Poststr. 23 in the Nikolaiviertel. Tel.: +49 (0) 30 2400 20 171
The Knoblauchhaus was the former main residence of the Berlin merchant family Knoblauch. The building is located at Poststraße 23, which is part of the Nikolaiviertel. It was built between 1759 and 1761 and remained in the Knoblauch family for 170 years. In 1929 the family sold the house to the city of Berlin. It survived the Second World War largely unscathed as one of the few 18th-century town houses in Berlin. Since 1989 the building has housed a branch of the Märkisches Museum and since 1995 the Berlin City Museum Foundation. On the first and second floor, a permanent exhibition shows the history of the Knoblauch family in addition to the bourgeois living culture of the Biedermeier period.
Family history until the construction of the house
The name of the
house goes back to the Berlin merchant family Knoblauch. Their origins
can be traced back incompletely to the 14th century. The family
originally had its seat in the Upper Hungarian cities of Košice and
Pressburg. Michael Knoblauch, the earliest known member of the family,
must have held high office as a city councilor in Košice as early as the
late 14th century. Johann Heinrich Knoblauch achieved a temporary
economic “breakthrough” in the 17th century. With his work as a
mastermind he brought great prosperity in Pressburg. Belonging to the
Protestant minority, however, put the family under increasing political
pressure, because after the failed Protestant uprising under Prince
Franz II Rákóczi, the Habsburgs pushed ahead with re-Catholicization in
Hungary. Johann Heinrich Knoblauch decided to flee. The religious
refugee settled in Heegermühle, where he was employed in a brass
factory. The family would only settle in Berlin under the grandson:
first, in 1738, Johann Christian Knoblauch (1723–1790) became an
apprentice to master needlemaker Göricke. During his apprenticeship he
acquired skills in the manufacture and sale of snap hooks, eyelets,
chains and cockade wires. The Prussian army of Frederick II was
dependent on these products. After acquiring Berlin citizenship in 1750,
Johann Christian Knoblauch set up his own business as a master
needlemaker. The needs of the Prussian army gave him a steady source of
income. In the middle of the Seven Years' War, a plot of land was
purchased in 1759, on which the Knoblauchhaus is located today.
Family history from the construction of the house
The location of the
property in the posh Nikolai district testified to the social
advancement of the family. The houses of courtiers, officials and
merchants stood in the immediate vicinity. In accordance with this
environment, Johann Christian Knoblauch had the previous building, a
half-timbered house, demolished. In its place, he erected the
three-storey building that still exists today. Around 1780, Johann
Christian Knoblauch entered the textile trade, which was sponsored by
the Prussian king. He opened a shop for silk and cloth goods on the
ground floor of the Knoblauchhaus. The eldest son Christian Ludwig
Knoblauch was sent to the leading textile manufacturers in Europe, from
where he was supposed to gather knowledge about the current French
fashion trends. The daughter married into the influential Keibel silk
merchant family. The second eldest son, Carl Friedrich Knoblauch, dealt
with the production of silk ribbons, which would become the family's
most important branch of the economy. In 1790 the head of the family,
Johann Christian Knoblauch, died. With that, the Knoblauchhaus became
the property of Carl Friedrich Knoblauch (1765–1813), because the older
brother Christian Ludwig Knoblauch created an independent branch of the
family based in Frankfurt am Main.
Carl Friedrich Knoblauch was
able to continue the economic success of the family. He owned a silk
ribbon factory on Mühlendamm, which he founded in 1789, and a silk
ribbon shop in Knoblauchhaus. He was also active in publishing, i. That
is, he provided Berlin weavers with fabrics he had bought. In return, he
received their finished products and resold them, for example at the
Leipzig or Frankfurt trade fairs. To a lesser extent, he imported silk
ribbons from France and Switzerland. In 1806 he had the baroque façade
of the Knoblauchhaus redesigned in a classical style with a frieze of
tendrils on the upper floor. In contrast to his son Carl Friedrich
Wilhelm (1793–1859), Carl Friedrich Knoblauch positioned himself
politically as pro-Napoleon. This added to tensions within the family.
After the end of Napoleon's Russian campaign in 1813, Knoblauch took
care of billeting and feeding the soldiers. He probably contracted
typhoid fever and died a short time later.
Carl Friedrich Wilhelm
Knoblauch, who took over the house and the silk ribbon company, made a
name for himself as a local politician. He represented a conservative
liberalism and was involved, among other things, in a revision of
Stein's city regulations of 1808. Knoblauch was a member of the Berlin
City Council and from 1824 of the Electoral Parliament. His political
commitment brought him into contact with personalities such as Freiherr
vom Stein, Peter Beuth and Wilhelm von Humboldt. In 1826, the latter two
included garlic on the board of their “Association of Friends of Art”.
This gave the Knoblauch family access to the intellectual, technical and
artistic elite of Prussia. The Knoblauchhaus developed into a meeting
point for social gatherings in which Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Christian
Friedrich Tieck, Christian Daniel Rauch, Johann Gottfried Schadow,
Friedrich Schleiermacher and Carl Joseph Begas took part. An important
source for life in the Knoblauchhaus are copies of the letters and more
than 100 diaries of Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Knoblauch. Most of the
original writings were burned in the family archive during the Second
World War, but thanks to the society’s journal for the history of
Berlin, some remained in the 1930s passages transcribed by Richard
Knoblauch over the years.
