Location: Potsdam Map
Constructed: 1745- 47 by Frederick the Great
Tel. (0331) 969 42 02
Bus: 606, 695
Open: mid- May- mid- Oct: 9am- 5pm
mid- Oct- mid- May: 9am- 4pm
Closed: Fridays
Frederick the Great
Sanssouci Castle is located in the Potsdam near German capital of
Berlin. It is one of the most impressive royal residences not only
in the city the whole country. A big part of the residential comple
is its extensive park. Sanssouci Castle is a magnificent royal
residence located on the outskirts of modern day Berlin. It was
constructed in 1745- 47 on the orders of Prussian king Frederick the
Great. The name of the palace comes from a French "sanc souci",
which means "without concern". It served as a private residency for
the king, a getaway from capital's court. The New Palace today
houses an extensive picture gallery.
Beautiful garden of
Sanssouci Castle was intended to serve personal interests of
Frederick the Great who wanted to grow wine, figs and plums. In fact
gardens of Sanssouci Garden appeared before the palace of Sanssouci
even was even in the plans. Trees were later compliment by a
vegetable garden as well as life flower carpets. He ordered
construction a series of intricate terraces was meant to mimic the
palaces of antiquity. Additionally several Greco- Roman statues are
spread out through the royal complex. Many pavilions and palaces
spread on a an area of 287 hectares (700 acres) require a whole day
to explore. As you walk through the Sanssouci residence you cann a
tomb of Frederick II who was buried here on the artificial castle
hill.
Planting the vineyard terraces
The famous
garden view of Sanssouci was created after Frederick the Great's
decision to create a terraced vineyard on the southern slope of the
Bornstedt ridge. There used to be oaks on the hill. At the time of
the soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm I, the trees were felled and used
to fortify the marshy soil when the city of Potsdam was expanded.
After Friedrich Wilhelm I had the previous pleasure garden at the
Potsdam City Palace converted into a parade ground in 1714, he left
the Marly Garden as a pleasure and pleasure garden as a replacement
in 1715, northwest of the Brandenburg Gate, on an area that had
previously been used by Potsdam citizens as a garden area Create a
kitchen garden and add a half-timbered pleasure house. In this
context, the first vineyards have already been planted on the slope
of the otherwise bare Bornstedter Mühlenberg. In this state,
Friedrich II knew the area from his time as Crown Prince.
On
August 10, 1744, Frederick II gave the order to cultivate the
"desert mountain" by creating vineyards. Under the direction of the
architect Friedrich Wilhelm Diterichs, the south-facing slope was
divided into six broad terraces with walls swinging inward in the
shape of an arch towards the center in order to achieve the greatest
possible use of solar radiation. On the walls of the retaining
walls, surfaces alternate with trellises with local fruit and wine
varieties, with 168 glazed niches in which foreign varieties grew.
The individual terrace areas were bordered above the walls by strips
of lawn and planted with espalier fruit. In the summer months, 84
orange trees stood in pots between 96 taxus pyramids. Philipp
Friedrich Krutisch was entrusted with the gardening work. In the
central axis, 120 (today 132) steps led up the slope, divided six
times according to the terraces and an access ramp on each side of
the slope. The work on the vineyard terraces was largely completed
in 1746.
Below the terraces, on the ground floor, a
baroque-style ornamental garden was created from 1745 with lawns,
flower broderies and flanking bosquets. The middle of the ground
floor was adorned in 1748 by a four-pass-shaped fountain basin, the
"Great Fountain". The center of the four-pass basin was adorned with
gilded lead sculptures with depictions from Greek mythology that
have not survived. Since 1750, twelve marble statues, eight figures
of gods and allegorical representations of the four elements have
surrounded the water basin: Mercury, the water La pêche dans la mer,
Apollo with the killed python, Diana bathing, the fire Venus looks
at the shield forged by Vulcan for Aeneas, Juno with the peacock,
Jupiter with Jo, the earth Ceres teaches Triptolemos how to plow,
Mars, Minerva, the air Le retour de la chasse and Venus. Venus and
Mercury, work by the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, and two hunting
groups, Allegories of the Elements Air and Water by
Lambert-Sigisbert Adam, were gifts from the French King Louis XV.
The other figures come from the workshop of François Gaspard Adam,
the head of the French sculptor's studio founded by Friedrich II in
Berlin. The completion of the so-called French roundabout lasted
until 1764. The parterre bordered a moat in the south. A kitchen
garden to the southeast, the Marlygarten, remained. The soldier king
mockingly called the kitchen garden laid out in 1715 under Friedrich
Wilhelm I, "my Marly", following the lavish Marly-le-Roi gardens of
the French King Louis XIV. Friedrich emphasized the connection
between ornamental and kitchen gardens, art and nature II. Great
value also for the later park expansion.
Sanssouci Palace
The harmony between art and nature is also reflected in the location
and design of the Sanssouci Palace at the height of the vineyard.
Viticulture, which has been common in the Mark Brandenburg since the
13th century, never played a central role in the artistic design of
the princely pleasure gardens in this area. In Sanssouci, it should
become the center of the park through the layout of the vineyard
terraces with the crowning palace and the ground floor. With a wide
view of the landscape, in the midst of nature, the Prussian king
wanted to live in the summer months and pursue his personal
inclinations and artistic interests, but also state business. A post
mill, which had stood on the hill since 1739, underlined the rural
idyll of the place. Frederick II was of the opinion that "the mill
is an ornament to the castle".
Time of Frederick II
In the cabinet order of January 13, 1745,
Friedrich II ordered the construction of a "Lust-Haus zu Potsdam".
Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff made draft drawings based on the
king's sketches. Friedrich disagreed with Knobelsdorff's proposals
to raise the building with a basement, to lower the basement and to
place it close to the edge of the top terrace in order to give the
building a better effect when viewed from the ground floor. He
didn't want a prestigious building, but an intimate residential
palace in the Rococo style that only met his private needs. A
single-storey building, the base of which was the mountain, a
“maison de plaisance”, without a multitude of steps to get from the
interior directly onto a wide terrace and from there into the
garden. A close connection between home decor and the great
outdoors.
In all buildings in Potsdam and Berlin commissioned
by Frederick II, he intervened administratively and artistically in
the construction process. Drafts were made according to his
specifications and cost estimates made before each start of
construction. Work was only allowed to begin after the king's
approval. He interfered in everything and wanted to be instructed in
every detail, which often led to disagreements between the
architects and the king and also triggered demolitions. The
autocratic nature of Frederick II thus also restricted the
architectural ideas of Knobelsdorff, who had to architecturally
implement the idiosyncratic wishes of his client. Diterichs
transferred Knobelsdorff's cracks into detail, selected the
materials, signed contracts with sculptors and stonemasons and
commissioned Johann Gottfried Büring and Carl Ludwig Hildebrandt,
with whom he had already terraced the vineyard, to carry out the
work as conductors. The foundation stone was laid on April 14, 1745.
On May 2, Diterichs was replaced by a cabinet order as construction
manager by Jan Bouman and returned to Berlin with Büring.
After only two years of construction, the inauguration of the
Weinbergschloss took place on May 1st, 1747, although not all rooms
were finished. Except in wartime, Frederick II lived there from late
April to early October. The building was designed only for the king
and guests chosen by him. After his accession to the throne in 1740,
he spatially separated from his wife Elisabeth Christine von
Braunschweig-Bevern, with whom he had been married since 1733. He
assigned Schönhausen Palace near Berlin to her.
In the
Rococo, there was a separation of private and public areas. The
Potsdam City Palace was intended for the representative obligations,
the renovation of which took place at the same time and which was
inhabited by Frederick II during the winter months. Potsdam
developed into the actual residence, while the Berlin Palace, in
which the Queen performed representational tasks, and Charlottenburg
Palace, where Frederick II had the "New Wing" added on the eastern
side at the beginning of his reign, took second place and the
Königsberger Castle and the Wroclaw City Palace were only visited
occasionally.
The Prussian monarch composed, made music and
philosophized in Sanssouci. He ruled his country with discipline and
lived modestly without pomp. His modesty grew in old age to the
point of stinginess. During his lifetime, Frederick II did not have
any repairs carried out on the outer facade and only with reluctance
inside, since, as he said on another occasion, it should "only last
for my life". The indifference of the king, who suffered from
rheumatism and gout, towards necessary renovations was criticized by
the chief building officer Heinrich Ludwig Manger later in his
building history of Potsdam: "Unfortunately, the great man
experienced defects in many of his buildings, the repair costs of
which were extremely sensitive to him." The lack of a basement,
which the king had insisted on against Knobelsdorff's advice, was
found to be a construction defect, as it led to damage to the
parquet from rising damp and constant cold feet.
The crypt
"Old Fritz", as he was popularly known, died on
August 17, 1786 in the armchair in his study and bedroom in
Sanssouci Palace. According to his own instructions, he wanted to be
buried in a crypt next to his favorite dogs. He had the underground,
brick-built burial chamber covered with marble slabs built in 1744,
before the actual castle construction began, on the side of the top
terrace of the vineyard that had just been laid out. During his
46-year reign, Friedrich repeatedly dealt with death. In addition to
his Political Testament of 1752, before almost every battle, before
every war, he wrote new regulations in which he regulated everything
family and financial down to the smallest detail. He repeated the
instructions for his funeral just as often:
“I lived as a
philosopher and I want to be buried as such, without pomp, without
solemn pomp, without pomp. I don't want to be opened or embalmed. I
was buried in Sanssouci at the level of the terraces in a crypt that
I had prepared […]. If I die in times of war or on the road, I
should be buried at the first best place and brought to the
designated place in Sanssouci in winter. "
His nephew and
successor Friedrich Wilhelm II did not follow these instructions.
Instead, he had Frederick II's coffin set up in the crypt of the
Potsdam Garrison Church, right next to the coffin of his father, the
soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm I. He showed visitors the grave site
on the terrace with the words: "This is where my predecessor wanted
to be buried, he would rather lie next to his dogs than between his
ancestors." although the crypt was created in front of the dog
graves. Friedrich's role model, Moritz von Nassau, was also
transferred from his forest grave to a royal crypt in 1680. The
custom of garden and park burials did not begin until the next
generation, which was influenced by the Romantic era, so Friedrich's
brother Heinrich was buried in the park of Rheinsberg Castle in 1802
in a self-designed mausoleum.
During the Second World War,
soldiers of the Wehrmacht brought the coffins from the garrison
church to safety. In March 1943 they came to the "Kurfürst
property", an underground bunker on the site of today's Bundeswehr
command and control command in the district of Geltow (West Wildlife
Park) of the Schwielowsee community and in March 1945 to the
Bernterode salt mine in Eichsfeld. The garrison church including the
gravesite of Friedrich and his father burned down in April 1945
during the devastating air raid on Potsdam. After the end of the
war, soldiers of the American army brought the coffins to the
Marburg Landgrave Castle in May 1945, to the Hessian State Archives
in Marburg in February 1946 and to the Elisabeth Church in August
1946. They stayed there until they were transferred to Hohenzollern
Castle near Hechingen in August 1952.
After the reunification
of Germany, the will of Frederick II was fulfilled. The initiative
came from Louis Ferdinand Prince of Prussia, the head of the House
of Hohenzollern and host of Hohenzollern Castle, who had the coffins
transferred to the castle's Christ Chapel in 1953. Even after almost
250 years, the underground burial chamber proved to be largely
intact, the masonry was renovated and a waterproof roof was
installed. On August 17, 1991, the 205th anniversary of the death of
Frederick II, the sarcophagus with the king's remains was laid out
in the courtyard of Sanssouci Palace, escorted by a guard of honor
from the Bundeswehr. Since the king had ordered: “For the rest, as
far as my person is concerned, I want to be buried in Sanssouci,
without pomp, without pomp and at night”, the burial took place at
midnight, in the presence of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, by members of
the House of Prussia and broadcast on television.
