Old Palace (Berlin)

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View of the Old Palace from Unter den Linden boulevard

The Alte Palais (formerly: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Palais ) on the boulevard Unter den Linden 9 in the Berlin district of Mitte is a former palace of the Hohenzollern family . It was built between 1834 and 1837 by Carl Ferdinand Langhans in the classicism style as a winter residence for the Prussian Prince Wilhelm and later German Kaiser Wilhelm I. In World War II burned, it was rebuilt from 1963 to 1964 by Fritz Meinhardt outside historic and modern inside. Since then, the monument has been home to the law faculty of the Humboldt University .

History and planning

Old Library (left) and Old Palace (right) with the pergola, which was reconstructed in 2008

In the place of the Old Palace was the town house built between 1688 and 1692 by Ernst Bernhard von Weyler , the head of the Brandenburg artillery. His son Christian Ernst , who moved to Vienna , sold it to Margrave Philipp Wilhelm von Brandenburg-Schwedt . His descendant, Margrave Friedrich Wilhelm , had it converted into a baroque palace by Christian Ludwig Hildebrandt . The refusal of the margraves to sell their palace for the construction of King Frederick II's programmatic Forum Fridericianum led to the failure of the original plans. When Friedrich resumed work on a greatly reduced version of his forum in 1774, the garden and back building of the palace had to give way to the new library building .

In 1817, Count Tauentzien acquired as head of III. Army Corps the house to use it as a residence and office. Prince Wilhelm was his successor in 1825, but only moved into the palace after his marriage to Augusta von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach in 1829.

The Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm planned to transform the forum into a memorial complex for Frederick the Great. For this purpose, his favorite architect, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, intended to demolish the library and the Margravial Palace in order to build an extensive two-tower palace for Prince Wilhelm. However, he did not agree to the plan for cost reasons and because of the disrespectful demolition of the library in his opinion . He preferred a much more modest design by the Breslau architect Carl Ferdinand Langhans . Langhans solved the task set by Wilhelm of building a representative city palace on the limited property, with willingly supported by Schinkel, in a generally recognized, elegant way.

Construction and use

Kaiser Wilhelm I at his desk in the palace, 1880
Royal Library (left) and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Palais (right), around 1900

Langhans constructed the building in the classicist style between 1834 and 1837. It has 13 window axes to the street with a covered portico - like driveway, is two stories high and has a mezzanine floor , adorned by a surrounding terracotta frieze with 18 figures and 16 coats of arms. Eagles soar at the corners. There was a green pergola facing the Opera Square . On the lower floor of the left part of the building were the living and working rooms of Wilhelm facing the street and to the rear facing a green inner courtyard, while those of Augusta were on the upper floor, connected by an intimate spiral staircase. In the middle part there was the vestibule , the representative staircase and above the social rooms . In the right part, which extended as a much longer wing on Oranische Gasse to Behrenstraße, there were festival rooms, including the large circular dance hall. Towards Behrenstrasse, there were service and living rooms for the staff, horse stables and a coach house around a second inner courtyard . In everyday operations, the entrance on the narrow Oranische Gasse served as the main entrance and drive.

For 50 years, in the months between the end of the autumn maneuvers in October and the spring parades in March, the palace was the residence and official residence of Wilhelm, who rose to become Prince of Prussia in 1840 , Regent in 1858 , King of Prussia in 1861 and German Emperor in 1871 . In the days of the March Revolution of 1848 , when popular anger had driven Wilhelm out of Berlin, it escaped looting and devastation because well-meaning people declared it national property. In the late 1850s it became one of the most important arenas of political life in the Prussian state, which culminated in 1871 with the unification of the empire . At the same time it was the place where Wilhelm fulfilled his duties as head of the House of Hohenzollern and a member of the European nobility. Every Thursday Augusta filled the rooms with a company of well-known artists and scholars. Heinrich Strack refurbished the building in 1854 to meet the increased demands for representation. Wilhelm acquired the Dutch Palace as a guest house in 1882 and connected the two buildings with a glazed corridor across Oranische Gasse.

During the imperial era , the palace developed into one of the most important sights in Berlin. Wilhelm always appeared at the "historic corner window" of his study on the ground floor in order to watch the large guard elevator Unter den Linden at the Neue Wache diagonally opposite . The regularly recurring event has been mentioned in travel guides since the 1870s and attracted numerous spectators. It is said that Wilhelm even interrupted an important meeting in order to observe the watch:

“The guard is coming, I have to go to the window! The people are waiting for my greeting - that's what it says in Baedeker ! "

- Kaiser Wilhelm I.

The legend that the palace did not have a bathroom is considered ineradicable , so that “ if Wilhelm wanted a bathtub from the Hotel de Rome opposite , it had to be carried into the palace by two hotel servants”. In addition, the chief building officer Albert Geyer remarked that there was a bathtub in Augusta's apartment from the start, which Wilhelm could reach via the spiral staircase. It was not until 1885 that Wilhelm had his own bathtub, which he did not use.

