Sanssouci Palace
Sanssouci (from the French sans souci "without worries") is the name of a group of buildings and gardens that include the former official summer palace of Frederick II the Great, king of Prussia, in Potsdam, near Berlin. It is one of the crowning works of the Rococo style, and is also notable for the numerous temples and pavilions scattered throughout the park that surrounds the complex.
The Sanssouci Palace combines the architecture of the 18th century with landscape architecture. Under the direction of Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, a single-story palace in the style of a “maison de plaisance” was built between 1745 and 1747 according to the king's instructions. The building comprises two side wings that occupy almost the entire upper part of the terrace. The wings of the palace have rows of trees on their north side and end in latticed arbors, decorated with gold ornaments.
Under its dome is the oval Marble Hall where the legendary gathering organized by the Prussian sovereign could be held, eager to share his musical and philosophical concerns with guests like Voltaire. The interior decoration is, for the most part, originating from the XVIII century.
Frederick II resided in the Palace regularly. However, after his death in 1786, it remained empty and neglected until the middle of the century XIX.
History
Frederick the Great
The palace was the work of architect Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, and was built between 1745 and 1747 as King Frederick's private residence, where he could relax away from the pomp and ceremony of the Berlin court. This circumstance is evident in the name of the palace: Sans Souci is a French term that can be translated as No Worries, symbolizing that the palace was more of a place of rest than a center of power.
The palace does not exceed the dimensions of a large single-story villa, more similar to the Palace of Marly than the Palace of Versailles. With only 10 main rooms, it was built on top of a small terraced field located in the middle of the park.
Frederick had married Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick-Bevern in 1733, but separated from his wife after his accession to the throne in 1740. The Queen resided alone at Schönhausen Palace in Berlin after the separation, and Frederick he preferred Sanssouci "sans femmes" (without women).
Voltaire, a regular guest at Sanssouci, described the king this way: “sovereign in the morning, writer in the afternoon, philosopher during the day and celestial at the round table at night.”
19th century
In 1840, 100 years after Frederick's accession to the throne, his nephew Frederick William IV and his wife moved into the Sanssouci quarters. The royal couple kept the existing furniture and replaced the missing pieces with furniture from Frederick's time. The room in which the King had died was planned to be restored to its original state, but this plan was never executed due to the lack of authentic documents and plans. However, the chair in which Frederick had died returned to the palace in 1843.
During the 19th century, the Palace became one of the residences of Frederick William IV of Prussia. This monarch hired the architect Ludwig Persius to restore and expand the building, and Ferdinand von Arnim to improve the city and thus the views from the palace. The king, a draftsman interested in architecture and landscaping, transformed his great-uncle's retirement palace into a country house in the fashion of his time. The service wings were expanded between 1840 and 1842; This was necessary because King Frederick liked to live modestly and without splendor; His main occupations in Sanssouci were meditating on philosophy and playing music.
Later additions include a loft with two wings. The kitchen was moved to the east wing. Frederick the Great's small cellar was expanded to provide spacious rooms, while the new upper floor was used as service quarters. The remodeled west wing was called the 'Ladies Wing', and offered accommodation for bridesmaids and guests. The rooms were decorated with intricate decorative wood paneling and tapestries. This accommodation for the ladies was vital: during the reign of Frederick the Great there were no rooms for women.
After the Hohenzollerns
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The city of Potsdam, with its palaces, was one of the preferred residential locations of the German imperial family until the fall of the Hohenzollern dynasty in 1918.
After World War II, the Palace became a tourist attraction in East Germany. It was completely maintained, in keeping with its historical importance, and was open to the public. After German reunification in 1990, Frederick's wish came true: his remains were finally moved to his beloved palace and buried in a new tomb located above the gardens he had created.
In 1990, Sanssouci and its gardens were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. In 1995, the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation in Berlin-Brandenburg was created, with the aim of preserving Sanssouci and other imperial palaces in Berlin and its surroundings. These palaces are today visited by more than two million people each year, from all over the world.
In 2011, George Frederick of Prussia was married before more than 700 people in Sanssouci, where some of the attendees waved small Prussian flags.
New funeral of Frederick the Great
Only two centuries after his death was Frederick II's dream of remaining buried in what was his personal paradise fulfilled, when in 1991 a new burial was held there in front of more than 20,000 attendees. The event came with controversy, due to the presence of the then chancellor Helmut Kohl.
