Palais Lichtenau
The Palais Lichtenau is a classicist building at Potsdamer Behlertstrasse 31.Built from 1796 to 1797 under King Friedrich Wilhelm II. In the immediate vicinity of the New Garden , it is an outstanding monument of early classicist architecture in Germany due to its facade design and the quality of the interior rooms. The authorship for the building is disputed between Michael Philipp Boumann and Carl Gotthard Langhans . Contrary to tradition and the name given, the palace was probably not built for Countess Wilhelmine von Lichtenau and was not inhabited by her.
History of origin
The land belonging to the citizen's jury, on which the palace was to be built six years later, was acquired by King Friedrich Wilhelm II in May 1790. During this time, several land purchases took place in the course of the gradual expansion of the New Garden, which was completely fenced in with a wall along the western border, at that time on the city side. The Jury'sche property at the southern end of the garden area remained outside the park area and is now adjacent to Behlertstrasse, which runs in the north and bends to the southeast, to the intersection of Behlertstrasse and Kurfürstenstrasse in the southeast.
In the northeast corner of the property, a house was built for the leaseholder of the Behlert Bridge, which at this point spanned the Behlertgraben, which at that time ran between Bassinplatz and Heiliges See . The western part of the property was transferred to the secret chamberlain Johann Friedrich Ritz (1755–1809) and his wife, who later became Countess Lichtenau. They also bought the trainee Feige's property to the west. The palace, built from 1796 to 1797, was built at the king's expense.
Construction began in the early summer of 1796 under the direction of Michael Philipp Boumann. In June, the newly fenced property was expanded again by purchasing a piece of meadow to the south. In September 1796 the roof structure was completed; the furnishing of the interiors dragged on until the spring of 1797. At the time of the inauguration ceremony on September 25, 1797, the marriage of convenience between the chamberlain Ritz and the royal mistress was on the verge of being dissolved by the king in April 1796, which was connected with the appointment as countess. Therefore, the future wife of Johann Friedrich Ritz, the actress Henriette Baranius , was at the center of the celebrations. It is not certain whether the Countess Lichtenau attended this inauguration at all.
Location and building description
At the time of its construction, the Palais Lichtenau was in a sparsely built-up area, in which the Nauener moved into the Berlin suburbs . The formerly extensive garden in the south of the house gradually gave way to the reallocation of garden to building land from 1881. Its north facade facing the New Garden forms the prospectus-like view of an elegant country estate from the Marble Palace, about 750 meters away, and thus also functions as an optical counterpart to the palace on the Pfaueninsel located four kilometers north of the Marble Palace .
Exterior construction
The Palais Lichtenau has a main floor on a high base and is crowned by a mighty mansard roof. The four facades are differentiated. The northeast side directly bordering on Behlertstrasse forms the main view of the house for the public and from the New Garden. The nine-axis front is presented with a three-axis central projection, which is closed off by a triangular gable with a segment-arched relief. The gable relief was created by the brothers Johann Christoph and Michael Christoph Wohler based on a design by Johann Gottfried Schadow . It shows Apollo surrounded by Hercules , Nike , Poseidon , Ceres and Proserpina .
All windows are cut directly into the wall surfaces without any intervening bevels or other framing elements. The three basement windows of the risalit are designed as semicircular windows in the square wall there, while the windows in the smooth plinth of the reserve have an almost square shape. Between the base and the main storey there is a wide belted cornice made of sandstone with a strong serrated frieze and decorated with simple rosettes , which surrounds the entire building and is only interrupted by the central risalit, where it continues as a cordon cornice , and by the outside staircase on the garden side.
On the main floor, the windows have an upright rectangular format, with the three openings in the back layers being designed as French doors. The smooth wall surface ends with the roof with a richly stuccoed eaves cornice made of palmette and rosette motifs alternating under stylized beam heads. The surrounding stucco frieze under the eaves is in turn interrupted by the risalit, the wall surface of which is characterized by delicate plaster ashlar and three attached window roofs . The triangular gable, like the eaves cornice, is provided with stylized beam heads. The lower part of the mansard roof is occupied by six axially arranged dormers with curved ends.
