Schinkel, Karl Friedrich

Schinkel, Karl Friedrich (kärl frē`drĭkh shĭng`kəl), 1781–1841, German architect and painter. A member of the Berlin Academy, he became a professor in 1820. He also worked in lithography, etching, and illustration, but he attained real distinction as the official state architect of Prussia. Schinkel designed primarily in the neoclassical style, and his buildings have been consistently admired by later generations of architects for their rational organization of parts and geometrical clarity. Among the public buildings, castles, and country residences he designed are the Royal Guard House (1816–18), Royal Theater (1818–21), and Altes Museum (1822–30) in Berlin, and the Church of St. Nicholas (1829–37) and the Casino (1823) in Potsdam.

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Schinkel, Karl Friedrich

(born March 13, 1781, near Brandenburg, Brandenburg—died Oct. 9, 1841, Berlin) German architect and painter. As state architect of Prussia (from 1815), he executed many commissions for Frederick William III and other royal family members. He based his work on the revival of various historical styles. His mausoleum for Queen Louise (1810) and the brick and terra-cotta Werdersche Kirche, Berlin (1821–30), are among the earliest Gothic Revival designs in Europe. Other works include the Greek Revival Schauspielhaus (1818) and Altes Museum (1822–30), both in Berlin. In 1830 Schinkel became director of the Prussian Office of Public Works; his work as a city planner resulted in new boulevards and squares in Berlin. His Romantic-Classical creations in architecture, landscape painting, and other related arts such as stage sets and ironwork made him the leading arbiter of national aesthetic taste in his lifetime.

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Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 

Born Mar. 13, 1781, in Neuruppin, Brandenburg; died Oct. 9, 1841, in Berlin. German architect, painter, and graphic artist.

Schinkel studied at the Berlin Academy of Architecture under F. Gilly from 1798 to 1800. He worked mainly in Berlin. He initially concentrated on painting and the graphic arts, producing landscapes, panoramas, works of stage design, drawings, and lithographs in the romantic style.

The most outstanding representative of late classicism in 19th-century German architecture, Schinkel strove for laconically monumental composition. His works include the Neue Wache (now a monument to the victims of fascism and militarism), the Drama Theater, and the Altes Museum, all in Berlin. He also revealed romantic tendencies in his pseudo-Gothic buildings, including a chapel in Petergof (1831–33). In the last years of his life, renouncing the forms of classicism and the Gothic, he anticipated the principles of rationalism, for example, in the Academy of Architecture in Berlin (1831–35). He also was an architectural theorist.

WORKS

Grundlage der praktischen Baukunst, 4th ed., vols. 1–4. Berlin [1850].
Briefe, Tagebücher, Gedanken. Berlin [1922].

REFERENCES

Rave, P. O. Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Berlin [1948].
Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s Lebenswerk, vols. 1–7, 9–13. Berlin-Munich, 1939–69. (Publication in progress.)
Pundt, H. G. Schinkel’s Berlin. Cambridge, Mass., 1972.