Garlic house

Knoblauchhaus museum

Garlic house
Data
place	Berlin coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 59 ″  N , 13 ° 24 ′ 25 ″  E
Art	History museum
architect	Johann Christian Knoblauch
opening	1761
management	Paul Spies
Website	www.stadtmuseum.de
ISIL	DE-MUS-816117

The Knoblauchhaus was the former main residence of the Knoblauch family in Berlin . The building is located in the Nikolai Quarter belonging Post Road 23. It was built from 1759 to 1761 and remained for 170 years in the family garlic. In 1929 the family sold the house to the city of Berlin. As one of the few Berlin town houses of the 18th century, it survived the Second World War largely unscathed. Since 1989 a branch of the Märkisches Museum has been housed in the house and since 1995 the Berlin City Museum Foundation . On the first and second floors, a permanent exhibition shows the history of the Knoblauch family in addition to the bourgeois living culture of the Biedermeier .

The Knoblauch family

Family history until the house was built

Workshop of a wire puller or needler, around 1770

The name of the house goes back to the Knoblauch family from Berlin. Its origins can be traced back to the 14th century. The family originally had their seat in the Upper Hungarian cities of Kaschau and Pressburg . Michael Knoblauch, the earliest known member of the family, must have held the high office of city council of Kosice by the end of the 14th century. Johann Heinrich Knoblauch achieved a preliminary economic “breakthrough” in the 17th century. With his work as a mastermind , he achieved great prosperity in Pressburg. Belonging to the Protestant minority continued the family but politically under increasing pressure, because after the failed Protestant uprising led by Prince Francis II. Rákóczi drove the Habsburgs the recatholicization in Hungary decided ahead. Johann Heinrich Knoblauch decided to flee. The religious refugee settled in Heegermühle , where he was employed in a brass factory . The family settled in Berlin under the grandchildren: first, in 1738, Johann Christian Knoblauch (1723–1790) became an apprentice to master needleworker Göricke. During his apprenticeship he acquired skills in the manufacture and sale of snap hooks , eyelets, chains and cockade wires . The Prussian army of Frederick II was dependent on these products . After acquiring citizenship in Berlin in 1750, Johann Christian Knoblauch went into business for himself as a master needle maker. The needs of the Prussian army provided him with a steady source of income. In the middle of the Seven Years' War the purchase of a piece of land followed in 1759, on which the Knoblauchhaus is today.

Family history from the building of the house

Knoblauchhaus and surroundings

The location of the property in the elegant Nikolaiviertel testified the family's social advancement. The houses of courtiers, officials and traders were in the immediate vicinity. In keeping with this environment, Johann Christian Knoblauch had the previous building, a half-timbered house , demolished. In its place he erected the three-story building that still exists today. Around 1780, Johann Christian Knoblauch joined the textile trade sponsored by the Prussian king. He opened a shop for silk and cloth goods on the ground floor of the Knoblauchhaus. The eldest son Christian Ludwig Knoblauch was sent to the leading textile manufacturers in Europe, from where he was supposed to gather knowledge about the current French fashion trends. The daughter married into the influential silk merchant family Keibel. The second eldest son, Carl Friedrich Knoblauch, dealt with the production of silk ribbons, the future most important branch of the family's economy, on his long journey. In 1790 the head of the family Johann Christian Knoblauch died. The Knoblauchhaus thus became the property of Carl Friedrich Knoblauch (1765–1813), because the older brother Christian Ludwig Knoblauch created an independent branch of the family based in Frankfurt am Main .

Heinrich Abel Seyffert: Eight portraits of the Knoblauch and Keibel family , 1816–1821, pastel painting , living room of the Knoblauchhaus.

Arrangement of the portrait figures
Emilie Henriette Knoblauch, b. Keibel	Sophie Henriette Keibel, b. garlic	Carl Gottlieb Keibel	Wilhelmine Henriette Franz, b. Keibel
Johanna Auguste Knoblauch, b. Keibel	Johann Georg Knoblauch	Auguste Keibel	Carl Heinrich Wilhelm Keibel

Carl Friedrich Knoblauch was able to continue the family's economic success. He owned a silk ribbon manufacture on Mühlendamm , which he had founded in 1789, and a silk ribbon shop in the Knoblauchhaus. He was also active in publishing , i. H. he made fabrics that he had bought available to Berlin weavers . In return, he received their finished products and resold them, for example at the Leipzig or Frankfurt fair . To a lesser extent, he imported silk ribbons from France and Switzerland . In 1806 he had the baroque facade of the Knoblauchhaus redesigned in a classical style with a tendril frieze on the upper floor . In contrast to his son Carl Friedrich Wilhelm (1793-1859) , Carl Friedrich Knoblauch positioned himself politically friendly to Napoleon. This added to family tension. After the end of Napoleon's Russian campaign in 1813, Knoblauch took care of billeting and feeding the soldiers. Presumably he got infected with typhus and died of it a short time later.

Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Knoblauch, who took over the house and the silk ribbon company, excelled above all as a local politician. He represented a conservative liberalism and worked, among other things, on a revision of Stein's city order of 1808 . Knoblauch belonged to the Berlin city council and since 1824 to the Kurmärkischen Landtag. His political engagement brought him into contact with personalities such as Freiherr vom Stein , Peter Beuth and Wilhelm von Humboldt . The latter two took Knoblauch in 1826 on the board of their "Association of Friends of Art". This gave the Knoblauch family access to the intellectual, technical and artistic elite of Prussia. The Knoblauchhaus developed into a meeting point for social gatherings in which Karl Friedrich Schinkel , Christian Friedrich Tieck , Christian Daniel Rauch , Johann Gottfried Schadow , Friedrich Schleiermacher and Carl Joseph Begas took part. Copies of the letters and over 100 diaries of Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Knoblauch are an important source of life in the Knoblauchhaus. Most of the original writings were burned in the family archive during the Second World War , but thanks to the journal of the Association for the History of Berlin , some remained in the 1930s Passages copied by Richard Knoblauch have been preserved for years.

Eduard Knoblauch (1801–1865), the brother of Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Knoblauch, is considered the “best-known representative of the family” (Jan Mende). The Schinkel student was primarily active in the field of private architecture. As such, in contrast to his teacher Schinkel, he was not in the service of the state, but worked predominantly for the aristocracy and above all the Berlin bourgeoisie. These two groups of assignments usually gave the architect more freedom in design than the state management. Knoblauch was particularly innovative in residential construction, where, in addition to aesthetic requirements, he also paid attention to light and hygiene conditions. His main work, however, is the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse . Like his brother, he was born in the garlic house. However, Eduard Knoblauch moved to his residence at Kronenstrasse 28 and from 1847 at Oranienstrasse Strasse 101/102. His son Gustav and grandson Arnold also became architects.

Pedigree of the Berlin line of the Knoblauch family

Johann Christian Knoblauch (1723–1790) (master needle maker and house founder)   ?                                                                                 Carl Friedrich Knoblauch (1765–1813) (silk ribbon dealer)   Christiane Luise Heiss (1765–1810)                                                                                     Henriette Keibel (1798–1821)   Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Knoblauch (1793-1859) (silk ribbon manufacturer and politician)   Eduard Knoblauch (1801–1865) (architect)   Julie Verhuven (1806–1863)                                                                                           Hermann Knoblauch (1820–1895) (physicist)   ?   Gustav Knoblauch (1833–1916) (architect)   ?   Edmund Knoblauch (1841–1883) (architect)                                                               Rudolf Knoblauch (1861–1926) (silk ribbon manufacturer)           Arnold Knoblauch (1879–1963) (architect)

The owners of the garlic house are in italics .

Building history of the house

Photograph of the war-damaged garlic house, 1952

18th century

The construction of the house cost the builder Johann Christian Knoblauch 10,044  talers , 23 groschen and 8 pfennigs. 12,000 roof tiles and 212,000 bricks were used between 1759 and 1761. This presented a great logistical challenge, because Prussia was suffering from the consequences of the Seven Years' War at that time. King Friedrich II had initially promised his army supplier Knoblauch financial support for the construction of the house. However, under the impression of the heavy Prussian defeat in the battle of Kunersdorf in August 1759, the monarch withdrew his promise. Johann Christian Knoblauch had to pay the cost of the three- story plastered building entirely out of his own pocket. The first floor of the house was home to the master needleworker's workshop and, from around 1780, a textile shop. Apprentices, employees and journeymen were also part of the Knoblauch household and probably housed on the upper floors together with the host's family. The room layout therefore did not provide for a separation between business and private life. There are no hallways or corridors in the garlic house; one room is directly adjacent to the other, which made an intimate retreat difficult for the residents. This original room layout of the house was not changed in any of the subsequent renovations and is classic for the 18th century.

Three free-standing facade sides and the mansard roof give Knoblauchhaus a dominant position within the quarter. It has an irregular trapezoidal floor plan and a curved facade with a central risalit in the Rococo style .

19th century

In 1806 the facade was given a classicistic tendril frieze that was placed concisely below the windows of the second floor. A bay window on the first floor enlivens the facade. The interior architecture and furnishings were renewed in 1835 according to plans by Eduard Knoblauch. The stairs have been revised and a new spiral staircase has been installed. In addition, the interiors were painted in the late classical style. The decorative framing of the entrance portal, probably originally made of terracotta, was added at this time.