According
to Nicolai, Friedrich II is said to have said to the Marquis
d’Argens on a walk through the palace construction site: “Quand je
serai là, je serai sans souci. »(German:“ When I'm there, I'll be
without worry ”). The grave is adorned by the marble group Flora
with Zephyr, created by François Gaspard Adam in 1749, and six
portrait busts of Roman emperors set up in a semicircle.
Franz Theodor Kugler sums up the importance of the
tomb in connection with the entire complex in 1840 as follows:
“Friedrich associated a secret, deeper meaning with the name
Sanssouci. He had had a crypt built on the side of the castle before
the foundation was laid, which would one day receive his earthly
remains. It was covered with marble and its purpose was playfully
concealed by the statue of a flora which lay on it. This tomb, whose
existence nobody could have guessed, was actually meant by that
name. He once talked to a friend about it and, pointing to the tomb,
said: "Quand se serai là, je serai sans souci" (If I am there, I
will not be worried!) From the window of his study he had the
picture of the flower goddess every day , the guardian of his grave,
in mind. "
Visitors lay flowers and potatoes on the simple
tombstone with the inscription "Frederick the Great", in memory of
the potato order.
Because the garrison church, which was
already being rebuilt, had been torn down during the GDR era in
1968, Friedrich's father, the soldier king, was buried in the Kaiser
Friedrich mausoleum at the Friedenskirche in Sanssouci Park.
Time after Friedrich II.
After the death of Frederick II, a new
era began in Prussia, which was also made visible by the change in
form in the architecture. When the successor Friedrich Wilhelm II
took office in August 1786, the classicist architectural style,
which had long been favored in Europe, also found its way into
Potsdam and Berlin. After taking office, the new king had the New
Garden and the Marble Palace built. In the year of his predecessor's
death, he had Friedrich's dying room, the worn study and bedroom,
changed by the architect Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff, apart
from the fireplace. During Friedrich II. From 1763 to 1769 the
Dessau architect had the New Palais built in the form of the
Baroque, with Wörlitz Castle in Wörlitzer Park, the earliest
neo-classical building in Germany. According to his plans, the first
interior of the Potsdam and Berlin palaces consistently designed in
the classicism style was built in Sanssouci. Friedrich Wilhelm lived
in it in the summers from 1787 to 1790 when he moved into the Marble
Palace.
The ruling from 1797 Friedrich Wilhelm III. only used
Sanssouci for occasional stays without changing anything in the
inventory. Only his wife Luise lived in the castle with her sister
Friederike for a few months in 1794, while Friedrich Wilhelm was in
Poland. The family preferred to spend the summer months in Paretz
Castle or on Pfaueninsel. The castle and inventory survived the
French occupation of Potsdam in 1806 unscathed, as Napoléon placed
it under his personal protection and thus saved it from looting.
Time of Friedrich Wilhelm IV.
Almost a hundred years after
the construction of the Sanssouci Palace, a king came to the
Prussian throne who was an admirer of Frederick the Great and his
world. Friedrich Wilhelm IV., The "romantic on the throne", felt
that the complex interests had in common, especially in the field of
architecture and artistic co-creation. Already in the time of the
Crown Prince he moved into the former rooms of Friedrich II in the
Berlin City Palace in 1815. In 1835 he was given permission to live
in Sanssouci Palace, although he and his wife Elisabeth Ludovika of
Bavaria had access to the Charlottenhof summer palace, built just a
few years earlier, in the southwest. The Crown Prince couple moved
into the former guest rooms on the west side. The rooms of Frederick
II on the east side initially served as state and public rooms and
were not included in private use until years later.
After the
accession to the throne in 1840, the larger court made it necessary
to convert and expand the side wings. Ludwig Persius made the
designs based on sketches by Friedrich Wilhelm IV. The old side
wings were torn down and lengthened and raised in 1841/42 under the
direction of the architect Ferdinand von Arnim. The existing
furniture was preserved, missing pieces were replaced by furniture
from the Frederician era where possible. The death room of Frederick
II, which had been redesigned under Friedrich Wilhelm II, was to be
returned to its original state. However, this plan was not
implemented because the documents and drafts did not appear
authentic enough to Friedrich Wilhelm IV.
The uppermost vineyard terrace, which was almost
bare in the Frederician era and only equipped with arcades, lattice
pavilions and sculptures, was adorned in 1845 with vases and water
features designed by Persius and Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse, bordered by
a marble balustrade and a well on the five lower levels. Court
gardener Hermann Sello planted the terraces with trees. On the
ground floor Persius expanded the fountain basin into a circle in
1840/41, which also increased the sculpture circle of the “French
Rondell” by around three meters. In 1848 ten (today eight)
semicircular marble benches designed by Hesse were placed between
the figures. From the same year, four marble columns with copies of
figures based on ancient models and two marble fountain walls each
with bagneroles (marble tubs) and statues of the muses Klio,
Polyhymnia, Euterpe and Urania are from the same year in the outer
compartments to the west and east of the “Great Fountain”. At the
southern end of the parterre, in the central axis, a scaled-down
replica of the equestrian statue of Frederick the Great was erected
in 1866, which is now in the "New Piece" below the Orangery Castle.
Friedrich Wilhelm IV died on January 2, 1861 in Sanssouci Palace
and was buried in the crypt of the nearby Friedenskirche. The last
inhabitant of the castle was his widow Elisabeth Ludovika. She lived
in Sanssouci for another thirteen years until she died on December
14, 1873 and was buried next to Friedrich Wilhelm IV in a ceremony.
