Schinkel School
Several generations of Berlin architects between 1840 and the end of the nineteenth century were summarized under the term Schinkelschule . It includes direct students and employees of Karl Friedrich Schinkel , such as Ludwig Persius , Friedrich August Stüler and Carl Scheppig , as well as graduates of Schinkel's Berlin Building Academy , where Schinkel lived himself but never worked as a teacher. The Schinkel School, also known as the Berlin arched architecture after its style-defining segmental arches , was always in conflict with the representational architecture of the emancipating bourgeoisie in the Prussian capital and later the German imperial city. In comparison with the official neo-renaissance architecture inspired by the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris , it wrongly performed poorly, was ridiculed and described as poor or brittle. Mainly used for secular purposes, such as schools, railway stations, barracks and factories, one sees in it today a carrier of Schinkel's idea of a reduced, functional architecture by the time a triumphant, playful historicism and thus became a pioneer of early modernism of Peter Behrens and Hermann Muthesius .
Prototypes and blueprints
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Schinkel's first building, which can be described as the prototype of the later Schinkel School, was the military detention and barracks building of the teaching cadron in Berlin's Lindenstrasse . With the lighthouse at Cape Arkona , the Friedrichswerder Church and the Packhof building behind the Altes Museum , other buildings made entirely of brick followed.
Schinkel rediscovered a material that had not been used for facades four hundred years since the Brandenburg brick Gothic. He was referring to buildings of the past, such as the Marienburg and the buildings of the Italian Renaissance , as well as to the modern English industrial building that he had got to know in Manchester . Schinkel saw many advantages in brick. He wanted to promote the craft, because under the layers of plaster when building the walls, work was often sloppy, which looked ugly when the plaster peeled off. A brick building, on the other hand, had to be done cleanly, because any inaccuracy was immediately visible, but the building did not lose any of its beauty even after years. At the same time, the standardization and fragmentation of the stones and the precise interaction with shaped stones forced precise preparatory work during stone production as well as planning by the architect. At the beginning, Schinkel faced countless problems: The procurement of suitable clays turned out to be difficult, a lot of technical knowledge had been lost and the kilns were not able to guarantee uniform colors and surfaces, which made the production of shaped stones almost impossible. He found a master with whom Schinkel was able to implement his ideas in Tobias Christoph Feilner , and later he worked closely with the Feilner student Ernst March .
The school building of the Schinkel students, the Berlin Building Academy at Friedrichswerder, is rather a blueprint as a prototype for the later development . Anyone looking at the quality of the stones and glazes, the safe use of shaped stones and terracottas could easily come to the conclusion that this is the development already reached its end and climax. In fact, at this point in time, Schinkel was in a permanent struggle to wrest the craftsmen the work he had in mind. Production remained of variable quality until the mid-sixties of the nineteenth century.
If you look at the Red City Hall a few steps away today , the route that brick production has taken from Friedrichswerder's Church, where molded bricks were still very sparsely used, via the newly built corner of the Building Academy to the new City Hall becomes apparent. In the years that followed, it became more and more difficult for the architects to maintain the right proportions, the range that the terracotta manufacturers offered in their catalogs became so extensive.
Features and stages of development
The main characteristics of the Schinkelschule buildings are their execution in brick , the cubic structures, often put together in a kind of additive system, the use of different colored glazed stones, the rich use of shaped stones and terracottas , the carefully designed and structured facade, the segmented arched window for generous exposure the interior, especially in factory buildings, as well as the flat roof . A fitting expression for the architecture of the Schinkel School is "Hellenistic Romanticism".
The five phases of the development of the Schinkel School
- 1817–1840: Karl Friedrich Schinkel designed a series of buildings made entirely of brick, which were exemplary for the later brick building art.
- 1830–1848: Friedrich August Stüler , who works in Berlin, and Ludwig Persius , who focuses on Potsdam, dominate the first phase. Many buildings are still being built in collaboration with Schinkel himself. These include the Berlin Building Academy and the City Theater in Frankfurt (Oder) , executed by Schinkel's student Emil Flaminius .
- 1848–1866: In the post-revolutionary phase there is a style conflict with the neo-renaissance preferred by the bourgeoisie.
- 1866–1871: Karl Bötticher , Heino Schmieden and Martin Gropius develop tectonic polychromy in the pre-imperial period . Many stations are being built for the Berlin railway.
- 1871–1890: In the newly founded German Empire, the Schinkel School comes under additional pressure due to public tenders, architects from other schools pushing to Berlin, and the representational architecture required for the imperial capital. At this critical point in time, City Planning Officer Hermann Blankenstein took over the management of the Berlin building construction department. He designs and builds numerous functional buildings in the style of the Schinkel School, including more than 120 schools, hospitals, market halls and churches.
Schinkel School and Neo-Renaissance
After the failed revolution of 1848 , the emancipation of the Prussian bourgeoisie took a new direction. It had to leave the most important political positions in the state to the nobility, but soon they were way ahead in the flourishing economy and wanted to show this in architecture as well. The buildings of the Renaissance served as a model, as the Renaissance, with its interest in the natural sciences, the boom in trade and the arts, was seen as a counterpart to the developments of the nineteenth century. A special example here is Friedrich Hitzig's Berlin Stock Exchange , which tries to make a name for itself in the immediate vicinity of the palace with a great gesture. After the founding of the empire in 1871, Berlin had to be made into the capital of the empire. Interestingly, the "École des Beaux Art" style of the defeated France was imported . The subtle, strict and cautious Schinkel School had to constantly survive against these influences. In the end, it was Martin Gropius and Heino Schmieden , especially with their exemplary arts and crafts museum , who led the Schinkel School out of and through the crisis after 1866.
Bötticher, Gropius and Tectonic Polychromy
Already under Schinkel there was a scientification of architecture. Instead of just studying ancient architecture based on engravings in books, people now traveled to the excavation sites and carried out detailed on-site investigations. The Englishmen James Stuart and Nicholas Revett had a particular influence with their work The Antiquities of Athens .
This development was accelerated under the Bauakademie teacher Karl Bötticher. He worked out an extensive catalog of requirements: for example, the acanthus plant was only allowed to be used on elements that have a load-bearing function, rosettes only where parts (like nails) were attached to the building, ribbon motifs had a binding function to symbolize kymatia had to be attached as compressed leaf shafts only where the weight exerted pressure, ornaments should not only be simply adopted, but always had to be designed from scratch.
Many critics from the ranks of the historians criticized Bötticher's teaching for a narrowing of the imagination. In the second half of the nineteenth century, when construction activity in Berlin can undoubtedly be described as hectic, the training and regulations of the Bauakademie led to a consistently high standard of quality despite all the speed in planning, decision-making and building. In this endeavor on the part of the Schinkel students there is also a constant search to reconcile content and form, which can later be found in the theories and works of classical modernism .
List buildings and architects
Bibliography
- Walter Curt Behrendt : Berlin church architecture: from 1848 to 1870 . In: Kunst und Künstler: illustrated monthly for fine arts and applied arts , 14, 1916, pp. 535–554 ( digitized version ).
- Eva Börsch-Supan : Berlin architecture after Schinkel 1840 to 1870 . Prestel Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-7913-0050-4
- Manfred Klinkott : The brick building art of the Berlin school . Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-7861-1438-2
- Sabine Bohle-Heintzenberg, Manfred Hamm: Architecture and Beauty . Transit Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 3-88747-121-0
- Andreas Kitschke, Wolfgang Brönner u. a .: Ludwig Persius - architect of the king . Schnell & Steiner, ISBN 3-7954-1586-1