Eduard Knoblauch (1801-1865), the
brother of Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Knoblauch, is considered the
"best-known member of the family" (Jan Mende). The Schinkel student
worked primarily in the field of private architecture. As such, in
contrast to his teacher Schinkel, he was not in the service of the
state, but worked mainly for the aristocracy and above all the Berlin
bourgeoisie. As a rule, these two groups of commissions gave the
architect more freedom in the design than the government. Knoblauch was
particularly innovative in residential construction, where he also paid
attention to lighting and hygiene conditions in addition to aesthetic
requirements. However, his main work is the New Synagogue on
Oranienburger Strasse. Like his brother, he was born in the
Knoblauchhaus. However, Eduard Knoblauch moved into residence at
Kronenstraße 28 and from 1847 at Oranienstraße 101/102. His son Gustav
and grandson Arnold also became architects.
18th century
The construction of the house cost the client Johann
Christian Knoblauch 10,044 thalers, 23 groschen and 8 pfennigs. 12,000
roof tiles and 212,000 bricks were installed between 1759 and 1761. This
presented a major logistical challenge, as Prussia was suffering from
the aftermath of the Seven Years' War at the time. King Friedrich II had
initially promised his army supplier, garlic, financial support for
building a house. However, under the impression of the severe Prussian
defeat in the Battle of Kunersdorf in August 1759, the monarch withdrew
his promise. Johann Christian Knoblauch had to pay the full cost of the
three-story plastered building out of his own pocket. On the ground
floor of the house there was initially the workshop of the master
needleman and since about 1780 a textile shop. Apprentices, employees
and journeymen were also part of Knoblauch's household and were probably
housed on the upper floors together with the family of the master of the
house. The room layout therefore did not provide for a separation
between business and private life. There are no hallways or corridors in
the Knoblauchhaus; one room is directly adjacent to the other, making it
difficult for residents to retreat intimately. This original room layout
of the house was not changed in any of the subsequent conversions and is
classic for the 18th century.
Three free-standing façade sides
and the mansard roof give Knoblauchhaus a dominant position within the
quarter. It has an irregular trapezoidal floor plan and has a curved
facade with a central risalit in the Rococo style.
19th century
In 1806, the façade was given a classicist frieze of tendrils, which was
prominently placed below the windows on the second floor. On the first
floor, a flower bay enlivens the facade. The interior design and
furnishings were renewed in 1835 according to plans by Eduard Knoblauch.
The staircase was revised and a new spiral staircase was installed. In
addition, the interiors were painted in a late classical style. The
decorative framing of the entrance portal, probably originally made of
terracotta, was also added at this time.
20th century
Only
four houses in the Nikolaiviertel were spared from bombing during World
War II, including the Knoblauchhaus. After the war, the municipal
housing administration set up three small rental apartments per floor in
the house. The shared toilet was in the stairwell. In 1948, a well-known
restaurant moved into the ground floor and the basement: Since the
historic wine bar in Molkenstraße was destroyed by the bombing, the
landlords Elisabeth Schütze and Paul Sachsenheimer moved their business
to the nearby Knoblauchhaus. In 1958 the couple fled to West Berlin. The
premises of the restaurant were then converted into a state-run
restaurant.
The building, which had previously been used as an
apartment building, was thoroughly renovated in the 1980s and opened in
1989 as a branch of the Märkisches Museum. Since 1995 the museum has
belonged to the Stadtmuseum Berlin Foundation. By 2012, a popular
restaurant, the "Historic Wine Bars", was set up on the ground floor.
The ground floor is currently empty and is to be used again for
gastronomy in the future (as of 2019).
The living rooms on the first floor are each dedicated to a
member of the Knoblauch family and furnished accordingly. The living
room presents Henriette Knoblauch (1798-1821), the wife of Carl
Friedrich Wilhelm Knoblauch (1793-1859). In the Biedermeier period,
the living room was the main place where the wife of the house
lived. Since, unlike in previous centuries, she was completely
excluded from public and professional life, her task was limited to
raising children and organizing household chores. The room
illustrates this role-playing of the time: near the windows stands a
patent secretary, suitable for both sewing and writing. There are
children's toys between the patent secretary and the sofa - a
reference to the mother's upbringing. In the Biedermeier living
room, the family and their friends gathered for socializing or
eating. An oval table surrounded by a sofa and chairs that can be
moved was usually available for this purpose. In addition, there was
usually a desk and showcases filled with all kinds of small works of
art. Diaries and letters were written at the desk. The piece of
furniture also stored documents, albums and private correspondence.
In the living room there is a piece of furniture that has rarely
been preserved in Berlin: the patent secretary was a table designed
by the English designer Thomas Sheraton. In the German Biedermeier
period, the patent secretary enjoyed great popularity. It could be
folded up and placed against the wall to save space. It could also
be used as a decorative stove screen. Particularly lavishly designed
specimens can be attributed to master carpenter Adolph Friedrich
Voigt in Berlin. Because of the trade reform, he was no longer
forced, in contrast to his predecessors, to turn to the guild
branches of glaziers, brass casters and locksmiths for decorative
elements. The production steps in the manufacture of furniture were
carried out entirely in his own workshop on Leipziger Strasse.
The chandelier in the living room was designed by Karl Friedrich
Schinkel. Around 1830, he commissioned the wood bronze manufacturer
Carl August Mencke to produce it. The candlestick itself consists of
substitutes imitating gold: the crown rings, for example, are made
of wood; Arms, rosettes and spouts molded from copper and lead. Only
the thinly applied oil paint causes the chandelier to be gilded. The
object was never owned by the Knoblauch family, but ended up in the
Knoblauchhaus through the Stadtmuseum Foundation at the end of the
1980s.
An exhibition area on the second floor deepens this
theme with other objects. The accessible living spaces are exemplary
and in a way that is unique for Berlin, showing the living culture
of the upper bourgeoisie of the Schinkel period. The current
exhibition is curated by the historian Jan Mende. There is an
increased family offer in the museum, for example the "Museum
Knoblauchhaus Rallye", which makes the place appear even livelier.