Time since the end of the 19th century
After 1873, Wilhelm I
made the castle and its inventory available for museum purposes,
making it one of the oldest castle museums in Germany. After the
First World War and the end of the monarchy, it initially remained
in the possession of the Hohenzollerns and in 1927 came into the
care of the Prussian "Administration of State Palaces and Gardens"
founded on April 1st of the same year. Under the direction of
director Ernst Gall, the palace administration tried to restore the
interior design in the time of Frederick II with the support of the
Berlin State Museums. Among other things, Frederick the Great's desk
was returned to the study and bedroom. The monument preservation
concept also affected the entire Frederician part of the park, the
reconstruction of which was entrusted to garden inspector Georg
Potente, who had been gardening director of the Sanssouci park area
since June 1927. As part of this restoration work, he had the
heavily overgrown vineyard terraces uncovered and replanted from
1927, two semicircular benches in the "French Rondell" removed from
the central axis and the water features and sculptures from the time
of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Removed from the top terrace.
When the air raids on Berlin began in the Second
World War, the windows were walled up from April 1941 and numerous
works of art were moved to Rheinsberg and Bernterode. Paintings by
French painters of the 18th century came from Sanssouci Palace,
console vases made of Meissen porcelain, almost all furniture from
the “Small Gallery” and Frederick II's library. The remaining
furniture, almost all sculptures and picture frames remained in the
palace. The building survived the fighting for Potsdam in April 1945
unscathed, although fighting took place on the north side, between
the driveway to the castle and the historic mill, during which the
gallery windmill burned down. After the Red Army marched into
Potsdam on April 27, 1945, Sanssouci Park was placed under the
control of Lieutenant Colonel of the Guard Yevgeny Fyodorowitsch
Lutschuweit and closed to the public until June 4, 1946. Most of the
art objects relocated to Rheinsberg and those that remained in
Sanssouci ended up as looted goods in the former Soviet Union and
only a small part came back in 1958. The art objects from Bernterode
found by American soldiers were first brought to the Central Art
Collecting Point in the Museum Wiesbaden and in 1957 to
Charlottenburg Palace in West Berlin. After the reunification of
Germany, Friedrich II's book collection returned from Charlottenburg
to Sanssouci in 1992. Thirty-six oil paintings and two marble busts
of Amphitrite and Neptune by Lambert-Sigisbert Adam followed between
1993 and 1995. With the help of the Kulturstiftung der Länder and
the Deutsche Klassenlotterie Foundation, the paintings “Sultan in
the Garden” and “Fortune Teller” by Jean-Baptiste Pater, which had
been relocated to Rheinsberg, were bought back from the art trade in
1990. In 1966 a comprehensive restoration of the building began. The
west wing, the so-called “ladies wing”, and since 1993 the kitchen
in the east wing have been open to the public since 1981.
architecture
The castle, rather modest in its dimensions for a
regent, with twelve rooms, of which Frederick II only lived in five
himself, corresponded to the changes in court architecture around
the middle of the 18th century. The baroque residential castles,
which were built on the model of Versailles from the middle of the
17th century, primarily served the princely builders to represent
their political and economic power. In terms of their size, they
often went far beyond their actual use as a residence and the
necessity of a befitting court.
This excess of magnificence
and size aroused the longing for intimacy and comfort. However, the
change was not radical, it was gradual. Frederick II, who preferred
the Baroque and Rococo forms throughout his life, had the New Palace
built in the western part of the park two decades after the
construction of the Sanssouci Palace. After the Seven Years' War he
wanted to demonstrate the power and strength of Prussia with the
guest castle. He called it his "fanfaronnade" (boasting, showing
off).
Exterior design
The single-storey main building with
its adjoining side wings takes up almost the entire width of the top
terrace. The length of the main building, with the two round
cabinets on the sides, is 292 feet [91.6 m] and 49 feet [15.4 m]
deep. [...] the entire height from the outside 39 feet 2 inches
[around 12.3 m]. The 15-axis south side is emphasized by a
protruding, semi-oval central building with a crowning dome. The
name of the castle is written in gilded bronze letters above the
central arched window. Between the almost floor-to-ceiling arched
windows, thirty-six atlases arranged in pairs support the
entablature. The sandstone figures by the sculptor Friedrich
Christian Glume depict bacchantes and were carved on site in 1746
from roughly offset stone blocks. He was also involved in the design
of the sculptural decorations on the surrounding roof balustrade and
the groups of putti on the dome windows, as did his father Johann
Georg Glume and the workshops of the ornamental sculptors Johann
Melchior Kambly and Matthias Müller.
Knobelsdorff covered the side wings, unadorned in
Frederician times, each 98 feet [31 m] long and 35 feet [11 m] deep,
in which the kitchen, stables and rooms for the small servants were
housed, covered with symmetrically arranged arcades, which in each a
free-standing lattice pavilion adorned with gold-plated ornaments.
In front of the arcades are portrait busts of Roman personalities
and vase copies. In the eastern pavilion, Frederick II had the
figure of the “Praying Boy” erected, which he had acquired in 1747
from the property of Prince Wenzel von Liechtenstein. A replica from
the Berlin “Bronce-Waaren-Fabrik L. C. Busch” has been there since
1900.
The simpler north side of the castle stands in striking
contrast to the sculptural playful south side. Instead of the
atlases, Corinthian pilasters structure the front. The counterpart
to the semi-oval central building on the garden side is a
rectangular risalit with blended columns and a flat monopitch roof.
The front closes at both ends with short wing structures set at
right angles. Continuing colonnades enclose the unadorned courtyard
in a semicircle and open to the steep access ramp to the north. The
forty-four pairs of columns, arranged in two rows, leave space for
walkways. As on the south side, a balustrade with sandstone vases
adorns the roof approach of the castle building and the quarter
arches of the colonnade. Vine and flower tendrils made of sandstone
decorate the arches of the almost floor-to-ceiling windows and
French doors.