20th century

Only four houses in the Nikolaiviertel were spared bombs during World War II , including the Knoblauchhaus. After the war, the municipal housing administration set up three small rental apartments per floor in the house. The shared toilet was in the stairwell. In 1948 a well-known restaurant moved into the ground floor and the cellar: As the historic wine tavern in Molkenstrasse had been destroyed by the bombing war, the landlords Elisabeth Schütze and Paul Sachsenheimer moved their business to the nearby Knoblauchhaus. In 1958 the couple fled to West Berlin . The premises of the restaurant were then converted into a state-run restaurant.

The building, which had previously been used as a tenement house, was completely renovated in the 1980s and opened in 1989 as a branch of the Märkisches Museum. The museum has been part of the Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation since 1995. By 2012, a popular restaurant, the "Historischen Weinstuben", was set up again on the ground floor. The ground floor is currently empty and is to be used again in gastronomy in the future (status: 2019).

Exhibition "Berlin Life in Biedermeier"

Living room on the first floor

View from the living room into the entrance hall and the picture library

The living rooms on the first floor are each dedicated to a member of the Knoblauch family and furnished accordingly. Henriette Knoblauch (1798–1821), wife of Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Knoblauch (1793–1859), introduces the living room. In the Biedermeier period, the living room was the main residence of the wife of the house. Since, unlike in previous centuries, she was completely excluded from public and professional life, her task was limited to bringing up the children and organizing the household. The room illustrates this role model of the time: near the window there is a patent secretary who is suitable for both sewing and writing. Between the patent secretary and the sofa there are children's toys - a reference to maternal upbringing. In the living room of the Biedermeier family and their friends gathered for a sociable exchange or food. An oval table was usually available for this, which was surrounded by a sofa and sliding chairs. In addition, there was usually a writing secretary and showcases filled with all kinds of small works of art. Diaries and letters were written at the desk. The piece of furniture also stowed away documents, albums and private correspondence.

In the living room there is a piece of furniture that has rarely been preserved in Berlin: The patent secretary was a table shape designed by the English designer Thomas Sheraton . The patent secretary was very popular in the German Biedermeier period. It could be folded up and placed against the wall to save space. It could also be used as a decorative stove screen . Particularly elaborately designed copies can be arranged in Berlin by the master carpenter Adolph Friedrich Voigt. Because of the industrial reform, in contrast to his predecessors, he was no longer forced to turn to the guild branches of glaziers , brass foundries and locksmiths for decorative elements . The production steps in the furniture manufacture were carried out entirely in his own workshop on Leipziger Strasse .  

Chandelier in the living room

The living room chandelier was designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel . Around 1830 he commissioned the wood bronze manufacturer Carl August Mencke with the production. The candlestick itself consists of substitutes that imitate gold: The crown hoops are made of wood, for example; Arms, rosettes and grommets formed from copper and lead . Only the thinly applied oil paint causes the chandelier to be gilded . The property was never owned by the Knoblauch family, but it came to the Knoblauchhaus through the Stadtmuseum Foundation in the late 1980s.

An exhibition area on the second floor deepens this topic with further objects. The accessible living spaces show the living culture of the upper middle class of the Schinkel era in an exemplary manner and in a way that is unique for Berlin. The current exhibition is curated by the historian Jan Mende . There is more family offer in the museum, for example the “Museum Knoblauchhaus-Rallye”, which makes the place appear even more lively.

See also

• List of cultural monuments in Berlin-Mitte / Old Berlin

literature

• Markus Sebastian Braun (Editor): Berlin - The Architecture Guide . Econ Ullstein List Publishing Group, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-88679-355-9 , p. 26.
• Baedekers Allianz travel guide Berlin. Verlag Karl Baedeker GmbH, Ostfildern-Kemnat 1991, ISBN 3-87504-126-7 , p. 192.
• Jan Mende: Berlin Life in Biedermeier: Knoblauchhaus. Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-910029-40-X .
• Jan Mende: The Knoblauchhaus in Berlin. Everyday life in Biedermeier. Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-939254-15-7 .

Web links

Commons : Knoblauchhaus  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Homepage of the Knoblauchhaus: history, association, museum
• Homepage of the city museum with information about the Knoblauchhaus

