SCHINKEL, Karl Friedrich

Schinkel’s design for the architectural academy features a building that impresses for its rationality and marks the beginning of a new era in German architecture.

When Schinkel was commissioned to do the Friedrich-Werder church in Berlin, he presented alternative designs in Renaissance and Gothic styles. The king plumped for the latter and Schinkel carried out the work in brick between 1825 and 1828.

The two-tower fa�ade leads into an aisleless church with wall piers and retracted choir. In the execution of the brickwork and details, Schinkel followed the tradition of brick Gothic in northern Prussia, although adapting these in keeping with the times.

Schinkel’s Neue Wache guardhouse is located between Andreas Schl�ter’s Arsenal and the Altes Museum. Its portico echoes Langhan’s Doric theme in the Brandenbutg Gate of 1789, but goes a step further in the archeological accuracy of its Doric order, with the battered pylons beside the portico emphasizing the military nature of the building.

The Altes Museum, executed 1823-30 by Schinkel, had to absorb a highly diversified collection of art. The building, opposite the royal palace in Berlin, opens to the square with a long colonnade of Ionic columns.

The interior, a central hall based on the model of the Pantheon containing an exhibition of sculptures, is reached across an open flight of steps. The remaining collection rooms, arranged as three-aisle halls, are grouped on two stories round two square courts.

The building is on the Museum Island in Berlin. Since restoration work in 2010-11, it houses the Antikensammlung (antiquities collection) of the Berlin State Museums.

The Altes Museum, executed 1823-30 by Schinkel, had to absorb a highly diversified collection of art. The building, opposite the royal palace in Berlin, opens to the square with a long colonnade of Ionic columns.

The interior, a central hall based on the model of the Pantheon containing an exhibition of sculptures, is reached across an open flight of steps. The remaining collection rooms, arranged as three-aisle halls, are grouped on two stories round two square courts.

The building is on the Museum Island in Berlin. Since restoration work in 2010-11, it houses the Antikensammlung (antiquities collection) of the Berlin State Museums.

In the German architecture of the first half of the 19th century, there was a tendency to retreat into rustic idylls and evocation of medieval architectural forms. Two crown princes, Frederick William of Prussia and Maximilian of Bavaria, built themselves ruined medieval castles as country retreats. In the years after the liberation wars, medieval castles came to symbolize national liberty and were rediscovered as witnesses to Germany’s history and culture.

The idealized chivalric virtues of their aristocratic builders constituted the notion behind the Romantic castle concept that developed in the 1820s and 1830s. The result was a string of newly built or rebuilt “medieval” castles sporting defensive walls, towers and battlements. An example is - among many others - Burg Stolzenfels near Koblenz, a medieval fortress castle (“Burg”) turned into a palace, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and built by Friedrich August St�ler.

Schinkel’s first exposure to the Gothic world came with a Rhine journey which included Cologne and Brabant. The painter’s Gothic Cathedral with Imperial Palace suggests a nostalgic souvenir, intensified by the celestial arc’s presence.

Many designs and buildings by Schinkel exude the noble pathos of Gilly’s (his teacher’s) Romantic Neoclassicism, for example the Rotunda in the Altes Museum in Berlin.

The interior, a central hall based on the model of the Pantheon containing an exhibition of sculptures, is reached across an open flight of steps.

The photo shows the interior of the Rotunda.

Many designs and buildings by Schinkel exude the noble pathos of Gilly’s (his teacher’s) Romantic Neoclassicism, for example the Rotunda in the Altes Museum in Berlin.

The interior, a central hall based on the model of the Pantheon containing an exhibition of sculptures, is reached across an open flight of steps.

The photo shows the interior of the Rotunda.

Many designs and buildings by Schinkel exude the noble pathos of Gilly’s (his teacher’s) Romantic Neoclassicism, for example the Rotunda in the Altes Museum in Berlin.

The interior, a central hall based on the model of the Pantheon containing an exhibition of sculptures, is reached across an open flight of steps.

The photo shows the interior of the Rotunda.

The photo shows the Knights’ Great Hall.

The photo shows the Knights’ Chamber.

Since the French Revolution, there had been great enthusiasm for monuments of every kind in Germany. Most of the projects for monuments to rulers, national monuments, and many others, remained purely notional, and were either never executed or only realised on a small scale. Effectively, all that came of Schinkel’s large-scale Gothic designs for a German national cathedral was the spire, in the form of a monument on the Kreuzberg in Berlin, carried out 1818-21.

Schinkel’s vision ran on the lines of s classical column, but the royal client demanded a monument made of iron, which was cheap, in the Gothic style, considered the German national style at the time. He took as his models the corner piers of late Gothic tabernacles, or even large-scale buildings like Cologne Cathedral.

The monument consists of a 19-meter tower on the ground plan of a Greek cross, with a socle and a niche level in which 12 winged battle spirits are displayed. Christian Daniel Rauch designed six of the battle spirits, but modeled only two. Christian Friedrich Tieck designed four and likewise modeled only two. The major part of the work was taken over by sculptor Ludwig Wilhelm Wichmann who executed the models by Rauch and Tieck and added two figures of his own design.

The painting shows a medieval town at its peak, a vision that Schinkel has raised to monumental quality in national pride. The longing to resurrect the national idea is evident.

