0332 Frühe Schinkel-Monographien

Erzählungen über einen Künstler, der eigentlich ein gut ausgebildeter Baubeamter war

Abstract

This article examines German architectural monographs from the first half of the nineteenth century, using the example of the Prussian state architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel. While tributes to architects in the generation preceding Schinkel were typically limited to posthumous obituaries, by the time of the post-Napoleonic bourgeois transformation and nation formation after the Congress of Vienna, an architect like Schinkel could already expect extensive public recognition in journals during his lifetime, from both art historians and professional peers. These writings clearly also served as a means of assessing national cultural achievement in the representative sphere of the arts.

In the Vormärz period, motifs and narrative strategies drawn from Romantic literature were employed to promote a bourgeois ideal of the artist – an ideal that left a particularly strong mark on representations of Schinkel. The architect was already perceived during his lifetime more as an autonomous artist than as a Prussian civil servant, even though he ascended through all ranks of state service over several decades, ultimately becoming Oberlandesbaudirektor (Director of Public Works), a position from which he significantly shaped architecture throughout Prussia. Moreover, the early monographs on Schinkel were apparently imbued with historical-philosophical ideas concerning the transhistorical significance of his artistry.