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STÜLER, Friedrich August - b. 1800 Mühlhausen, d. 1865 Berlin - WGA

STÜLER, Friedrich August

(b. 1800 Mühlhausen, d. 1865 Berlin)

German architect. In 1818 he started studying architecture and became a student of Karl Friedrich Schinkel in Berlin. After travelling to France and Italy together with Eduard Knoblauch (1801-1865) in 1829 and 1830 and to Russia together with Heinrich Strack in 1831, Stüler became Hofbauinspektor (Royal Buildings Inspector), Hofbaurat (Royal privy councilor for buildings) and director of the commission for the building of the Berliner Stadtschloss in 1832.

In 1837, he planned the rebuilding of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, but failed to realise these plans because Tsar Nicholas I of Russia decided to rebuild the original Baroque/Rococo palace instead of Stüler’s Neo-Renaissance concept. Stüler then returned to Berlin, where King Frederick William IV of Prussia opened a huge array of tasks to him, making him Architekt des Königs (Royal architect) in 1842.

Together with King Frederick William, who had previously (since his first journey to Italy in 1828) studied Italian architecture, Stüler incorporated Classical antiquity and Renaissance architecture in what was to become Prussian Arcadia. They also conceived a recourse to early Christian motives such as the liturgy of the Early church to avoid political problems with the contemporary church. After the death of Ludwig Persius, Stüler assumed control of the building of the Friedenskirche in Potsdam in 1845. Joint journeys to Italy of Stüler and King Frederick William in 1858⁄59 deepened the Italian influence from medieval and Quattrocento buildings. His ideas for Cast-iron architecture or the techniques he used for the Neues Museum are more likely influenced from a journey to England in 1842.

While many of the buildings Stüler built were destroyed in World War II, a few were restored - not in the original ways, but one can still see Stüler’s concepts on the outside, especially in the Jakobi church in Berlin. His masterpieces are the Neues Museum in Berlin, as well as the dome of the triumphal arch of the main portal of the Berliner Stadtschloss.

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The Neues Museum (“New Museum”) in Berlin is located to the north of Schinkel’s Altes Museum (Old Museum) on Museum Island. It keeps to Schinkel’s strict formal grammar in the exterior, while exploiting modern technology for the extremely fine iron roof and support structures.

The museum was closed at the beginning of World War II in 1939, and was heavily damaged during the bombing of Berlin. The rebuilding was overseen by the English architect David Chipperfield. The museum officially reopened in October 2009.

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A first high point in Romantic castle building was reached with the grand ducal Schloss in Schwerin, designed by Georg Adolph Demmler in 1840 and carried out by Friedrich August St�ler in 1843-57. Drawing heavily on decorative features of French and Italian Renaissance models and with the silhouette of a Loire castle, Schwerin attained a new high point in the Romantic Schloss, which was only to be surpassed by the dream castles of King Ludwig II of Bavaria in the second half of the century.

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