After the demolition of the single-storey
extensions from the Frederician era, the side wings were extended by
two axes, each with ten window axes and three-arched porches on the
front sides. While maintaining the eaves height of the castle
building, the extensions were raised by one storey and the flat
gable roof was hidden behind a baluster attica. The windows got a
straight end. Persius adopted the design elements on the north side
for the facade. Pilasters, balusters and decorations were cast from
zinc and sanded so that they look deceptively similar to the models
made of sandstone.
Interior design
The palace complies
with the principles of a “maison de plaisance”, the rooms of which
in Sanssouci are on one level so that you can easily reach the
garden. When it comes to the room layout, great importance was
attached to comfort. According to contemporary French architectural
theory, the double apartment corresponded to court comfort. In this
division, two rows of rooms are one behind the other: the main rooms
on the side facing the garden, usually to the south, and the
servants' chambers behind on the north side of the building. An
"apartment double" thus consists of a main room and an adjoining
servants' room. Doors connect the apartments with each other. They
are arranged in an axis, an enfilade, so that the extent of the
castle inside can be seen at a glance. A representative entrance
area dominates the central building, which does not immediately
reveal the intimate character of the building.
Frederick the
Great made floor plan sketches according to these rules of courtly
architecture, but these diverged from French building theory in some
areas, taking into account his personal wishes and ideas of living
comfort. When it came to furnishing the interior, he also determined
how the rooms should look down to the last detail. After sketches
that were often prepared by him, artists such as Johann August Nahl,
the brothers Johann Michael and Johann Christian Hoppenhaupt, the
brothers Johann Friedrich and Heinrich Wilhelm Spindler and Johann
Melchior Kambly created works of art in the Rococo style. Frederick
the Great was alien to any “addiction to luxury” as far as his
person was concerned. He cared little about etiquette and fashion,
which made him wear dirty and worn clothes as he got older, but he
felt an inner need to surround himself with noble things. He had a
keen sense for everything beautiful and designed his private rooms
to suit his own taste and needs, often ignoring the usual. These
“own compositions” in Rococo art led to the term Frederician Rococo.
Vestibule, marble hall and royal apartment
The vestibule and
the marble hall facing the garden are located in the central part of
the palace in the north-south axis. The royal apartment adjoins to
the east, with an audience room, concert room, study and bedroom,
library and an elongated gallery on the north side. To the west of
the two central halls are five guest rooms.
In the vestibule, which is entered from the
courtyard, the coupled column position of the colonnade is repeated.
The walls of the rectangular hall are divided by ten Corinthian
pairs of columns made of white stucco marble with gilded bases and
capitals. You are standing in front of Corinthian pilasters that
protrude only slightly from the wall. The ceiling picture above the
arched cove shows the Roman goddess Flora with geniuses who scatter
flowers and fruits from the sky. The painting was created in 1746 by
the Swedish painter Johann Harper. The three French doors on the
side of the main courtyard correspond to three flat, arched niches
with doors on the opposite side. Gilded over-port reliefs by Georg
Franz Ebenhech are placed above the central double door, the
entrance to the marble hall, and above two doors in the west and
east walls. With themes from the Bacchus myth, they create a
connection to the vineyard, as do the ornaments on the door panels
with gilded vine tendrils, herms and musical emblems by Johann
Christian Hoppenhaupt. The marble copy of Ares Ludovisi made by
Lambert-Sigisbert Adam in 1730 came as a gift from Louis XV.
together with the figures from the French roundabout 1752 to
Potsdam. Frederick II had the Ares erected as a counterpart to a
statue of Mercury that came from the collection of his sister
Wilhelmine von Bayreuth. Friedrich Wilhelm II had the Mercury set up
in the Marble Palace and replaced with a Trajan statue. Both figures
came into the Berlin Collection of Antiquities in 1830. A Mercury by
Jean-Baptiste Pigalle came into the vestibule to replace the Trajan.
In its place was the seated statue of the younger Agrippina created
by Heinrich Berges in 1846.
The marble hall on the garden
side served as a ballroom. Knobelsdorff used the Pantheon in Rome as
a model for the oval floor plan and the dome, which is opened
through a light opening at the apex. The eponymous marble from
Carrara and Silesia is found on columns, walls, window reveals and
in the ornamental inlay work on the floor. The gilded stucco work in
the dome was carried out by Carl Joseph Sartori (1709–1770) and
Johann Peter Benkert. They designed the vault with coffered fields,
military emblems and attributes of the arts and sciences depicted in
medallions. Four female figures and groups of putti by Georg Franz
Ebenhech on the cornice symbolize civil and military architecture,
astronomy and geography, painting and sculpture, as well as music
and poetry. The arrangement of the eight pairs of Corinthian columns
is repeated as in the vestibule. The sculptures of Venus Urania and
Apollo, created by François Gaspard Adam in 1748, are placed in the
niches in between next to the door. Apollon, turned to Venus, holds
an open book in his hand, which can be interpreted as the work De
rerum natura by the Epicurean poet Lucretius. The words “Te sociam
studeo scribendis versibus esse / Quos ego de rerum natura pangere
conor” (in German: “After you [Venus] I ask for you [Venus] as my
companion when composing the verses that I am about things apply to
her Daring to write beings ”). The bronze bust of the Swedish King
Charles XII, by Jacques Philippe Bouchardon (1711–1753), has been in
the Marble Hall since 1775. Friedrich II received the bust as a gift
in 1755 from his sister, the Swedish Queen Luise Ulrike.
