Belvedere on the Pfingstberg
The Belvedere on the Pfingstberg is a palace north of the New Garden belonging to the Potsdam Palaces and Gardens ensemble . The castle is located on the Pfingstberg, the 76 m highest elevation in the west of the Havel part of Potsdam. It was built under Friedrich Wilhelm IV because of the beautiful view and is only part of an originally much more extensive building project. The twin tower complex, modeled on the Italian Renaissance , experienced two construction phases, the first of which was from 1847 to 1852 and the second of which followed after a long break from 1860 to 1863. The architects Ludwig Persius , Friedrich August Stüler and Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse were commissioned to carry out the construction based on the king's drafts. The garden architect Peter Joseph Lenné took on the planning of the outdoor facilities .
Building history
Decades earlier, Friedrich Wilhelm II was considering building a belvedere on this hill in 1793 , which at that time was still called Judenberg. However, the royal building intentions caused land prices to soar that the project was never realized. The design drawings of a Gothic Tower and the attached Gothic Hall by the builder Michael Philipp Daniel Boumann the Elder . J. did not come to execution.
The desire for a Belvedere at this point was revived by the “romantic on the throne”, Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Since 1817 the area has belonged to the royal house by purchase. In that year the name of the Judenberg was also renamed Pfingstberg .
The artistically gifted Friedrich Wilhelm IV made his own sketches, which he changed again and again. Italian villas from the Renaissance period served as a model . The casino at the Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola north of Rome, built around 1585 and which the king had visited on his first trip to Italy as a 33-year-old , received the final approval . The king copied the complex almost completely and added a mighty double tower in the background. She alone finally came to execution. His architects Persius, Stüler and Hesse were responsible for drawing up the building plans and carrying out the construction.
The first construction phase extended over the years 1847 to 1852. The complex that had been built up to then had an almost square floor plan. The double front of the 25 meter high towers, the open staircase opposite and the colonnades on the side enclose a large inner courtyard with a water basin. The water reservoir is fed to the present day by the pump house of the dairy in the New Garden and serves as a raised tank for the water features in the New Garden below.
Double flight of stairs lead from the inner courtyard to the roof terrace above the gate building and further to the western and eastern colonnade, which form the access to the two towers, in each of which a lavishly furnished room was created: The Moorish Cabinet in the east tower (by Carl von Diebitsch ) its colorful, glazed and partly gilded tiles on the walls and the Roman cabinet in the west tower with genii, swans, winged lions, porticos and figures on a red background. The cabinets are connected by an arcade. In the west tower, a cast iron spiral staircase leads from the Roman cabinet to the level above the arcade and on to the viewing platform on the roof. There is also a spiral staircase in the east tower, which leads from the level above the Moorish Cabinet to the viewing platform and can be reached via the walkable cover of the arcade.
For financial reasons, the further construction was stopped in 1852 in favor of the Orangery Castle that had begun in 1851 . The Pfingstberg project was to be resumed after the orangery was completed. Several strokes, the resulting handover of the reign to his brother Wilhelm I in 1858 and finally the death of Friedrich Wilhelm IV in 1861 were the reasons that large areas remained in the planning stage and will not be completed in the future. The now ruling Wilhelm I had the building completed by Friedrich August Stüler with an entrance hall and the two wing walls. In 1863 work on the fragment was finished.
Among other things, the construction of the two-storey casino directly adjacent to today's entrance area, a double-flighted staircase in the shape of a horseshoe leading down from the casino terrace, in the middle of which a fountain was supposed to bubble, and a wide footpath running down from there were not implemented. This was to be divided by a water staircase and flanked at the lower end by two pavilions. A watercolor by the architect Ferdinand von Arnim from 1856 reproduces this state of planning .
If the project had been carried out on this scale, the Pomona Temple below the Belvedere , the first Schinkel building built in 1800 , would have had to be demolished. This cleverly conceals the unfinished plans in the context of Lenné's gardens.
Peter Joseph Lenné also had to adapt to the new circumstances and make changes to his original garden planning. Two buildings, the Belvedere and the Temple of Pomona, should now be connected in terms of garden architecture, but not be visually related. The outdoor area around the lookout palace, which was built in a much smaller form, was completed by a semicircular arcade. Behind it, the area around the Pomona temple opens up down the valley. The large, round lawn used to be lavishly designed with flowers.
The Belvedere after 1945
The moisture damage, which was already visible after completion, required constant structural maintenance, which was no longer carried out in the days of the Second World War. The final decline of the building began when Soviet military personnel moved into the villa district between Pfingstberg and New Garden in the 1950s. When the Wall was built in 1961, the Belvedere was blocked from viewing, as it was possible to see the border installations and towards West Berlin from there.
In 1987, a group of young people from Potsdam came together and set themselves the task of freeing the ruinous and overgrown building from its “deep sleep” and restoring the surrounding landscape on the Pfingstberg. Under the umbrella of the Kulturbund der GDR they founded the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Pfingstberg” in 1988, renamed “Förderverein Pfingstberg e. V. ".
Through the allocation of funds and generous donations from private sponsors and foundations, in particular through donations of millions from the Hermann Reemtsma Foundation and the mail-order company owner Dr. Werner Otto , the Belvedere could be restored. The Pfingstberg Ensemble is under the administration of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg and was on the list of the 1999 UNESCO - World Heritage added. On the ground floor under the northern arcade there is a permanent exhibition on the history of the Belvedere.
literature
- Official guide of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg: The Pfingstberg in Potsdam . 1st edition 1995
- Gert Streidt, Klaus Frahm: Potsdam. The castles and gardens of the Hohenzollern . Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Cologne 1996. ISBN 3-89508-238-4
- Astrid Fritsche: The Pfingstberg in Potsdam. Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg. Scientific series, issue 2. 1995.
- The Potsdam Pfingstberg and its facilities. Creation - decay - reconstruction. Published by the Förderverein Pfingstberg in Potsdam eV 2nd, updated edition 2003.
Web links
- Entry in the monument database of the State of Brandenburg
- SPSG 1. Buildings and gardens of the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin”, 1.4. Pfingstberg, Potsdam
- Friends of Pfingstberg in Potsdam eV
Coordinates: 52 ° 25 ′ 7.4 ″ N , 13 ° 3 ′ 32.3 ″ E