View from the north, 2008
Street-side central elevation, 2013
Gable relief in the central elevation, 2013
View of the garden side from the southeast, 2012
Detail of the outside staircase facing the garden, 2009
The north-western narrow side appears to be two-story because of the non-hipped roof and has three window axes on all floors. In the middle axis of the basement there is a side entrance in a small porch that serves as a balcony on the main floor . Its window door is provided with a profiled frame with ears and a final cornice. The friezes of the north facade also surround the building here, with the eaves cornice of the main floor acting as a cornice on the narrow sides. The upper part of the roof with a flat lunette window is framed by a gable triangle indicated with stucco profiles.
On the south-east side, this structure is included with variations. Here, above the three-axis basement, the wall of the main floor is windowless because of the ballroom behind, while the top floor opens up with four window axes in the direction of the Behlert Bridge and the bridge tenant house. In the central axis of the base there is a door to which a few steps lead down.
On the side facing the garden southwest side of the eight-axle facade appears here on two levels, as there is a wide, vierfenstriges Zwerchhaus takes up most of the underroof. The four middle window axes of the facade are set back slightly and, like the risalit facing the street, are provided with delicate plaster blocks. All window openings on the main and mansard floors have profiled frames with ears, as do the two central glass doors; on the main floor they are also crowned by a final cornice as a roofing over the windows. The dwelling is closed by a flat, simple gable triangle with acroteria . In the middle of the building of the palace there is a curved two-flight flight of stairs, with two arched glass doors leading to the basement under the platform. Similar to the balustrades of the French doors, the stair railing is made of metal in restrained forms.
inside rooms
Inside the Palais Lichtenau, the room layout of the main floor has been preserved. Some of the interiors still have their original, extraordinarily high quality. The two large glass doors on the garden side lead from the outside staircase directly into the central garden hall, which in the north merges into a corridor separated by two arcades . This corridor runs through the main floor to the west and ends in the window door of the small balcony on the west gable, where the main staircase, which was added in the 19th century, is also located. On both sides of the corridor there are two rooms on the south and three on the north.
From the garden hall, which is provided with an illusionistic painting, one reaches the so-called rosewood room on the street side, the wood paneling of which is completely preserved, through the arcades of the corridor, the ceiling frames of which each show a shell motif painted in fine gray-blue shades . A framework made of root wood veneer divides the wall surfaces and includes large panels made from local woods. The lintels form carved vessel designs with arabesques , which the sculptor Johann Christian Angermann created and among other things in the contemporary Wedgwood ceramics were used. Two painted friezes frame the coffered ceiling in tones of ocher, gray and brown: In the cove of the ceiling attachment tendrils merge into a griffin motif, while the frieze framing the ceiling area shows rods with stylized foliage and rosettes in the corners. In the rosewood room, a clay oven from the time it was built has been preserved, which is decorated with gothic shapes.
In the smaller room adjoining it to the east, a wall mount with rectangular framed fields and painted thyrsus rods can be seen under remnants of modern wallpaper .
Garden room with arcades
Garden room, east wall
Garden room, painting of the vaults
Rosewood room, overdoor
Rosewood room, gothic stove
Room east of the rosewood room
On the south side, southeast of the garden room, is the oval cabinet, which has also been completely preserved in its spatial setting. It is structured by four diagonally arranged, almost room-high round arch niches. The wall strips remaining between the niches and the door and window openings show a free variation of the Thyrsos motif with tripod stands, figures, portrait medallions, strings of pearls, acanthus leaves and crowning cones. Above that, consoles with angular volutes appear, with a festoon with a rosette in between. The sacrificial scenes depicted on the transverse oval over-portals are reminiscent of ancient reliefs or gems . A neo-Gothic ribbon of finials closes the wall surface from the slightly projecting ceiling cornice. The ceiling itself is painted with a spiral coffering. The color of the room is made up of finely coordinated light tones as well as brown wall strips and deep green walls. The decorative painter Johann Carl Wilhelm Rosenberg (1737–1809) created the wall decorations in this room.