The
audience room to the east was also used as a dining room in the
Frederician era. In this room, which could be heated on cool summer
days, the sociable "round tables" of Frederick II presumably took
place and not, as shown by Adolf Menzel in the painting Round Table
by Sanssouci, in the marble hall, which was only used as a dining
room on special occasions. Numerous paintings by French painters of
the 18th century dominate the appearance of the room. The walls,
covered with purple-pink silk damask, are loosely hung with works by
Jean-Baptiste Pater, Jean François de Troy, Pierre Jacques Cazes
(1676–1754), Louis de Silvestre, Antoine Watteau and others. The
over-port reliefs with putti playing with flowers and books are
works by Friedrich Christian Glume. The ceiling painting above the
cove decorated with leaf motifs, Zephyr wreaths Flora by Antoine
Pesne, shows the wind god with the flower goddess.
In the concert room, the exuberant rococo
ornamental shape, the rocaille, is visible in abundance on the white
and gold walls and the ceiling. The wall paintings by Antoine Pesne
and wall mirrors are fitted into the decoration and are framed by
the rocailles with their typical S-curves and C-curves. The wooden
frames come from the workshop of the sculptor Johann Michael
Hoppenhaupt (the elder). Charles Sylva Dubois, Antoine Pesne painted
a landscape picture and a view of the Sanssouci Palace on two
overhanging portraits with landscapes, ancient monuments and ruins.
The fortepiano by Gottfried Silbermann from 1746 and the music stand
of Frederick II, a work by the decorative sculptor Johann Melchior
Kambly from 1767, indicate the use of the space. Adolf Menzel's
painting The Flute Concert of Sanssouci impressively reproduces the
festive atmosphere at royal concerts.
At the time of
Frederick II, the study and bedroom showed just as rich, gilded
stucco and wood carving as the concert room. After the redesign in
the classical style by Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff, only the
fireplace remained in its place. The celadon green silk covering of
the walls with overlying gilded wood carvings gave way to a light
green covering. The formerly stuccoed ceiling was painted by the
decorative painter Johann Fischer with a kind of velarium, around
which the signs of the zodiac, sacrificial scenes and depictions of
gods are grouped and in the spandrels allegories of historical fame,
peace, war and poetry. The originally richly ornamented putti
balustrade, which separated the working and sleeping areas, was
replaced by two Ionic columns resting on pedestals and two pilasters
painted with flower-fruit hangings. Under Friedrich Wilhelm IV, part
of the Frederician furniture was returned to the room in the middle
of the 19th century, including the death chair of Frederick II in
1843. In addition, he had the walls decorated with paintings mainly
showing Frederick the Great. The works were created by Antoine
Pesne, Johann Georg Ziesenis, Joachim Martin Falbe, Charles-Antoine
Coypel, Edward Francis Cunningham, Christian Bernhard Rode, Johann
Christoph Frisch and Anton Graff.
The library deviates from
the spatial planning of French palace architecture. The circular
room is almost hidden outside the enfilade at the end of the royal
apartment and can be reached through a narrow corridor from the
study and bedroom. The location underlines the private character of
the room, into which the “philosopher von Sanssouci” could withdraw
undisturbed. Walls paneled with cedar wood and bookcases made of the
same wood embedded in wall niches, in which the entrance door is
also integrated, show a closed picture in the wall decoration. The
harmonious color scheme in brown with the gold-colored ornamentation
of the rocaille creates a calm atmosphere. Benjamin Giese created
four gilded bronze reliefs above the cupboards with allegories of
the arts. Niches accommodate the fireplace and the sofa. The
bookcases are filled with around 2,100 volumes of Greek and Roman
poetry and historiography in French translation as well as French
literature of the 17th and 18th centuries, the focus of which is the
works of Voltaire. Friedrich II paid little attention to German
literature. The books are bound in brown or red kidskin and richly
gilded. The king owned the same set of works in his palace libraries
and from 1771 had them marked with gold letters on the book cover.
In the case of the gallery in the north, too, Frederick II
deviated from the French spatial planning of the "apartment double",
according to which chambers were provided for the servants in this
area. The wall of the narrow, elongated room is divided by niches in
which marble sculptures of Greco-Roman deities from the collection
of the French Cardinal Melchior de Polignac are placed. Paintings by
Nicolas Lancret, Jean-Baptiste Pater and Antoine Watteau hang over
five sofas. On the outer wall, interrupted by windows and mirrors,
there are ten marble busts on pedestals and on the chimneys at the
ends of the gallery the two busts of Amphitrite and Neptune by
Lambert Sigisbert Adam. The five-part ceiling painting above the
voute decorated with vine leaves is by Johann Gottlieb Glume and
shows putti scattered with flowers. Charles Sylva Dubois made the
temple ruins on the east side overhang painting and Antoin Pesne
made the figure decoration on the west overlay.
Guest room
The five guest rooms adjoining the marble hall to
the west have windows facing the garden and the first four rooms
have an alcove on the opposite wall. Next to this bed niche, a door
leads through a narrow corridor into the servants' room adjoining to
the north and another door into a small chamber that was intended
for storing clothes.
The walls of the first guest room are
paneled with white painted wood, in whose narrow fields Friedrich
Wilhelm Hoeder painted pale pink ornaments and figurative
representations in the chinoise style. The room underwent a change
as early as 1747, when a blue satinade (semi-silk atlas) was
stretched over the paneling. Presumably, the use of damp wood led to
the formation of cracks, which were supposed to be covered in this
way. After the removal in 1953, the up to then fourteen paintings
would have covered Hoeder's painting, so that only two works by
Antoine Pesne and Jean-Baptiste Pater could be placed on the alcove
wall.
The walls of the second and third guest rooms were
already covered with a textile wall covering when they were
furnished. In addition to over-port paintings with still lifes by
Augustin Dubuisson (1700–1771), a son of Jean Baptiste Gayot
Dubuisson, works by painters from the 18th century hang on the blue
and white striped covering of the second room and on the red and
white striped wall surface of the third room Landscapes and vedute
by Giovanni Paolo Pannini, Luca Carlevaris, Michele Marieschi and
others.
