blue eyes, light hair, and by profession a portrait painter. He did not see much battlefield action. According to a newspaper article in the “Louisville Courier-Journal”of February 13, 1938, he rose to the rank of lieutenant by January 1864 in the Second Alabama Regiment of Engineers with the task of drawing plans for bridges and forts, making maps, and doing sketches of Federal defenses as part of battle plans. After the war ended, he returned to Marion and married Martha Eliza March. He painted both their portraits, which are on display at the First White House of the Confederacy in Montgomery. They had three children. Unable to support his family in the post-war economy in Alabama, he traveled about the South to find work settling by 1872 in Mobile. In 1873, he and his family relocated to Louisville, Kentucky where he could easily find gainful employment as a portrait artist. His last portrait was painted in 1908. On May 30, 1931, a marble tablet was dedicated in the rotunda of the State Capitol in Montgomery commemorating the raising of the first Confederate flag. The tablet is inscribed: "From the dome of this Building, the First Capital, floated the First Flag of the Confederacy, known as the 'Stars and Bars,' designed by Nicola Marschall, of Marion, Alabama, at the suggestion of Mrs. Napoleon Lockett of the place, Adopted by the Confederate Congress, March 4, 1861, and raised that day by Miss Letitia Tyler, grand-daughter of former U.S. President John Tyler." On the seventy-fourth anniversary of the adoption and unfurling of the first Confederate flag, a memorial to Marschall was unveiled in Marion on March 4, 1935. The unveiling ceremony was what would have been expected of that era, with a parade of the cadets of the Marion Military Institute, a band playing “Dixie”, the presence of Marschall's two daughters and descendants of Mrs. Sumter Lea, whose silk dress furnished the material for the first “Stars and Bars”. Today, his portrait of Confederate Cabinet member Judah Benjamin is appraised at $30,000 and one of C.S.A. Colonel James William Bondurant at $50,000.