The ballroom adjoining the oval cabinet to the east takes up the entire depth of the house on the south-east side and has two windows each on the north-east and south-west side. The entire room is structured in mirror symmetry: the garden and street side enfilades with double-leaf doors end on the western wall of the hall ; In the middle of this wall, a similar door leads to the building-time spiral staircase in the extension of the corridor. The opposite wall behind the east gable is provided with corresponding door openings, which however only hide wall cupboards. Two semicircular niches are arranged between the doors on the west and east sides. In the niches of the south-east wall are replicas of the sculptures of the so-called Lykomedesdaughters , in the north-west wall there are chimneys.
The wall surfaces of the ballroom are structured by the slightly protruding wall pieces with the niches in them and the light frames of these niches and the overhangs. The recessed wall strips next to the door openings have thyrsus rod motifs, the overhangs have two fields on top of each other in grisaille painting with arabesques below and a figure scene above, presumably based on designs by court painter Christian Bernhard Rode . In addition, on the wider wall surfaces to the left and right of the windows as well as between them, six depictions of architecture and landscapes with motifs of the peacock island appear in oblong oval medallions. Above the niches there are fields with vine leaves and grape motifs, which entwine around a central vessel. In contrast to that of the neighboring Oval Cabinet, the color effect is determined by light green tones on a white background. Bartolomeo Verona and Johann Carl Wilhelm Rosenberg were responsible for the picturesque design of the ballroom.
Oval cabinet, floor to ceiling wall niche
Oval cabinet, over-port and ceiling
Ballroom, north window pillar
Spiral staircase
Vaulted room in the basement
Side staircase to the mansard floor
The vaulted rooms on the basement were probably used for economic purposes, while the rooms on the mansard were probably used as bedrooms and staff rooms. A narrow side staircase accesses this floor from the corridor of the main floor. The generous opening of the south-east gable with four window axes, which differs from the other architectural design, speaks for a stately use of at least some of the rooms.
Architectural motifs and participating artists
Several architectural motifs appear in the building of the Palais Lichtenau that were new at the time of its creation or at least have been used in a new context. The question of the architect or architects has still not been conclusively clarified. It is certain that in addition to Michael Philipp Daniel Boumann, Carl Gotthard Langhans was also involved in the design of the palace. Langhans' part in the planning is controversial. In general, the design of the interiors is attributed to him. The Countess Lichtenau is also said to have brought her taste in, as with other building projects in the vicinity of the king.
Two-storey buildings with pronounced plinths, covered by mighty mansard roofs, were erected on both sides of the city canal in the 1820s at the time of Friedrich Wilhelm I. These baroque houses, built for notable people, with a simple plaster structure, however demonstratively turned their main entrance with an outside staircase towards the public viewing side. With the house at Am Kanal 4a, one of the few characteristic representatives of this type has been preserved. A tendency to keep the main facade free of a larger door opening that interrupts the even row of windows can be seen in several buildings erected under Friedrich II in Potsdam. In addition to the courtly buildings of the Sanssouci Palace , the New Palais and the New Chambers , where no main entrance is particularly emphasized in the large number of French doors, the commander's house of the Garde du Corps from 1752/53 is located in the vicinity of the above-mentioned town house Am Kanal 3 Knobelsdorff received, the entrance of which is not in the main facade. Despite these examples, which were built much earlier, the renunciation of a representative street-side entrance to Palais Lichtenau is a new phenomenon in bourgeois-influenced architecture.
The friezes and cornices that consistently run around the entire structure are also new. The commander's house mentioned above, for example, has no ornate side or rear facades. The approach of comprehending the ornamentation of a building from all sides was new in the area of bourgeois urban buildings. Rather, this approach points to models of rural manor houses , which would also explain the high mansard roof often used in them. Last but not least, the simple facade design, which looks more through its proportions than through ornamental jewelry, is extremely innovative for the time it was created. David Gilly's designs were probably exemplary here ; direct influence cannot be ruled out either.
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Comparable with the design of the Palais Lichtenau are the theater at Charlottenburg Palace, designed by Langhans in 1788, and the Potsdamer Schauspielhaus built by Michael Philipp Daniel Boumann, which was built by Michael Philipp Daniel Boumann in 1793–1796 , although Langhans' collaboration is also being discussed here. The Charlottenburg theater has a broad structure with a mansard hipped roof. The structure here is richer than in the later Palais Lichtenau, with plaster grooves on the ground floor and pilaster structures on the upper floors. The main facade of the Potsdam playhouse, which no longer exists, is comparable to that of the Palais Lichtenau with its door and window openings cut smoothly into the wall surfaces and the delicate plaster ashlar on the ground floor.
