Orangery House (Berlin)

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View of the electoral orangery house in the pleasure garden of the Residenzschloss in Berlin, around 1695. Engraving by Carl Friedrich Blesendorf
The pleasure garden (B) stretched north of the electoral residence in Berlin (A), in which the first orangery house (7) was built as early as 1652.

The Orangerie-house in the center of Berlin (in German of the Baroque period and oranges -House called or Pomeranzenhof) was part of the palace complex in Brandenburg electors and later Prussian kings in their capital. It was a building ( orangery ) built in the 17th century as a greenhouse and winter garden for citrus fruits at the northern end of the former electoral pleasure garden (today's Museum Island). In place of a previous building, which had to give way to fortification work in 1658, the orangery house was rebuilt in 1685 in the shape of a semicircular building, which existed until 1866.

Location of the pleasure garden

The northern part of the Berlin Spree island was still a swampy floodplain in the Middle Ages. While the town of Cölln emerged on the southern, slightly higher part of the island in the 13th century , the northern part was later included in the residence of the Brandenburg electors and used as a so-called "Lustgarten", i.e. H. Artfully arranged garden for recreation.

Building history

The “Orangery House” built by Johann Arnold Nering was at the northwest end of the electoral pleasure garden in Berlin.
The Berlin map by Johann David Schleuen from 1740 shows the pleasure garden, which has been converted into the "Paradeplatz", and the semicircular orangery house (B) directly on the fortress wall.

The electoral builder Johann Gregor Memhardt built a “pleasure house” in the Dutch style in the garden as early as 1650, a kind of permanent garden pavilion which served as a setting for courtly festivities and contained an artificial grotto in its basement. For the potatoes imported from Holland in 1649 and planted here for the first time, Memhardt built the “bitter orange house” (later also called “orangery house”) in 1652, which housed 586 trees during the cold season. In addition to potatoes, tomatoes were also grown here as ornamental plants. However, due to a fault in the heating system, the original building burned down as early as 1655. It was first rebuilt in 1656, but a little later in 1658, as part of a large-scale fortification of the entire city, it was demolished to make room for the fortifications. As part of the fortification, a fortress moat was also created, which cut through the pleasure garden and connected the Cölln city moat with the Spree. The bridge, which now had to connect the place of the old orangery with the pleasure garden, was called the "Little Pomeranze Bridge".

In 1685 an orangery was rebuilt for the third time by the electoral builder Johann Arnold Nering . Nering's building was a semicircular orangery or bitter orange house.

In contrast to the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm and the first Prussian King Friedrich I , the thrifty soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm I did not appreciate the pleasure garden and had it converted into a sand-covered parade ground in the year of his coronation in 1713 . The statues in the garden and the exotic plants that were kept in the orangery house were moved to the orangery in the garden of Charlottenburg Palace .

Use as a packing yard

View of the Lustgarten orangery in its function as "Neuer Packhof". Barges can be seen in the foreground delivering goods. Attachment to the Berlin city map by Schleuen 1757.

The bitter orange house had lost its original function. It was initially used as a manufactory and from 1749 as a Packhof, i. H. used as a hall for the temporary storage of goods. The building on the Spree has since served to cope with the increased trade on the waterways. Above all, those goods that were intended for export from Berlin were temporarily stored here. A crane was installed on the water to lift the goods delivered from the ships. In 1776 the plant was supplemented by a flour house , in which flour deliveries could be weighed and stored. Since there was already an "old" packing yard in Friedrichswerder , the former orangery was now called the "new packing yard".

Health Utensil Defeat

1829–1832 Karl Friedrich Schinkel built next to the old orangery house at Am Kupfergraben along a larger complex of government buildings, warehouses and storerooms, to which the name “ Neuer Packhof ” passed. This also included the so-called main stamp office, for which a new building was also erected after being temporarily housed in Schinkel's old orangery. The old orangery remained part of this larger complex for a short time, but was then sold. From then on, the larger part of the building served as a warehouse for the royal health crockery factory, and the smaller part as a stock exchange for the Berlin grain traders.

In Biedermeier, all kinds of kitchen utensils made of tinned or enamelled sheet iron or cast iron, as well as earthenware or stoneware appliances with a lead-free glaze , were called health dishes. This type of crockery production should counteract the health risks associated with the use of poorly glazed earthenware or poorly tinned copper vessels. At that time, the orangery house was recorded as a "health crockery defeat" in city maps.

Demolished in 1866

View of the Museum Island across the Friedrichbrücke: the old orangery (behind the colonnade) and the Welper bathing house (right) were demolished in 1866. (Left: the machine house for the Lustgarten fountain; in the background: the Neues Museum.) Photo: F. Albert Schwartz

As part of the construction of the National Gallery , the old orangery had to give way to the expansion of the museum area in the mid-1860s. The old orangery house was demolished in 1866 together with the neighboring Welperschen bath house.

The Schinkel'sche Neue Packhof, the maintenance of which was a burden on the state treasury due to the need for repairs to its buildings, and in the vicinity of which magnificent museum buildings had meanwhile expanded, was demolished in 1938.

Street names

The street that passed the old Orangery House in Berlin was called “Neue Packhofstraße” from 1749 to 1835, then “Am Neuen Packhofe” (1835–1886) and later “Museumsstraße” (1886–1935). The current name (in use since 1935) is "Bodestrasse". Today's street "Am Lustgarten", which runs along the Berlin Cathedral , is reminiscent of the Lustgarten, to which the Orangery House belonged .

Excavations

In 2001, the TU Berlin carried out archaeological excavations on the site of the old "Orangery House" and the "New Packhof".

Individual evidence

  1. cf. Gädicke, Lexicon, p. 364.
  2. The copper engraving shown by Carl Friedrich Blesendorf (CFB) shows the view of a viewer standing on the rear terrace of the electoral residence palace in a north-westerly direction through the entire royal pleasure garden to the semicircular bitter orange house in the distance.
  3. cf. Pierer's Universal-Lexikon, Volume 7. Altenburg 1859, p. 305.
  4. ^ Renate Petras: The buildings of the Berlin Museum Island. Berlin 1987. p. 20 and p. 80.
  5. cf. the online article by Christof Krauskopf / Hanna Liebich / Birgit Tuchen "Berlin Museum Island - Neuer Packhof". Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / baugeschichte.a.tu-berlin.de

literature

  • Johann Christian Gädicke: Lexicon of Berlin and the surrounding area. Berlin 1806.
  • Friedrich Nicolai: Description of the royal royal cities of Berlin and Potsdam, all the peculiarities located there, and the surrounding area. (4 volumes). Berlin 1786.
  • Renate Petras: The buildings of the Berlin Museum Island. VEB publishing house for construction. Berlin 1987. ISBN 3-345-00052-0 .
  • Folkwin Wendland: The pleasure garden at the Berlin Palace. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. 20: 94-139 (1969).

Web links

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '12.8 "  N , 13 ° 23' 54.4"  E