It is not known exactly who received the privilege of
living in Sanssouci over the decades. Due to the naming of the
fourth room, the “Voltaire room”, and the fifth, the “Rothenburg
room”, two guests are associated with Sanssouci. It is not certain
whether Voltaire lived in the summer palace during his stay in
Potsdam from 1750 to 1753, as he lived in rooms in the Potsdam City
Palace; in any case he was a frequent guest of the king during the
three years. The “Voltaire room” is referred to as the “flower room”
in an inventory list from 1782 and, like the first guest room, was
presumably so in need of repair due to damp wood that Johann
Christian Hoppenhaupt made new wood paneling in 1752/53. The
original painting by Hoeder, with gray-purple ornaments, is now only
visible in the bed niche. Hoppenhaupt created yellow-lacquered oak
paneling with colorful, plastic wood carvings depicting flowers,
fruits, bushes and animals. The colorful flower decoration made of
stucco and sheet iron continues on the ceiling. Wilhelm II had a
bust of Voltaire based on the model created in 1774 by the porcelain
modeler Friedrich Elias Meyer the Elder. Ä. Copy 1889 and put in the
room before 1905.
The counterpart to the library is the
circular “Rothenburg Room”, also located outside the enfilade. It
was named after a close confidante of the king, Count Friedrich
Rudolf von Rothenburg, who lived in the room regularly until his
death in 1751. The light green painted wood paneling was painted by
Hoeder with Chinese motifs, which are similar to the design in the
first guest room. The pictures by an unknown artist in the bed niche
show grotesques that go back to ornamental engravings by Antoine
Watteau. All rooms were equipped with chimneys and today, with the
exception of the "Rothenburg Room", are furnished with furniture and
art objects from the 18th century.
Side wing
In Frederick
times, the single-storey side wing on the east side contained the
rooms for servants and on the west side the castle kitchen and
stable boxes for the horses. With the new building under Friedrich
Wilhelm IV., The kitchen was in the east wing and the rooms for
servants in the upper floor. The west wing accommodated the living
quarters for ladies-in-waiting.
The wine store, an ice-making room, larger storage rooms, the
lamp room, workrooms for cellar servants and the confectionery were
housed in the newly built kitchen wing. The work rooms for the
direct supply of the castle residents were on the ground floor. In
addition to the 115 m² kitchen, which takes up the entire width of
the side wing, there was a coffee kitchen for preparing breakfast
and cold dishes, a coffee room, a baking chamber, the master
kitchen’s office (coffee room), a small pantry and two rooms for
cleaning the table silver. The kitchen master, the caretaker and
other servants lived on the upper floor. Since the kitchen was only
used from 1842 to 1873 and no structural changes were made after
that, the fixed inventory is still available today. This includes a
cast iron "cooking machine" with brass fittings and a rotating brass
rod. The stove, which was state-of-the-art at the time, is equipped
with hotplates in various sizes with compartments for roasting and
baking, a water bubble and a heating cabinet.
The west wing,
also known as the ladies' wing, was used to accommodate
ladies-in-waiting and guests. In addition to smaller coffee kitchens
and a room for the orderlies, three apartments for court ladies have
been set up on the ground floor and two cavalier apartments and one
women's apartment on the upper floor. Each apartment has two rooms.
The sequence of rooms corresponds roughly to the "apartment double".
Next to the bed niche, a door leads through a short corridor into
the adjoining servants' room or the stairwell and another door into
a small toilet room. Friedrich Wilhelm IV had the preferred rooms on
the ground floor, with their direct access to the garden, designed
with wood-paneled walls more elaborately than the usually
wallpapered rooms on the upper floor. Almost all of the chimneys
date from the Frederician era and were probably built into Frederick
II's western apartment in the Potsdam City Palace, which was
redesigned around 1800. The rooms were furnished with rococo
furniture from the Frederician era and newly made pieces in the
"second rococo" style. In later years, however, contemporary
furniture was also added.
The “second Rococo” was a style of
the multi-layered art of the 19th century from the mid-1820s and
especially in the 1840s. For Friedrich Wilhelm IV. In connection
with Sanssouci, however, not only a fad, but also a return to the
artistic values of Frederick II and, as a result, can only be
found in Sanssouci. In the numerous other buildings that arose
during his reign in Potsdam, he preferred styles of antiquity, the
Renaissance and classicism.
Sanssouci Park
After the
terracing of the vineyard and the completion of the Sanssouci
Palace, the surroundings were included in the design. A baroque
ornamental garden was created with lawns, flower beds, hedges and
trees. 3000 fruit trees were planted in the hedgerows. Oranges,
melons, peaches and bananas were in the greenhouses of the numerous
park gardeners. The goddesses Flora and Pomona, who adorn the
obelisk portal at the eastern exit of the park, point out the
connection between the ornamental and kitchen gardens.
The
expansion of the facility after the construction of further
buildings resulted in a dead straight, around two kilometer long
main avenue. This began in the east at the obelisk erected in 1748
and extended over the years to the New Palace, which forms the end
in the west. At the height of the picture gallery erected in 1764
and the new chambers erected in 1774, which flank the castle, the
avenue opens up to roundels with fountain basins, which are lined
with marble sculptures. From these points, paths branch off in a
star shape between tall hedges into further garden areas.
When designing the park, Frederick the Great continued what he had
already started in Neuruppin and Rheinsberg. During his stay in
Neuruppin, where he was the commander of a regiment from 1732 to
1735 when he was crown prince, he had an ornamental and kitchen
garden laid out at his residence. Already here he deviated from the
classic design of the baroque gardens, which were purely for
representation, based on the model of Versailles, by combining the
beautiful with the useful. He followed this principle in Rheinsberg
as well. When the palace was redesigned, which Friedrich II received
as a gift from his father, the soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm I, in
1734, he had hedged fruit and vegetable quarters set up. The main
axis and a larger transverse axis were no longer directed towards
the castle, as was usual in French-style parks, but ran at right
angles to the building from the south wing.