On the one hand, the division of the interior is modeled on the Brandenburg and Upper Silesian manor houses, but also shows clear parallels to the buildings of Friedrich Wilhelm II with the oval cabinet and the boiseries of the rosewood room. Preciously paneled rooms in delicate early classical forms were already realized in the Marble Palace and the castle on the Pfaueninsel, whereby emphasis was placed on the use of "native wood". The asymmetrical position of the rosewood room behind the central projection represents a contradiction to the facade design. This inconsistency can either be the result of later wishes of the client or a sign that the facade was presented to the building in an abstract way as a representative eye-catcher from the marble palace.
Oval rooms were created in free-standing park structures such as the Belvedere in Charlottenburg by Carl Gotthard Langhans or the Hermitage in the New Garden, but they were also planned in the southern side of the Boumann-designed side wing of the Marble Palace and in the planned neo-Gothic palace on the Pfingstberg. In particular, the Hermitage, built at the same time as the palace, with its casts of the Lykomede daughters in four figure niches, is comparable to the oval cabinet of the Palais Lichtenau, especially since the participation of Countess Lichtenau in this project, which was carried out in the absence of the king, is considered certain.
The artists who also worked for other royal building projects were involved in the Lichtenau Palace. The painters Christian Bernhard Rode, Bartolomeo Verona and Johann Carl Wilhelm Rosenberg as well as the sculptor Johann Christian Angermann have already been mentioned. This explains the quality of the interior fittings and proves the high demands of the builders to create not only a representative focal point within sight of the Marble Palace, but also a total work of art that is stylistically state-of-the-art.
Appreciation
The Palais Lichtenau, which is probably never inhabited by its namesake, is an outstanding example of early classicism, and not just in the regional context. Ten years after the death of Frederick II, who in his sphere of influence had adhered to the forms of the Rococo and plait styles to the last , the connection to international architecture was restored with the Palais Lichtenau and comparable buildings. The houses " Salve Hospes " by Peter Joseph Krahe (1805) and Vieweg by David Gilly (1802–1805) in Braunschweig , which are always referred to as avant-garde buildings, were not built until six to nine years later. At the same time, the palace that was created in the context of the aristocratic building activity anticipated bourgeois elements.
The art-historical importance for Potsdam is also based on the fact that only a few buildings from around 1800 have survived in the Potsdam city area. The number of houses from this era was always significantly fewer than that of the Frederician buildings, and they too were affected by later renovations and war damage. This makes the preservation of the high-quality interior of the Palais Lichtenau from this period all the more important.
Further use and restorations
It is very likely that the Lichtenau Palace was built as a befitting residence of the treasurer Ritz. Since the Countess Lichtenau was in Italy when construction began and spent the summer of 1797 in Bad Pyrmont , she can only have influenced the interior furnishings of the house from autumn 1796 to spring 1797. The time from her return from Pyrmont to the death of the then seriously ill king on November 16, 1797, she spent in the cavalier house of the "Dutch Establishment" in the New Garden, also known as the ladies' house, in order to be as close as possible to the king. After the death of Friedrich Wilhelm II, she was accused of high treason and embezzlement by his successor and taken into custody. Her property was confiscated; it was not until 1809 that she received compensation for the expropriation and finally in 1811 for rehabilitation.
From 1798–1800 Johann Friedrich Ritz had Boumann build a new house for himself and his new wife Henriette Baranius at Berliner Straße 136, which has been preserved and is now known as Villa Ritz. This building also has an oval cabinet on the garden side, albeit with stucco marble cladding.
