Susanne Schinkel

Susanne Schinkel and daughter Elisabeth, around 1825

Eleonore Susanne Henriette "Susette" Schinkel , b. Susanne Berger (born October 5, 1780 in Stettin ; † May 27, 1861 in Berlin ) was the wife of the architect, painter and set designer Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841), the outstanding designer of Prussian classicism . She raised the four children they had together, organized the family's everyday life, looked after her husband during his long illness and managed the artist's estate .

youth

The sources of the biography of Susanne Schinkel are incomplete. She was born as the daughter of the wine merchant Georg Friedrich Berger on Rossmarkt in Stettin, at that time the capital of the Prussian province of Pomerania . She met the young architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1806 from the merchant Carl Gotthilf Tilebein in Stettin, for whom he designed a house. The acquaintance was continued and deepened when Susanne stayed in Berlin in 1807 in the household of Wilhelm Ernst Gropius, who ran a puppet theater in addition to a café and a mask factory. Schinkel lived in the same house, who occasionally painted large-format diagrams for Gropius 'company - as he did later for the diorama founded by Gropius' son Carl Wilhelm in 1827 . In November 1807 from Berlin, Susanne wrote a letter to her father, which was accompanied by a letter from Schinkel, expressing her decided affection for the young man who was not yet financially successful. All she could say was “that I am very happy and satisfied (...) The letter I received is from my dear friend to you, dear father (...) You do not know him and my judgment about him can rightly be a little partial occurrence. I also by no means demand that you accept it as valid and I am happy to accept it when you ask others about theirs, (...) I am so certain of my cause. "

Her younger brother Wilhelm became an architect, lived temporarily in the Schinkel's house and worked closely with her husband.

marriage

The marriage of the two took place on August 17, 1809 in the St. Jacobi Church on Rossmarkt, the main church in Stettin. The marriage was also recorded in the Georgenkirche in Berlin, Schinkel's home parish. The couple became domicile in Berlin. The marriage had four children: Marie Susanna Eleonore (* 1810), Susanna Sophia (* 1811), Carl Raphael (* 1813) and Susanna Sophie Elisabeth Eleonore (* 1822). The youngest daughter, Elisabeth, married the writer Alfred Freiherr von Wolhaben (1823–83), who was the first to publish the posthumous writings of his father-in-law Karl Friedrich Schinkel from 1862–64. After Elisabeth died early in 1851, Susanne Schinkel took her son, her grandson Hans von Wolzüge, into her home.

The couple around 1810, drawing by Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

Susanne supported her husband in secondary aspects of his professional life by, for example, writing letters of apology if commissioned work was not finished on time. To the wife of the consul Joachim Heinrich Wilhelm Wagener : “Dear Madame Wagener, I am certainly almost as sorry as you are that the picture was not finished and that I have now given you half the joy of your birthday without my fault and certainly also with you must spoil my husband. (…) The picture is in progress and you can at least promise your dear husband the joy of having it soon. ”In this case, however, it took another seven months.

As a soprano singer , Susanne Schinkel was an active member of the choir of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, founded in 1791 from 1820 to 1826 . She maintained contact with personalities from Berlin's artistic and intellectual life such as Christian Peter Wilhelm Beuth (1781–1853), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) and Christian Daniel Rauch (1777–1857), as well as the architect Friedrich August Stüler (1800– 1865) and to Ignaz von Olfers (1798–1872), the first general director of the Berlin museums. She conducted a lively correspondence and was a frequent guest in Berlin salons , the private social meeting places for discussions, readings or musical performances. She attended the salon evenings of Fanny Hensel (1805–1847), Felix Mendelssohn's sister Bartholdy , Hedwig von Olfers (1799–1891) and Bettina von Arnim (1785–1859), with whom she was close friends. She herself did not appear as a salonier, but tried repeatedly to persuade her husband to make such visits. However, he preferred his own apartment and drew there, often even when there were guests in the house.