Wilhelm I died on March 9, 1888 in his palace to great public sympathy. The corner window was then draped forever. After Empress Augusta died here two years later, it was opened to the public as a memorial to the imperial couple. The house of Hohenzollern kept it under the contract with the Free State of Prussia on the division of its assets of October 6, 1926. In the time of National Socialism , the name Altes Palais prevailed instead of Kaiser-Wilhelm-Palais .

Destruction and rebuilding

Ruins of the Old Palace (top left), August 1951

The interior of the palace was destroyed by fire in 1943 during the Second World War as a result of a bomb attack , while its exterior including the facade decorations, arbor and pergola was preserved.

According to Ludwig Justi's wish, the exhibition “Reunion with museum property”, organized in the Berlin City Palace in December 1946, was to be followed by another in the Old Palace, and its reconstruction was planned until the 1950s. The palace, which was expropriated without compensation by the Soviet occupying power in 1945 and later owned by the Humboldt University, fell into disrepair for two decades, except for the outer walls.

Together with the old library, the palace was rebuilt between 1963 and 1964. Fritz Meinhardt renovated the street facade of the old palace, which had been gutted down to the load-bearing walls, in the form of 1837 with changes to the floor plan and, in some cases, the room heights. The pergola and eagles on the corners of the building were removed as too clear memories of Kaiser Wilhelm I. The rear part of the building, which had contained the large halls, and the buildings on Behrenstrasse were demolished and replaced by prefabricated buildings. As a result of the overbuilding of the Oranische Gasse with the house at Unter den Linden 11 , the palace facing the street is no longer free. The modern institute buildings are connected to each other inside.

Between May 2003 and August 2005, the Berlin Monument Protection Foundation renovated the building and returned the classicist facade to its original version. The restoration of the pergola was also completed by 2008.

literature

  • Helmut Engel : The House of the German Emperor - The "Old Palace" Unter den Linden , Braun Publishing House, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-935455-52-6 .
  • Thomas Kemper: The former Palais Kaiser Wilhelm I. , in: MuseumsJournal 2003, issue 2, pp. 8–11
  • Bogdan Krieger: Das Palais des alten Kaisers , special reprint from Velhagen & Klasings monthly books, 40th volume, 1925/1926, 11th issue, July 1926 (p. 521-536), facsimile print . With an accompanying text by [Hans-Werner] Klünner, Archiv-Verlag, Braunschweig 1990.
  • F. [Fritz] Meinhard: Former Palais Wilhelm I, former commandant's house. Reconstruction , in: Deutsche Bauakademie and Bund Deutscher Architekten (Ed.): Deutsche Architektur , XI. Vol., Berlin, November 1962, p. 643 (with drawings and floor plans of the buildings)
  • Kurt Jagow , Johannes Sievers : The Palais Kaiser Wilhelm I in Berlin , general administration of the formerly ruling Prussian royal house, Berlin 1936

Web links

Commons : Altes Palais  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schinkel, Karl Friedrich: Collection of architectural designs containing partly works that have been executed, partly objects whose execution was intended , Ernst and Korn, Berlin 1858, sheets 108-135
  2. ↑ The correspondence between those involved was published in: Paul Seidel, (Ed.): Hohenzollern - Yearbook 1902. Research and illustrations on the history of the Hohenzollern in Brandenburg - Prussia. Sixth year , Giesecke & Devrient Verlag, Leipzig, Berlin 1902
  3. ↑ Helmut Engel : The House of the German Emperor - The "Old Palace" Unter den Linden , Verlagshaus Braun, Berlin 2004, p. 8.
  4. ↑ Sometimes the tub is filled with hot water (weighs around 250 kg). For example with Mario Krammer in: Berlin in the course of the centuries , Rembrandt Verlag, Berlin 1965, p. 226.
  5. ↑ On the “ineradicable legend”: Hans-Werner Klünner at Bogdan Krieger (see list of literature ). The legend also existed in relation to the city palace. According to Werner Hegemann ( Das Steinerne Berlin , Gustav Kiepenheuer, Berlin 1930, p. 179) the hotel servants of the Rome carried a barrel of hot water there when Wilhelm wanted to bathe.
  6. ↑ This results from a comparison of the names in Berlin travel guides of the companies Grieben from 1941 (73rd edition) and Baedeker from the years 1921 (19th edition), 1936 (21st edition)
  7. ↑ Bodo Rollka, Klaus-Dieter Wille: The Berlin City Palace. History and Destruction , Haude & Spener, Berlin 1987. ISBN 3-7759-0302-X , p. 28
  8. ^ Hans Müther: Berlin's building tradition. Brief introduction , Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 1956, p. 88
  9. ↑ Meinhard (see list of literature) initially wanted to remove only the pergola, not the eagles, as his design drawing shows.

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 1 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 34 ″  E