Individual evidence

1. ^ Azra Charbonnier: Carl Heinrich Eduard Knoblauch. 1801-1865. Architect of the bourgeoisie , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2007, p. 11.
2. ↑ Note: The needle punch was a craft that specialized in the processing of wires. He made sewing pins and pins, but also hooks, eyes, pins, buckles, combs, sieves, cages and window bars, cf. Herbert Aagard, Nadler , in: Reinhold Reith (ed.), Lexikon des alten Handwerks From the late Middle Ages to the 20th Century , Munich 1991, pp. 172–176, here p. 172.
3. ^ Azra Charbonnier: Carl Heinrich Eduard Knoblauch. 1801-1865. Architect of the bourgeoisie , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2007, p. 11. and curator Jan Mende: The Knoblauchhaus Berlin: Everyday Life in the Biedermeier , Verlag M, Berlin 2013, p. 33–35.
4. ^ Azra Charbonnier: Carl Heinrich Eduard Knoblauch. 1801-1865. Architect of the bourgeoisie , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2007, p. 11.
5. ^ Azra Charbonnier: Carl Heinrich Eduard Knoblauch. 1801-1865. Architect of the bourgeoisie , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2007, p. 12. and curator Jan Mende: The Knoblauchhaus Berlin: Everyday Life in Biedermeier , Verlag M, Berlin 2013, p. 35.
6. ^ Azra Charbonnier: Carl Heinrich Eduard Knoblauch. 1801-1865. Architect of the bourgeoisie , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2007, pp. 12–13. Curator Jan Mende: The Knoblauchhaus Berlin: Everyday Life in Biedermeier , Verlag M, Berlin 2013, p. 37.
7. ↑ Bärbel Holtz, Dieter Weigert: Free and unified! Portraits from the Revolution of 1848, Haude & Spener, Berlin 1998, p. 52. Curator Jan Mende: Das Knoblauchhaus Berlin: Everyday Life in Biedermeier , Verlag M, Berlin 2013, pp. 43–44 and 46–47.
8. ^ Azra Charbonnier: Carl Heinrich Eduard Knoblauch. 1801-1865. Architect of the bourgeoisie , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2007, under notes on p. 230 and Richard Knoblauch: 175 years of Knoblauchsches Haus. From diaries and files in the family archive, in: Zeitschrift des Verein für die Geschichte Berlins , 54 (1937), pp. 46–49.
9. ↑ Jan Mende: Das Knoblauchhaus Berlin: Everyday Life in Biedermeier , Verlag M, Berlin 2013, p. 52.
10. ↑ Annette Bossmann: Eduard Knoblauch In Drei Architekten in Berlin, Eduard Knoblauch (1801–1865), Gustav Knoblauch (1833–1916), Arnold Knoblauch (1879–1963) (catalog for the special exhibition in the Knoblauchhaus Museum) , Berlin 1993, p. 8 –23, here: p. 14.
11. ^ Azra Charbonnier: Carl Heinrich Eduard Knoblauch. 1801-1865. Architect of the bourgeoisie , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2007, p. 105.
12. ↑ Jan Mende: Das Knoblauchhaus Berlin: Everyday Life in Biedermeier , Verlag M, Berlin 2013, pp. 52 and 56–58.
13. ↑ Curator Jan Mende: Das Knoblauchhaus Berlin: Everyday Life in Biedermeier, Verlag M, Berlin 2013, pp. 11–12 and 63–64, and Kurt Pomplun, Writings on Berlin's Art and Cultural History, From Houses and People , Vol. 15, Hessling, Berlin 1972, p. 23.
14. ↑ On the history of the building see Jan Mende: Berliner Leben im Biedermeier : Knoblauchhaus , Berlin 2007, pp. 10–16
15. ^ Azra Charbonnier: Carl Heinrich Eduard Knoblauch 1801–1865. Architect of the bourgeoisie, Munich / Berlin 2007, p. 302
16. ^ Azra Charbonnier: Carl Heinrich Eduard Knoblauch. 1801-1865. Architect of the bourgeoisie, Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 2007, p. 269.
17. ↑ Kurt Pomplun, Writings on Berlin Art and Cultural History, Von Häuser und Menschen, Vol. 15, Hessling, Berlin 1972, p. 23 and curator Jan Mende: Das Knoblauchhaus Berlin: Everyday life in Biedermeier, Verlag M, Berlin 2013, p 66.
18. ^ Jan Mende: Stadtmuseum Berlin - Knoblauchhaus In Museum Journal, reports from museums, castles and collections in Berlin and Potsdam 1/2007, pp. 86–87.
19. ^ Curator Jan Mende: Das Knoblauchhaus Berlin: Everyday Life in Biedermeier, Verlag M, Berlin 2013, pp. 14-15
20. ^ Curator Jan Mende: The Knoblauchhaus Berlin: Everyday Life in Biedermeier, Verlag M, Berlin 2013, p. 29 and Margrit Bröhan: Berggruen Collection - Bröhan Museum. The beginning was Art Nouveau In Museums Journal, reports from museums, castles and collections in Berlin and Potsdam, pp. 33–36, here: p. 36.
21. ↑ Achim Stiegel, Berlin Furniture Art. From the end of the 18th to the middle of the 19th century , Munich 2003, pp. 66 and 409. The copy of the Knoblauchhaus from 1810/1815 can be found in the city museum's online database
22. ↑ Jan Mende: The beautiful appearance is deceptive. In: Kulturstiftung der Länder. Retrieved June 20, 2019 . 
23. ↑ Ralley at the Knoblauchs , accessed on June 6, 2019