Schinkel's Berlin: A Study in Environmental Planning
by Hermann G. Pundt
Boston: Harvard University Press [1972].
[All rights reserved. All international copyrights apply. No part of the following text can be reproduced anywhere, in any form, without the signed authorization of Susan M, Peik, copyright owner (text only)].
INTRODUCTION:
Karl Friedrich Schinkel ranks among the best-known neoclassical architects of nineteenth-century Europe. A contemporary of Leo von Klenze of Munich, Charles Percier and Pierre Francois Fontaine of Paris, and John Nash of London, he attained an eminent international status after having been the student, protege and associate of a number of distinguished men in his own land of Prussia. As a youth, he received sound training under David and Friedrich Gilly, highly respected architects in Berlin at the turn of the nineteenth century. Early in his career the diplomat, scholar, and connoisseur of art, Wilhelm von Humboldt, became one of his principal mentors. As early as 1816, Goethe recognized Schinkel's potential as an artist and an architect, saying that one can only wish that such a rich talent may be granted an equally broad sphere of action. (note 1)
Schinkel would indeed find a wide range of activities as the most successful of Prussia's state architects. He held increasingly important official positions from 1810 until his death in 1841. As a civil servant he demonstrated outstanding organizational skills as well as the ability to reconcile aesthetic aspirations with economic realities. His clarity of thought, decisiveness of action, sense of total commitment, and loyalty earned him the trust and support of his sovereign, Friedrich Wilhelm III, King of Prussia (1797-1840). In addition, his superior abilities as an architect ensured the respect and admiration of his professional contemporaries. The Parisian architect, Jakob I. Hittorff, was moved to compare him to Michelangelo -- a most flattering appraisal. (note 2) Leo von Klenze, writing from Munich, praised him as a great artist whose sensitivity and exquisite Grecian designs proved that one can build in the spirit of the Greeks on the barren sands of the Mark Brandenburg just as well as along the banks of the Ilissos, as long as one has a free mind and a free will. (note 3) Others were especially impressed by his modesty and lack of pretense-qualities that were coupled with a stubborn determination to realize his architectural conceptions and to accept no compromise when matters of principle were involved.
While men of his own time judged Schinkel as a superior classical architect as well as a competent landscape painter, future generations would view his capabilities in somewhat more complex terms. For instance, Walter Curt Behrendt, in a study of Alfred Messel in 1911, wrote that he considered Schinkel to be the chief representative of the so-called theoretical-academic and rationalist branch of Berlin's building tradition -- an assessment which ignored his more important contributions. (note 4) About the same time, Adolf Loos reminded his colleagues of Schinkel's important place in the continuing process of renewal which he felt architecture must undergo when he wrote that each time that architecture departs from its great example-- time and again misled by the petty ones, the ornamentalists -- the outstanding architect is close at hand who will lead it back to antiquity.
Fischer von Erlach in the south, Schlüter in the north, were rightfully the great masters of the eighteenth century. And at the threshold of the nineteenth stood Schinkel. We have forgotten him. May the light of this towering figure fall upon our coming generation of architects! (note 5) A decade later, Sigfried Giedion saw in Schinkel's work stylistic qualities of Romantic-Classicism and considered his designs as representative of the most progressive ideas of the period. Still later, Nikolaus Pevsner emphasized Schinkel's positive attitude toward modern building technology. (note 6)
Other critics of the first half of the twentieth century continued to interpret his importance to modern architectural thought as "proto-functionalist" in theory and Franco-Prussian rationalist in practice. Among professional architects such men as Peter Behrens, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe not only spoke highly of Schinkel's achievements, but also continued his legacy as an architect and a humanist. It is perhaps fitting that the last work of the long-established master of modern classicism should be an important public building in West Berlin, the Neue Nationalgalerie. Referring to his design in 1963, Mies noted that "the final solution for the utilization of the site permitted a building of clarity and precision, which, I believe, will stand in harmony with the tradition of Schinkel in Berlin." (note 8)
At present, the ever-increasing interest in total physical environments and the diminishing fascination for buildings as individual statements of structure are not only forcing architects to broaden their scope of vision and participation; they are also redirecting historians in their attempts to interpret the past. In regard to Schinkel and his relevance for a new generation in the last decades of our century, a revaluation of his work appears urgently needed. A limited number of recent essays have already suggested that a concern with a broad context of environment, rather than with monuments as self-sufficient entities, was more evident in his work and thought than past histories have revealed. (note 9) It remains now to determine to what extent and with what degree of success Schinkel was able to create or improve urban environmental scenes. Since he projected and executed numerous architectural designs and planning schemes for the civic center of Berlin, it seems logical that this study should concentrate on his efforts there. His work as a planner cannot be finally evaluated, however, until other aspects of the place and the period have been scrutinized. The early parts of this study summarize the environmental character of Berlin prior to Schinkel's time and treat those aspects of his training and experience which presumably affected his development as a planner of urban environments. The Appendix lists the important events in Schinkel's life chronologically and includes a resume of his works and projects. It was devised especially for the non-German reader and is intended to be an easily accessible source of information, much of which could only be found heretofore in numerous German tomes.
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