Friedrike is an artist, philanthropist and mother. She received her AA Degree from Bradford College in 1974, (with high honors and the Art Award), and her BA degree from the University of New Hampshire in 1976, (where she helped organize the UNH Women’s Ice Hockey Team). She lived in Italy in 1997, carving marble. Friedrike has spent her professional life creating sculpture, photography, and Plein Air paintings. She has also designed and managed numerous building restorations and landscape designs. 

Ms. Merck has served on many boards, including the New York Women’s Foundation, the Yaddo Artist Colony, the Oyster River Cooperative School District Board and the Merck Family Fund. She also brings to the Glywood Board the experiences of growing up in the once bucolic countryside of Morris County New Jersey, as well as extensive time spent at her grandmother’s Connecticut dairy farm. Her son Maxwell is an artist, living in Brooklyn, New York. Friedrike is named after her great grandmother, Friedrike Schenk Merck, mother of Linn Merck Perkins, and grandmother of Anne Perkins Cabot.