Karl Friedrich Schinkel

Karl Friedrich Schinkel (March 13, 1781, Neuruppin - October 9, 1841, Berlin) was a German architect and painter. Schinkel was the foremost architect of neoclassicism in Germany, being one of the architects of the city of Berlin in his Prussian period. As head of the Prussian state works department and architect to the royal family, he designed most of the buildings important of the time in Berlin. His works and his projects exerted a notable influence on numerous architects of the modern movement.

Schinkel is also recognized as an urban planner and painter, but also as a furniture and set designer. The neoclassical aesthetic present in a large part of his projects adopted the paradigms of Ancient Greece. Later he leaned towards the neo-Gothic style, and towards the end of his career, he opted for a brick façade for the headquarters of the Berlin Academy of Architecture, considered a precursor of modern architecture. From his position in the service of the court The Prussian era prompted the creation of a series of works that led to a "golden age".

In 1818, a fire destroyed the Schauspielhaus, a theater designed by Carl Gotthard Langhans, and Schinkel was commissioned to design a new building, which he completed three years later. This first great work already shows his preference for Greek architecture over Roman architecture, also showing the way in which Prussia distances itself from French neoclassicism.

According to Schinkel: “a true statesman must always keep in mind the ideal of Antiquity”. The public buildings that the architect created in the historic center of Berlin, between 1816 and 1840, sought to represent the power of Prussia. He also proclaimed that public architecture should be based on the "imitation of nature."

He is also credited as the initial planner of Museum Island, the name of the northern half of the Spreeinsel, an island in the Spree River in central Berlin.

His architecture was influenced by the work of Friedrich Gilly, from whom he inherited a number of projects, since Gilly died in 1800. Schinkel devoted himself to the study of medieval architecture influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who in a writing on architecture he called the Gothic as "the true German art". However, he did not carry out projects in this style, since his mentor, the minister Wilhelm von Humboldt, claimed that the study of Greek culture was of essential importance.

Their influence reached as far as the Prussian provinces of the Rhineland and Westphalia region.

Biography

Youth and university

Young Schinkel.

Karl Friedrich was the son of Johann Christoph Schinkel and Dorothea Schinkel, née Rose in Neuruppin, the second of five. His father worked as an archdeacon and superintendent of the churches and schools in the district. Schinkel grew up in a Protestant rectory for the first few years, until he lost his father at the age of six, who died of pneumonia during firefighting in a devastating fire in Neuruppin. The family then moved into the home of the preacher's widow.

His mother, determined to provide a good education for her children, moved to Berlin in 1794. There, Schinkel attended the Berlin Grammar School for the Gray Monastery. He was musical and talented in drawing. At that time, the young Friedrich Gilly was considered the biggest emerging talent among the future German architects in Berlin. He had caused a stir shortly before with the design of his monument to Frederick II the Great. At the age of 16, in 1797, after visiting a drawing exhibition at the Berlin School of Architecture where he discovered a drawing by Friedrich Gilly, Schinkel became clear about his professional objective: he wanted to become a master builder and began to draw.

Schinkel finished secondary school in 1798 and became a student and close friend of Friedrich Gilly and his father David Gilly, who had founded a private academy of architecture, where he became close friends with the Gilly family. From 1798 he attended to his private building school in Berlin, where he lived at the same time as all his other architecture students. In 1799 he too enrolled as a student at the newly founded Berlin Academy of Architecture. The training was practically oriented, and lectures were scheduled only in winter, and students spent the summer on construction sites. In addition, Schinkel enriched his education by attending lectures at the Academy of Fine Arts. The duration of his studies is uncertain.

By 1800, his name no longer appeared in directories, and that same year his mother died. However, Schinkel was one of the first to pass the technical exams for the civil service and to obtain the titles of site manager (Bauleiters) or site inspector (Baustelleninspektor). After Friedrich Gilly's untimely death in 1800, he continued his construction projects under the direction of his father, David Gilly. He designed the Pomona Temple on the Pfingstberg in Potsdam, which was the first building he would build.

Educational trip and painting

Upon reaching his majority in 1803, Schinkel undertook his first trip to Italy. During the trip he recorded his impressions in sketches, journal entries, and letters. Numerous drawings of landscapes and watercolors surpass the pure architectural notes. At that time Joseph Anton Koch and other painters were regarded more as landscape painters than as architects. The prominent position of painting in Schinkel's life's work was recognized by the fact that later, already with obligations As an increasingly older architect, he constantly devoted himself to painting. Finally, painting and architecture cannot be clearly separated in his and his work. You can see the architect in his paintings and the painter in his buildings.

