The Princess Palace is a monument on the boulevard Unter den Linden 5 in the Mitte and part of the Fridericianum Forum. It was built in 1733 by Friedrich Wilhelm Dieterich in the style of the Frederizian Rococo and expanded by Heinrich Gentz in the style of classicism from 1810 to 1811. Burned out in the Second World War and demolished in 1962, it was reconstructed by Richard Paulick as an opera café by Richard Paulick from 1963 to 1964. Since 2018, the Princess Palace has been home to the Kunsthalle PalaiSpopulaire of Deutsche Bank.
In 1733 Friedrich Wilhelm Dieterichs two in 1730 for the General of
Becheffer and the Freiherr von Cocceji in Oberwallstraße on Berlin
-based building organized buildings under the Linden Palais, the Cocceji
to his Death lived in. Margrave Friedrich Heinrich von
Brandenburg-Schwedt acquired the building in 1755. After the death of
the bad margrave in 1788, the palace passed the property of the Prussian
royal family.
At first the prince couple Friedrich Ludwig Karl
and Friederike von Prussia, then the royal couple Friedrich Wilhelm III.
And Luise von Prussia with the three daughters Charlotte, Alexandrine
and Luise. Since then it has been called Princess Palace. In 1811, King
Friedrich Wilhelm III. extend the princess palace by master builder
Heinrich Gentz through a head building to the boulevard under the Linden
and connect by Karl Friedrich Schinkel through a swibbow with the royal
palace. As early as 1809, Queen Luise had commissioned the young
Schinkel to draft a representative head building, which, however, was
not carried out for financial reasons. After the daughters moved,
Countess Auguste von Harrach, Friedrich Wilhelm III. After Luise's
death, the princess palace had married from 1824.
After the end
of the monarchy in 1918, the Palais initially passed the property of the
Free State of Prussia and then the state museums. On March 13, 1931, the
150th birthday of Karl Friedrich Schinkels, the Schinkel Museum opened
in the rooms. With a large collection of paintings, drawings and
sketches, it showed the whole variety of his work.
When the
reconstruction of the princess palace, which had burned down in 1952 in
1952, had delayed several times for financial reasons, the facades were
so weathered that they were demolished from 1960 to 1962 and
reconstructed by Richard Paulick from 1962 to 1964. The newly opened
opera café with opera bar, wine bar and barbecue restaurant received
modern equipment and a large terrace to the opera garden. In the round
staircase, the blacksmith Rokokogeländer from the Buch Castle, which was
demolished in 1964, also a work by Dieterichs, was attached. The
reconstructed princess palace quickly developed into a popular meeting
place for locals and tourists. It also served as the location for Paul
and Paula's legend, one of the most successful feature films of the GDR.
For the East Berlin gay scene, weekly disco evenings took place in the
opera café.
After the German reunification, the Berlin
restaurateur Manfred Otte took over the opera café, whereby it received
historicizing equipment from 1990 to 1991. Until the closure in 2011 it
was primarily for his more than 50 varieties cake and cakes, but also
for its numerous high-ranking guests such as the conductor Daniel
Barenboim, the tenor Plácido Domingo, former Federal Chancellor Helmut
Kohl or former Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker. In 2014, Axel
Springer boss Mathias Döpfner acquired the princess palais from TLG
Immobilien and rented it to Deutsche Bank, which Kuehn Malvezzi
converted it to the Kunsthalle Palaispopulaire by 2018. The main
entrance was moved back to Oberwallstrasse and the concrete core was
uncovered inside. The 900 square meters of exhibition rooms received
unadorned equipment with gray floors, white walls and unexcited
blankets. On the ground floor, the Hessian restaurateur Klaus Peter
Kofler operates the Café Lepopulaire.
The former garden of the
princess palace has been the eastern part of Bebelplatz since the post
-war period.