The original of this painting was burnt in 1931 in the Glass Palace in Munich, but this faithful copy by K. E. Biermann from c. 1830 shows us Schinkel’s idea just as well.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):

Michael Praetorius: Motet

In his allegory of German regeneration, Morning, painted in 1813 for the militant Prussian nationalist August Wilhelm von Gneisenau, the view is imaginary, leading to a classical city by a sunlit sea, antique fragments of which lie overgrown in the foreground. This Mediterranean culture is intended to denote the Renaissance, and it is approached by two women in old German costume, with their children rushing before them. Like Friedrich’s chasseur, two guards in plumed helmets symbolize the Napoleonic order now passing.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 5 minutes):

Edvard Grieg: Peter Gynt Suite No 1, Op, 46 (‘Morning Mood’)

One of the most impressive incunabula of the intellectual enthusiasm in the Romantic period for the Orient (and especially for Egypt) was Schinkel’s stage design for Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. For the Queen of the Night it shows the Egyptian starry sky.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Die Zauberfl�te (The Magic Flute), Act 2, Chorus of the Priests

The picture shoes a design by the architect Schinkel for a Gothic mausoleum for the Prussian Queen Luise. This warm-hearted patron of the arts was much mourned, and Schinkel chose the Gothic style both as a patriotic expression, and for its echoes of organic natural forms, hinting at nature’s processes of renewal and thus of eternal life. The complex patterns of vaulted arches receding into a light-filled interior evoke the German forests. As things turned out, the grieving king preferred a classical scheme, which still stands in the park at Charlottenburg, and economic conditions after the War of Liberation left Schinkel’s grander vision for a vast Gothic cathedral in Berlin unrealized.

On a stretch of the Spree popular with river trippers from Berlin, two horn players are ferried across after a day’s festivities. At evening, their work, like the fishing on the river, is done, and their passage home becomes an image of human life, a crossing with connotations of death, leading to a mysterious end.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 4 minutes):

Franz Schubert: Auf Dem Wasser Zu Singen (To Be Sung On The Water), Franz Liszt’s transcription

Since the mid-18th century, one of the most important civil building tasks had been the construction of theatres, and the historical development from Neoclassicism through to Revivalism can be clearly followed in them. Schinkel’s theater in the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin, built 1818-21, had to incorporate the foundation walls of the burnt-out predecessor building by Langhans, and is divided into three large blocks which serve different functions.

The picture shows perspective drawings of the exterior and interior.

The Charlottenhof complex in the garden of Sanssouci near Potsdam is attuned to private mythology and Romantic outlook. It was laid out by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the landscape architect Peter Lenn� (1789-1866) for the Prussian king from 1826. The ideal landscape around Charlottenhof with the Schloss, Court Gardener’s House and Roman Baths represented an utopian realm of peaceful human co-existence.

Schinkel had to incorporate an existing building into his plan, but nevertheless succeeded in realizing this idea in architectural form. The Schloss is distinguished stylistically by Doric columns on the garden side and Ionic doorways on the entrance side, while the Court Gardener’s House is modeled on Italian country houses with open pergolas and vine arbours. However, in the Roman baths, Schinkel combines the structure of a Pompeian house with the spatial arrangement classical ‘thermae’ and settings from Greek Antiquity, such as the caryatid porch of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis in Athens.

The Charlottenhof complex in the garden of Sanssouci near Potsdam is attuned to private mythology and Romantic outlook. It was laid out by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the landscape architect Peter Lenn� (1789-1866) for the Prussian king from 1826. The ideal landscape around Charlottenhof with the Schloss, Court Gardener’s House and Roman Baths represented an utopian realm of peaceful human co-existence.

Schinkel had to incorporate an existing building into his plan, but nevertheless succeeded in realizing this idea in architectural form. The Schloss is distinguished stylistically by Doric columns on the garden side and Ionic doorways on the entrance side, while the Court Gardener’s House is modeled on Italian country houses with open pergolas and vine arbours. However, in the Roman baths, Schinkel combines the structure of a Pompeian house with the spatial arrangement classical ‘thermae’ and settings from Greek Antiquity, such as the caryatid porch of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis in Athens.

The Charlottenhof complex in the garden of Sanssouci near Potsdam is attuned to private mythology and Romantic outlook. It was laid out by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the landscape architect Peter Lenn� (1789-1866) for the Prussian king from 1826. The ideal landscape around Charlottenhof with the Schloss, Court Gardener’s House and Roman Baths represented an utopian realm of peaceful human co-existence.

Schinkel had to incorporate an existing building into his plan, but nevertheless succeeded in realizing this idea in architectural form. The Schloss is distinguished stylistically by Doric columns on the garden side and Ionic doorways on the entrance side, while the Court Gardener’s House is modeled on Italian country houses with open pergolas and vine arbours. However, in the Roman baths, Schinkel combines the structure of a Pompeian house with the spatial arrangement classical ‘thermae’ and settings from Greek Antiquity, such as the caryatid porch of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis in Athens.

The Charlottenhof complex in the garden of Sanssouci near Potsdam is attuned to private mythology and Romantic outlook. It was laid out by Karl Friedrich Schinkel and the landscape architect Peter Lenn� (1789-1866) for the Prussian king from 1826. The ideal landscape around Charlottenhof with the Schloss, Court Gardener’s House and Roman Baths represented an utopian realm of peaceful human co-existence.

Schinkel had to incorporate an existing building into his plan, but nevertheless succeeded in realizing this idea in architectural form. The Schloss is distinguished stylistically by Doric columns on the garden side and Ionic doorways on the entrance side, while the Court Gardener’s House is modeled on Italian country houses with open pergolas and vine arbours. However, in the Roman baths, Schinkel combines the structure of a Pompeian house with the spatial arrangement classical ‘thermae’ and settings from Greek Antiquity, such as the caryatid porch of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis in Athens.