Karl Friedrich Schinkel (13 March 1781 – 9 October 1841) was aPrussian architect,city planner and painter who also designed furniture and stage sets. Schinkel was one of the greatest German architects, a nineteenth century design genius, and a leader in the InternationalNeoclassical andGothic Revival movements.[1] His most famous buildings are found in and aroundBerlin, where he influenced the city's design and landscape profoundly. Schinkel'sBauakademie is considered one of the forerunners ofmodern architecture. HisAltes Museum is one of the most important classical buildings in Europe and a model for future national art museums throughout the world.
Franz Ludwig Catel,Schinkel in Naples, 1824A stamp with Schinkel's Altes Museum
Schinkel was born inNeuruppin,Margraviate of Brandenburg. When he was six, his father died in the disastrous Neuruppin fire of 1787. He became a student of architectFriedrich Gilly (1772–1800) (the two became close friends) and his father,David Gilly, inBerlin. At that time, the architectural taste in Prussia was shaped in Neoclassical style, mainly byCarl Gotthard Langhans, the architect of theBrandenburg Gate in Berlin.
After returning to Berlin from his first trip to Italy in 1805, he started to earn his living as a painter. When he sawCaspar David Friedrich's paintingWanderer above the Sea of Fog at the 1810 Berlin art exhibition he decided that he would never reach such mastery of painting and turned to architecture.[citation needed] Working for the stage, in 1816 he created a star-spangled backdrop for the appearance of the "Königin der Nacht" inWolfgang Amadeus Mozart's operaThe Magic Flute, which is even quoted in modern productions of this perennial piece. After Napoleon's defeat, Schinkel oversaw the Prussian Building Commission. In this position, he was not only responsible for reshaping the still relatively unspectacular city of Berlin into a representative capital for Prussia, but also oversaw projects in the expanded Prussian territories from the Rhineland in the west toKönigsberg in the east, such asNew Altstadt Church.[2]
His portrait appeared on the 1,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁ banknote issued by theReichsbank from 1936 until 1945.[4] Printing ceased in 1945 but the note remained in circulation until the issue of theDeutsche Mark on 21 June 1948.
Floorplan of the proposed Orianda Palace, CrimeaCastle by the River (Schloß am Strom), 1820Gotische Kirche auf einem Felsen am Meer, 1815Monument to Schinkel at Schinkelplatz, Berlin
Schinkel's style, in his most productive period, is defined by a turn to Greek rather than Imperial Roman architecture, an attempt to turn away from the style that was linked to the recent French occupiers. (Thus, he is a noted proponent of theGreek Revival.) He believed that in order to avoid sterility and have a soul, a building must contain elements of the poetic and the past, and have a discourse with them.[5][6]
His most famous extant buildings are found in and around Berlin. These include theNeue Wache (1816–1818), theNational Monument for the Liberation Wars (1818–1821), theSchauspielhaus (1819–1821) at theGendarmenmarkt, which replaced the earlier theatre that was destroyed by fire in 1817, and theAltes Museum onMuseum Island (1823–1830). He also carried out improvements to theCrown Prince's Palace and toSchloss Charlottenburg. Schinkel was also responsible for the interior decoration of a number of private Berlin residences. Although the buildings themselves have long been destroyed, portions of a stairwell from the Weydinger House were able to be rescued and built into the Nicolaihaus on Brüderstr. and its formal dining hall into thePalais am Festungsgraben.[2]
Later, Schinkel expanded his stylistic range, embracing theNeo-Gothic in hisFriedrichswerder Church (1824–1831). Schinkel'sBauakademie (1832–1836), his most important brick masonry building, seemed to point the way to more rationalist architecture, but nonetheless is full of terra cotta ornament, classical details, and extraordinary symbolic sculpture. It is far more similar toH.H. Richardson's Romanesque work than to any modernist building, and was one of the finest architectural school buildings ever built, precisely because it reflected a curriculum created by Schinkel and his colleagues.
Schinkel is noted as much for his theoretical work and his unbuilt projects as for the relatively few buildings that were actually executed to his designs. Some of his merits are best shown in his unexecuted plans for the transformation of the AthenianAcropolis into a royal palace for the newKingdom of Greece and for the erection of the Orianda Palace in theCrimea. These and other designs may be studied in hisSammlung architektonischer Entwürfe (1820–1837) and hisWerke der höheren Baukunst (1840–1842; 1845–1846). He also designed the famedIron Cross medal of Prussia and later Germany.He worked on an unpublished architectural treatise that might well have influenced modern architects, as it looked at construction in various materials and extolled beauty as the highest form of artistic expression.
Schinkel built far fewer buildings than his contemporaries in England, France, the United States and Italy. Due to the difficult political circumstances – French occupation and the dependency on the Prussian king – and his relatively early death, he remains a kind of Schubertian, truncated genius, tragically taken from us by illness during a century that saw many artists die too early.
Christoph Werner:Schloss am Strom. Die Geschichte vom Leben und Sterben des Baumeisters Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Bertuch-Verlag, Weimar 2004,ISBN3-937601-11-2.
Christoph Werner:Castle by the River: The Life and Death of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Painter and Master Builder: A Novel. Tredition, Hamburg, 2020,ISBN978-3-347-04274-2.
Christoph von Wolzogen:Karl Friedrich Schinkel: Unter dem bestirnten Himmel. Biographie. Edition Fichter, Frankfurt, 2016,ISBN978-3-943856-33-0.
John Zukowsky (ed.):Karl Friedrich Schinkel 1781–1841: The Drama of Architecture. With essays by Kurt W. Forster and Wolfgang Pehnt, 2020 [2004],ISBN0-86559-105-9.
Carter, Rand."Karl Friedrich Schinkel, The Last Great Architect". Prefatory essay fromCollection of Architectural Designs including those designs which have been executed and objects whose execution was intended by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (Chicago: Exedra Books Incorporated, 1981). Also used as a reference.
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