In 1801, Ritz sold the property and palace, which were then used by changing owners. The von Lüttwitz family bought it in 1927 . Five interiors in the palace remained in their original state until 1945. The rosewood room was restored in 1964 and 1970, the ballroom in 1973. One of the paintings with peacock island motifs has been replaced by a picture by the painter Dankwart Kühn, which shows the neighboring Gothic library as a romantic ruin. From 1945 to 1955 the Red Army used the palace as a planning office, from 1973 it became the administration building of VEB Spezialbau Potsdam for ten years . In 1988/1989 the Institute for the Preservation of Monuments planned the restoration of the palace in view of serious damage, after which the building was to be used as a registry office .
Until it was sold in 2007, the palace was the venue for smaller performances by the Hans Otto Theater Potsdam several times . On January 14, 2005, Theodor Fontane's " Frau Jenny Treibel " premiered with Katharina Thalbach in the title role at Palais Lichtenau. After several years of vacancy and the bankruptcy of the previous owner Viola Hallman , the dermatology clinic of the current owners has been housed in the house since restoration work was completed (2011 to 2013). The ballroom is also used as an event location.
Trivia
In the DEFA feature film Karbid und Sauerampfer from 1963, the garden facade of the Palais Lichtenau represented a Soviet commandant's office. The scenes in the destroyed Dresden cigarette factory were filmed in the later demolished war ruins of the above-mentioned Potsdam theater.
Individual evidence
- ↑ The house at Behlertstrasse 32 was built according to AL Krüger's designs and converted into a tower villa by Hesse in 1853 . A figure relief of J. Chr. Wohlers has been preserved from the original facade on Behlertstrasse. see. Bartmann-Kompa et al. 1990, p. 76
- ↑ Schroedter 1997, pp. 459-460
- ↑ Schroedter 1997, p. 461
- ↑ Remains of an ornamented cove ceiling under later cladding attest to the representative room decoration that existed before the stairs were installed.
- ↑ Schroedter 1997, pp. 462-463
- ↑ a b Mielke 1991, p. 99
- ↑ Schroedter 1997, p. 464
- ↑ cf. Vogtherr 1997, p. 358
- ↑ Floor plan shown in: Sigel et al. 2006, p. 70
- ↑ Mielke 1991, p. 98
- ↑ Schroedter 1997, p. 465f.
- ↑ Sigel et al. 2006, p. 87
- ↑ Bartmann-Kompa et al. 1990, pp. 75f.
- ↑ according to unoccupied entry at potsdam-wiki.de ( memento of the original from March 5, 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.
- ↑ Schroedter 1997, p. 466
- ↑ Kulturinformationszentrum: theater und literatur aktuell: HOT Unterwegs - "Frau Jenny Treibel" comes to Palais Lichtenau , KIZ from December 14, 2004, accessed October 21, 2013
- ^ Michael Erbach: Palais Lichtenau sold to Hohenzollern . In: PNN , December 21, 2007
- ↑ Guido Berg: Laser center in the Palais Lichtenau . In: Potsdam Latest News , January 4, 2011.
literature
- Hans-Joachim Giersberg: The Potsdam community center around 1800 , Potsdam 1965
- Ingrid Bartmann-Kompa among others: Architectural and art monuments in Potsdam , Berlin 1990, ISBN 3362004970
- Friedrich Mielke : Potsdam architecture. The classic Potsdam , Frankfurt / M. 1991, ISBN 3549066481
- Beate Schroedter: Palais Ritz-Lichtenau , in Christoph Martin Vogtherr (ed.): Friedrich Wilhelm II. And the arts. Prussia's path to classicism (exhibition from July 20 to September 14, 1997, Orangery and Marble Palace in the New Garden; White Hall in Charlottenburg Palace), SPSG Berlin 1997, pp. 459–466
- Paul Sigel, Silke Dähmlow, Frank Seehausen, Lucas Elmenhorst: Architectural Guide Potsdam , Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-496-01325-7
Web links
Babelsberg Castle | Bornstedt Crown Estate | Cecilienhof Palace | Charlottenhof Palace | Small lock | Palais Lichtenau | Lindstedt Castle | Marble palace | Marquardt Castle | New chambers | New Palace | Orangery Castle | Sanssouci Palace | Satzkorn manor | City Palace | Sacrow Castle | Jagdschloss Stern | Kartzow Castle
Coordinates: 52 ° 24 '22 " N , 13 ° 3' 56.2" E