STEINMEYER, Johann Gottfried

(b. ~1780 Mühlhausen, d. ~1851 Berlin)

German architect. He grew up in Berlin, where he learned the profession of carpenter. He was trained as an architect at the Bauakademie in Berlin and also worked as a builder in Berlin. Since his legacy was almost completely lost, little is known about his life and origin. A close friendship connected him to Karl Friedrich Schinkel, whom he accompanied on his first trip to Italy in 1803-05.

Between 1815 and 1850, Steinmeyer worked as an architect in Putbus, a town on the southeastern coast of the island of Rügen. He was one of the most important architects in the construction of this residence town. Prince Wilhelm Malte zu Putbus, who started the reconstruction and expansion of Putbus from 1800, gave numerous contracts to the Berlin architects.

Steinmeyer’s most important creation is the Granitz hunting lodge on Rügen.

Aerial view

The hunting lodge (Jagdschloss) was built on the highest hill in East R�gen, 107 m above sea level for Prince Wilhelm Malte I of Putbus. It was designed by the Berlin architect, Johann Gottfried Steinmeyer in the style of the North Italian Renaissance castellos. It was once a popular holiday destination for European nobility and prominent people; for example, Frederick William IV, Christian VIII, Otto von Bismarck, Elizabeth von Arnim, and Johann Jacob Gr�mbke numbered amongst its visitors.

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Exterior view

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General view

When Prince Malte of Putbus enlarged his town on the island of R�gen into a princely seat from 1815, ha had the civic areas laid out by Johann Gottfried Steinmeyer as a “white town” with whitewashed houses. The central “square” is the Circus, which is ringed by condominiums. The plain two- and three-story houses are decorated with cautious stylistic borrowings from Neoclassicism and the Gothic Revival, and generous amounts of green have been left between them.

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