During Napoleon’s reign, Friedrich painted the ruins of old German architecture to express his patriotism. Friedrich’s favorite building to paint was the monastery at Eldena. The monastery (or an edifice resembling the monastery) appears in the several of Friedrich’s paintings, including Cloister Ruins at Eldena, Winter, and Abbey in an Oak Grove. The Cisterian sect monks who lived in the Eldena Abby carried out secluded lives that focused on self-sufficiency and Christ. Friedrich's paintings were already about solitude before he saw the ruins at Eldena, so the haunting feeling of the long dead monks naturally attracted Friedrich.

He finished Cloister Ruins at Eldena around 1825, a time in which his personal struggles climaxed. The Akademie der Bildenden Kunst (the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts) refused to give Friedrich the landscape painting teaching position in 1824. The old teacher, Johann Christian Klengel (one of Friedrich’s major influences), died and left the post vacant. Friedrich never received wide critical acclaim in his career, so he was used to this sort of rejection. However, Friedrich fell ill afterwards. 

From 1825-1826, Friedrich suffered health problems that almost claimed his life. These years aged Friedrich and marked an end of an age that Cloister embodies. In the years before his illness, Friedrich’s paintings had worked mostly with landscape, but some featured little pairs of people (as seen in Cloister). These couples disappear in the later works, as Friedrich broods over works featuring winter landscapes.