In December 1830, Schinkel was promoted to head of the Oberbaudeputation, so he had a decisive influence on the design of all major building projects in the Kingdom of Prussia. After moving several times within Berlin, the family moved into an attractive official apartment on April 1, 1836 on the second floor of the Berlin Building Academy . The building was constructed in 1832–1836 based on a design by Schinkel. Contemporaries mentioned the artistic furnishings of the living spaces with full appreciation several times. Schinkel's professional advancement to ever higher ranks in the Prussian building administration brought frequent business trips with it. The Schinkel couple went on various trips together, occasionally for business reasons, several times with their children. In 1816 the daughters Susanne and Marie went to Weimar to visit Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . In 1821 the whole family went on a five-week summer trip to Stettin. In 1830 they all traveled together via Switzerland to Milan and Venice . In the summer of 1835 the couple went on a business trip to Rügen , where they spent the night in the lighthouse at Cape Arkona . A business trip with family was in Silesia in 1836 .

Karl Friedrich Schinkel had mastered an extremely strenuous workload for years. In the 1830s, he got increasingly health problems that made repeated spa stays necessary. After several strokes in the autumn of 1840 with subsequent paralysis as well as visual and speech disorders, he died a year later in his official apartment. Susanne took care of him and wrote about it to Bettina von Arnim: “For 10 years I have been trying hard and only live to pay attention and care for this condition. I have always done this day and night and certainly do not want to boast about it, for they know for whom it happened and for whom it is still happening. (...) Should my husband for Homeopathy decide, I give you the assurance that I support this decision rather than wants to prevent. "Previously, Ms. von Arnim had held her that she still relatively new alternative medicine method of the physician Samuel Hahnemann in of Schinkel's care.

Widowhood

Soon after Schinkel's death, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia ordered that all Schinkel's pictures and drawings be properly preserved . The artistic estate, as far as it was in the possession of Schinkel's widow Susanne, was bought by the Prussian state together with Schinkel's collection of antique plaster casts in January 1842 for 30,000 thalers . Together with sheets from various state institutions, these works were shown in a Schinkel Museum, which since November 1844 has been open to visitors in a section of the official residence at the Bauakademie. Even after the museum was founded, Susanne tried to check the estate. In many cases, drawings were only allowed to be published with their consent.

Schinkel had agreed a lifelong right to live in the building academy for his wife. She lived there for almost 20 years after his death, within sight of some of her husband's most important buildings - the Friedrichswerder Church , the Altes Museum and the Neue Wache . Her grandson Hans von Wolhaben informed his father about her painful death on May 27, 1861 the following day: She had to gasp for air from 2 am until late at night . Susanne Henriette Eleonore Schinkel was buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin-Mitte in the grave of her husband, as were her daughters Marie and Susanna. Since a thorough reconstruction of the grave complex in 2011, a reclining memorial stone with gold inscriptions commemorates mother and daughters; It is made of reddish Bornholm granite , like the stele for Karl Friedrich Schinkel , which was shaped according to an ancient pattern .

literature

• Elke Blauert: Susanne Henriette Eleonore Schinkel in: MuseumsJournal, reports from the museums, castles and collections in Berlin and Potsdam, issue 1/2012, pp. 8/9.
• Christoph von Wolzüge : Karl Friedrich Schinkel - Under the starry sky. Biography . Volume 1: Text volume, Volume 2: Commentary and register. Edition Fichter, Frankfurt 2016. ISBN 978-3-943856-33-0

Web links

• Article about Schinkel's grave

• Text about the history of the Schinkel Museum

Individual evidence

1. ^ Elke Blauert: Susanne Henriette Eleonore Schinkel . In: MuseumsJournal. Reports from the museums, castles and collections in Berlin and Potsdam . Issue 1/2012.
2. ^ Elke Blauert: Susanne Henriette Eleonore Schinkel . In: MuseumsJournal . Issue 1/2012, p. 8
3. ^ Elke Blauert: Susanne Henriette Eleonore Schinkel . In: MuseumsJournal . Issue 1/2012, p. 9.
4. ↑ Page about the history of the Schinkel Museum  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Elke Blauert: Susanne Henriette Eleonore Schinkel in: MuseumsJournal, issue 1/2012, p. 9