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Article Link: https://www.zeyka.in/post/who-was-karl-friedrich-schinkel-and-why-is-he-famous
As I mentioned earlier, Karl Friedrich Schinkel was an interesting man.
If at any point this feels like I am infatuated and obsessing over him, that’s because I am. And by the time you are done reading this, you will be too.
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Schinkel was born in a Germany that was shaped by David and Friedrich Gilly and Karl Gotthard Langhans. They were inspired by the French revolutionaries and thinkers. Friedrich Gilly looked up to Ledoux, while Gotthard was greatly influenced by the works of Durand (previous article). The Langhans Brandenburg Gate stands as a testimony of the influence of French ideals and architecture in redefining that of Germany. Together, Langhans and the Gillys shaped the architectural taste of Prussia and its nationalism. It also shaped the career of one of its brightest architects- Karl Friedrich Schinkel.
In the early 19th Century, Schinkel toured Rome and Sicily to understand the art and architecture of ancient and antiquity. Later, in Berlin, he started as a painter and continued at it for a few years. After attending the Berlin Art Exhibition in 1810, he accepted that he would not be able to reach such mastery in painting. As an alternative, he started looking for work in other fields and turned to architecture. A few years later, he got the chance to design the backdrop for Wolfang Amadeus Mozart’s (the Mozart) opera The Magic Flute. His star-spangled design was widely acclaimed and is used by productions even to this day.
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The King of Prussia commissioned Schinkel to construct Neue Wache, the new guardhouse for the Royal Palace. This was Schinkel’s first major architectural commission in Berlin. The building is primarily plain, with a Doric portico and four massive risalits, where two wings meet at right-angles, at its four corners. The statuary in
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