During his educational journey, he spent weeks in Dresden, Prague, and Vienna, as well as Trieste and other ancient cities on the Adriatic. When he and his traveling companion Johann Gottfried Steinmeyer, who later became Putbus's architect, witnessed a racy scene in the neighboring room of a hostel, Schinkel preached "calm and taming" to the public. as the "most noble people". He via Venice, Padua, Ferrara, Bologna, Florence and Siena he reached Rome. There he met Wilhelm von Humboldt, with whom he became friends. In April 1804 he traveled to Naples and ascended Vesuvius. He considered a three-month trip to Sicily to complete his trip. He also made numerous drawings and sketches of landscapes or architectural impressions there. The return journey took him via Pisa, Livorno, Genoa, Milan, Turin and Lyon to Paris, where he arrived in December 1804 and, among other things, visited the Louvre Museum (then the Napoleon Museum) looted from Bonaparte. In 1805 Schinkel returned to Berlin via Strasbourg, Frankfurt am Main, and Weimar.

After the defeat against the French at the battle of Jena and Auerstedt, it was not possible to carry out large construction projects in Prussia. As Schinkel was not only an architect, but also an accomplished painter, he devoted more and more time to his paintings.Architecture also shaped the character of his later images, which often centered on utopian urban landscapes and ideals. From 1807 to 1815 he painted, among other things, panoramas and dioramas for Wilhelm Ernst Gropius (1765-1852), who ran a café in the former Schinkel house and had had a mask factory since 1806.

In Berlin, occupied by French troops, Schinkel showed the first panoramic images in 1807, including those of Constantinople and Jerusalem. The Palermo panorama was particularly successful in 1808.

Golden Age

Medieval town on the edge of the river (1815), work by Schinkel, Gemäldegalerie Berlin.

In August 1809, Schinkel married Susanne Berger, the daughter of a wine merchant in Szczecin. The marriage took place in the Church of Saint Jacobi. Together they had four children: Marie (b. 1810), Susanne (b. 1811), Karl Raphael (b. 1813), and Elisabeth (b. 1822). In 1810 he was appointed construction official and in 1815 a member of the Technical Construction Council.

After the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, Schinkel was supervisor of the department of public works, where he was responsible not only for the reformation of the still provincial city of Berlin into the capital of Prussia, but also for supervising the projects in the territories where the kingdom had expanded: the Rhineland and Königsberg (now Kaliningrad).

Last years

In 1839, Schinkel suffered the first symptoms of paralysis, the following year he suffered a stroke and began an almost permanent loss of consciousness. He died on October 9, 1841 and his remains are entombed in the Dorotheenstädtischen Cemetery in the German capital.

Work

The «Altes Museum» in Berlin.

She went through various styles and the romantic stage. At his most fruitful stage he turned to Greek art instead of the Imperial Roman style in order to depart from the style to which the recent French occupiers were prone. It is noteworthy that he was a notable defender of the Neo-Greek style.

Berlin

Berlin Academy of Architecture.

It was only from 1816 that Schinkel was able to undertake specific architectural functions. His most famous buildings are in and around Berlin, such as the Neue Wache (1816-1818), the Schauspielhaus (1819-1821) (now the Konzerthaus Berlin), the Gendarmenmarkt, which replaced an earlier theater that was destroyed by fire in 1817, and the Altes Museum (see photo) on the Island of the Museums (1823-1830), who would later influence other architects, such as Robert Smirke, James Gandon or William Wilkins. Later, Schinkel moved from Classicism to embrace Gothic Revival with his Friedrichswerder Church (1824-1831).

His most innovative building was the Bauakademie (Berlin Academy of Architecture), (1832-1836), which eschewed historicist conventions and seems to point the way to a line of "modern" which would only become prominent in Germany at the turn of the 20th century.

Unbuilt work

Schinkel is much better known for his theoretical works and his architectural drawings than for his relatively little work, since very few of his sketches were actually built. Perhaps his merits are appreciated in his unexecuted designs for the transformation of the Acropolis of Athens into a palace for the new Kingdom of Greece or for the never-realized Orianda palace on the Crimean peninsula. These and other designs were compiled in his «Sammlung architektonischer Entwürfe (Collection of architectural projects)» (1820-1837), this catalog contains built works and projects, alternative projectors, plans, elevations and sections, perspectives of interiors and public roads, architectural details and gardens, projects for monuments, bridges, furniture, ornaments, and handicrafts.

Design

Schinkel designed the medal for Prussia and later for Germany, the famous Iron Cross. He also worked as a set designer for plays or opera, creating a memorable neo-Egyptian palace for the Queen of the Night in a production of The Magic Flute in 1815.

Honors and Memberships

Exhibitions

• 2012/2013: Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Geschichte und Poesie, Kulturforum Berlin, Berlin.
• 2013 Karl Friedrich Schinkel: Architekt - Maler - Designer. Kunsthalle der Hypo-KulturstiftungMünchen