The ceremony closed the pilgrimage of the king's remains. In 1943 they were removed from his grave along with those of his father, by order of Marshal Hermann Goering, to protect them from strategic bombing during World War II. After the war, American soldiers discovered the sarcophagi in a lime mine nearby in Eichsfeld. From there they went to the Church of Saint Elizabeth (Marburg), until in 1952 the Hohenzollern heir, Ludwig Ferdinand, took them to the family headquarters in Hechingen.
Style
It is no coincidence that Federico chose the Rococo style for the architecture of Sanssouci. This whimsical artistic style, then fashionable, was perfectly adapted to the uses of retirement and enjoyment to which the monarch intended it. The Rococo style emerged in France in the 18th century as a continuation of the Baroque, but in contrast to the dramatic and dark themes of the Baroque, Rococo was characterized by opulence, grace, joy and luminosity. Rococo motifs focused on carefree and joyful aristocratic life and not on heroic battles and religious figures. They also revolve around natural and outdoor settings, which again suits Federico's ideals of integration into nature. The complex was finished in accordance with what the King had planned in his preliminary sketches of it.
Sanssouci Park
In his organization of the park, Federico el Grande continued with what had begun in Neuruppin and Rheinsberg. During his stay as Crown Prince in Neuruppin, where he was commander of a regiment from 1732 to 1735, he ordered the creation of a garden of flowers, fruits and vegetables on the grounds of his residence. He had already separated from the classical organization of the Baroque gardens, which followed the model represented by Versailles, combining the beautiful and the useful. He also followed this principle in Rheinsberg. Apart from the transformation of the palace, which Federico received as a gift from his father Federico Guillermo I in 1734, he ordered the creation of a garden of fruits and vegetables surrounded by hedges. The central avenue and another larger avenue did not lead directly to the palace, as it was usual in the French parks of the time, but they came out of the south wing and formed a straight angle with the building.
Federico invested heavily in the park's source system, because they were a fundamental element of the baroque gardens. But neither the Neptune Grotto, completed in 1757 in the eastern part of the park, nor the facilities for the sources could be used for their intended function. At the top of the Ruinenberg, about six hundred metres away, there was a watershed from which water could not be reached to the park due to the lack of experience of the builders of the sources.
He didn't get water until the steam machine was used a hundred years later. In October 1842 a steam engine of 81.4 horses built by August Borsig began to work and made the water jet of the Great Source, under the terraces of the vineyard, rise to a height of 38 meters. A pumping station was built at the Havelbucht for this machine. It was commissioned by Federico Guillermo IV and built by Ludwig Persius between 1841 and 1843, "in the style of a Turkish mosque with a minaret like a chimney".
Many years earlier, Federico Guillermo III had purchased an area bordering the Sanssouci Park in the south and was given to his son Federico Guillermo IV for Christmas in 1825. There Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Ludwig Persius built the Charlottenhof Palace where a farm was formerly located. The garden design was entrusted to Peter Joseph Lenné. With the baroque gardens of flowers and fruits of the time of King Frederick in mind, the architect of the garden converted the flat and partially swampy grounds into an open park. The wide meadows created visual avenues between the Charlottenhof Palace, the Roman baths and the New Palace, with the Temple of Friendship built from the time of Frederick the Great. Groups of bushes and trees casually located and a pit that widens in a pond embellish the great park. Lenné used excavated materials to create the pond to build a peaceful area of hills where the roads cross at the top.
The façade of the Palace garden is decorated with figures of Atlantes and caryatids, grouped in pairs between the windows, imaginarily supporting the balustrade that crowns the building. The statues, almost round in shape, emerge from very flat stipe-shaped pilasters. Executed in sandstone, these figures of both sexes represent bacchantes, the companions of the god of wine, Bacchus. They were executed in the workshop of the sculptor Friedrich Christian Glumme. The same workshop created the vases on the balustrade and the groups of cherubs above the dome windows.
- Chinese Pavilion
Chinese pavilion, or Chinese tea house (in German: Chinesisches Haus), it is a pavilion in the gardens of Sanssouci Park in Potsdam. It is located about seven hundred meters southwest of the palace of Sanssouci, and it was Federico the Great who commissioned its construction to serve as an ornament to the whole. The architect of the garden was Johann Gottfried Büring, who between 1755 and 1764 designed the building in the then fashion style of the Chineseiserie, a mixture of rock elements and parts inspired by the oriental architecture.
Federico the Great was inspired by the Maison du Trefle, a garden pavilion in Lunéville of the year 1738, of trilobed plant designed by the architect Emmanuel Héré de Corny, for the Duke of Lorena, former King of Poland, Estanislao I Leszczynski who lived exiled in France. A copy of one of the engravings of the Maison published by Héré in 1753, he was in the power of the Prussian king.Panorama
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