Frederick the Great invested a lot of money in the park's
fountain system, as water features were an integral part of Baroque
gardens. In Sanssouci, however, the project failed due to the lack
of specialist knowledge of the builders, so that it was not possible
to channel water from a high basin on the ruin mountain down into
the park. The Neptune Grotto in the eastern part of the park,
completed in 1757, did not fulfill its intended function, nor did
the fountain systems or the marble colonnade built from 1751 to 1762
according to plans by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, which was
located in the western section of the main avenue, within the
Rehgarten. The water feature, also known as the “Rehgarten
Colonnade” due to its former location, is no longer preserved, as it
had to be demolished in 1797 due to its dilapidation.
It was
not until a hundred years later that the project succeeded with the
help of steam power, and the purpose of the water reservoir was
fulfilled. In October 1842, an 81.4 hp steam engine built by August
Borsig went into operation and raised the water jet from the "Great
Fountain" below the vineyard terraces to 38 meters. A pumping
station was built especially for this machine at the Havel Bay,
which, as Persius wrote in his diary, was commissioned by Friedrich
Wilhelm IV. And between 1841 and 1843 by Persius, in the style of
Turkish mosques with a minaret as a chimney was erected.
Years earlier, Friedrich Wilhelm III. an area that bordered
Sanssouci Park to the south, and gave it to his son Crown Prince
Friedrich Wilhelm (IV.) at Christmas 1825. Karl Friedrich Schinkel
and Ludwig Persius built Charlottenhof Palace on the site of a
former manor house. Peter Joseph Lenné was commissioned to design
the surrounding area. Taking into account the baroque ornamental and
kitchen garden from the Frederician era, the garden architect
transformed the flat, in places swampy terrain into an open
landscape park. The wide meadows created visual axes between
Charlottenhof Palace, the Roman Baths and the New Palace with the
friendship temple from the time of Frederick the Great. Loosely set
groups of shrubs and trees enliven the large park area, at the
south-eastern end of which a moat has been expanded into a pond.
Lenné used the excavated earth to create a gently undulating
terrain, at the top of which the walking paths meet in a star shape.
This southern part is also known as Park Charlottenhof.
Friedrich II. And Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Shaped the complex in the
18th and 19th centuries in a contemporary style and created a total
work of art of architecture and garden design with their own
artistic cooperation through their architects, sculptors, painters,
decorators and gardeners, the heart of which is the vineyard
terraces with the crowning lock. The historic Sanssouci park with an
area of around 290 hectares and almost 70 kilometers of paths is
the largest in the Mark Brandenburg.
In the park and on the
adjacent Klausberg, in addition to the Sanssouci Palace, other
buildings and garden architecture under Frederick II were built,
which are still preserved today:
Picture gallery
New chambers
Neptune grotto
Chinese house
New palace with the communs and
the triumphal gate
Friendship stamp
Temple of Antiquity
Obelisk Portal and the Obelisk
Ensemble of artificial ruins on
the ruin mountain (north of the park)
Belvedere on the Klausberg
(north of the park)
Royal vineyard on Klausberg (north of the
park)
Drachenhaus on the Klausberg (north of the park)
Friedrich Wilhelm IV had the Park Sanssouci supplemented with
further buildings:
Charlottenhof Palace
Roman baths
Friedenskirche with the adjoining groups of buildings
Orangery
Palace, also New Orangery (north of the park)
A buried, no longer
visible model fort northeast of the New Palace, near Maulbeerallee,
dates from the time of Wilhelm II.
Visitors at the time of
Friedrich
The park was open to all visitors, as was the picture
gallery, which could be viewed under the guidance of the supervisor.
But the New Palace and even Sanssouci Palace itself were made
accessible to visitors when the king was not present.
The
French general Count Guibert wrote about Sanssouci in Friedrich's
time:
“There you never found that noise, that tumult, that eternal
to-and-fro of idle greatness, order-bearing conceit and bustling
intrigue, as you usually do on the streets leading to the
courtyards. The eye was not injured by the sight of hopes, greed and
ambition, of all those passions which are more often unhappy than
satisfied. One could believe that one was coming to the residence of
an ordinary citizen. Having three or four unarmed soldiers standing
near the castle as the only guard did not change that impression
much. Hardly that a few scattered servants showed up here and there.
Everything seemed deserted and was therefore all the more sublime,
as in those temples, where loneliness, far more than crowding,
proclaims the presence of the Godhead and calls to worship. One
walked through this castle, and its deserted expanse, the splendor
that seemed more developed for curiosity than for use, the small
apartment to which Friedrich confined himself, everything could have
aroused the belief that a king lived there, who indeed would have
kept his palace but laid down the crown. "
Marshal Francisco
de Miranda wrote in 1785:
“We took a clerk and a carriage and
visited the palace of Sans-Souci… In the library by the window the
king's armchair stood at a lectern with the open 'Art of War' of
Marshal von Pussegur. Our guide told us that His Majesty was in it
earlier would have read. The library and living rooms are extremely
artistically and sumptuously furnished, splendid furniture. In the
midst of all this splendor, a simple round wooden table stands out
in the dining room. The bed in a corner separated by a screen, an
ordinary wooden frame, would be too poor for a monk. Otherwise,
curtains and furniture are precious, but because the use of
handkerchiefs is apparently unknown, they look very disgusting. "
And after a visit in 1778 Goethe wrote:
"And I got really
close to old Fritz because I saw his being, his gold, silver,
marble, monkeys, parrots and torn curtains, and heard his own
rag-dogs argue about the great man."