The Wanderer

Author(s): Emma Letizia Jones

Source: AA Files, No. 72 (2016), pp. 152-160
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture
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The Wanderer
Emma Letizia Jones

Karl Friedrich Schinkel, view of Capri,

design for wall painting, Schloss Glienicke, 1824

Berlin State Museums

bpk / Kupferstichkabinett, smb

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In 1834 the Prussian painter Eduard Gaertner climbed with his

in a letter to his wife that the rows of new townhouses were ov

'drafting machine' (most likely a kind of camera obscura) to one of

ornamented and 'made to look attractive by all sorts of pec

the highest rooftops in Berlin, hoping to capture a view of the city in

forms'.2 But the inside of Nash's own 'princely' house was an

360 degrees. The rooftop he chose belonged to Karl Friedrich Schin-

matter entirely. Here, he was impressed by the copies of paintin

kels newly completed Friedrichswerder church, whose two slender

and classical statues, the 'beautiful imitation green porphyry

gothic revival brick towers rose from the west bank of the Kupfergra-

'excellent imitation wood in the doors'.3 Later he described in detail

ben canal, across the water from the Royal Palace and just south of

the contents of all the rooms at Nash's Brighton Pavilion4 and made

the city's main processional route, Unter den Linden. The view from

the church would become the basis for his six-panel Panorama von

careful notes on the objects in Robert Adam's Lansdowne House;

which he would put to good use on his return, designing furni-

Berlin.1 At the time Gaertner made this painting he was already well

ture for Prince Carl that mimicked the details of Adam's 'Etruscan

known for his vedute (urban scenes) in which he captured Bieder-

chair'.5 From London, Schinkel also sourced carpets and fireplaces

meier Berlin life in his signature clean, meticulous style. The com-

for use in the refurbishment of Prince Carl's Berlin Palace on Wil-

pleted Panorama von Berlin , widely acknowledged to be his greatest

work, also shows his mastery over a genre that he had been drawn

Klosterstrasse workshop of Carl Gropius (theatre inspector to the

helmplatz (on which he was working at the time, alongside the

renovation of Schloss Glienicke).6 And though he found 'much
that is useless'7 in the external appearance of John Soane's Bank of
England, he was utterly captivated by the interior spectacle of
Soane's own house, even if he was given the guided tour by the

Royal Court).

housekeeper rather than the architect himself. (It had been a similar

to from the days of his apprenticeship, when, alongside many of

the city's struggling young artists, he trained as a set painter in the

In jedem Winkel steht ein Schinkel , the Berlin saying goes (its

story the week before, when 'Mrs Nash received us and other gentle-

sing-song assonance is lost in translation: 'in every corner stands a

Schinkel'). The same applies to Gaertner's panoramic scene, where

men and ladies ... [but] Mr Nash was not there.')8 Schinkel declared
Soane's manipulation and expansion of the perceived dimensions

we see, from left to right, in the first three panels looking towards

of the small space 'ingenious', exclaiming delightedly: 'everywhere,

the south: Schinkel's Neue Wache (Royal Guardhouse, 1818), Packhof complex (1832, slightly hidden behind the Zeughaus), Schloss-

little deceptions'.9

brcke (1823, also partly concealed) and Dom am Lustgarten,

renovated with an Ionic portico (1822); and, from left to right in the

second three panels looking north: the Bauakademie (1836), Kreuzberg War Memorial (1820) and Schauspielhaus (1823). Occupying the
crowning position in the third panel is Schinkel's Altes Museum

(opened 1830), which is shown just above the one incomplete turret of the church (left unbuilt in the painting, so as not to block
the spectator's line of sight). When viewed together, these projects
form an entire constellation of institutional monuments stretching

across an urban landscape that in many ways represents Schinkel's

These deceptions were famously engineered largely through

Soane's careful placement of mirrors, both convex and flat,
throughout the interior of his home. Reflecting the spaces back
on themselves, the mirrors disoriented visitors whilst simultaneously opening up new sightlines along their path - as depicted in
a watercolour by Joseph Gandy which records the view of the
upstairs south drawing room, the final stop on a tour of the house.

At the time of Schinkel's visit, guests accessed this room through

the double doors connecting it to the room behind.10 These doors
faced the window wall, with its view out to Lincoln's Inn Fields,
but Soane was careful to offset the doors from the windows. So,

great contribution to the image of the city: an image through which

on entering the room, instead of looking straight out towards the

Berliners recognised - and continue to recognise - themselves.

Quite apart from its technical prowess, however, Gaertner's

square, Schinkel would have been confronted with a view of himself

panorama is also a striking visual record of the development of

Berlin during the decades immediately following the Napoleonic

reflected in the glass, as if framed through a rear window, he would

wars. More particularly, it is a showcase for all of Schinkel's central

adjacent room, with its architectural pasticcio: 'a precarious tower

of ancient and modern fragments' that Schinkel likened to a cemetery.11 On entering the room, then, what Soane's guests saw was

Berlin projects. Consistent with the characteristic containment of

a panorama, Gaertner imagines the celebrated architect's urban

reflected in a mirror placed between the openings. Furthermore,

have caught a glimpse of the small inner courtyard at the rear of the

monuments collected, surveyed and displayed as if they were

objects arranged in a room. Schinkel's own interiors - executed
mainly for members of the royal family and their relatives over
a 20-year period between 1809 and 1829 - were likewise masterful repositories of illusion, a parallel constellation to the typically

not the grand view through the windows ahead, but rather the relics

restrained classicism of his facades. From the remnants that sur-

his future projects, represented by the world outside, still lay ahead,

of architecture reflected in the mirror behind them. It was no great

stretch for the romantic mind to conceive of this as a metaphor:

examples from the history of architecture were piled high at the
architect's back, either weighing him down or urging him on, while

justthat
out of sight and out of reach.
vive - drawings, paintings, odd pieces of furniture - it is clear

Schinkel developed the architectural interior as a privileged

site
Schinkel's
positive response to the 'little deceptions' of the English interiors was in line with his repeated manipulation of a conof spatial and perceptual experimentation, a space of difference,
trast between sober exterior and theatrical interior. For him, if the
separation and exception.
Schinkel's love of sophistry and the deceptive possibilities
public of
face of a building was suitably restrained, then the interior
an internalised architecture was clearly evident on his first visit
couldtobe the space of exception and the realm of effects - a dualBritain in 1826, when he was as seduced by the lavish trickery
theallowed him to operate both as fantasist and pragmatist,
ityofthat
interiors he saw as he was offended by the decadence andreconciling
decepwhat Nikolaus Pevsner once termed the 'two sides'
toat
histhe
character.12 Yet even before his British tour, Schinkel, like
tion of their facades. In his travel diary he recorded his horror
Soane, had frequently installed mirrors in his interiors in order to
gaucheness of John Nash's Regent's Park terraces, and complained
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manipulate the dimensions of interior space as perceived by the

moving eye. For example, between 1824 and 1826, when he refurbished the Crown Prince's quarters at the Royal Palace on Spree
Island, he placed mirrors against the windows of the tea-room,
angled so as to reflect the urban scene obliquely (a setting that also

the building, already modified to Schinkel's design. The top section, taken directly through the central cubic volume of the plan,

illustrates a set of doors on both the garden and the river-facing

sides. This was a relic of the old structure, which had featured

a main entrance in the centre of the composition on the garden

facade. Schinkel seems to have intended, at first, to preserve this

included his own Altes Museum, opposite). Similarly, in the Berlin palace of Prince Albrecht, Schinkel designed a circular salon

entrance, and it is not clear exactly when he changed his mind.15 Yet

with curved mirrors facing the windows that threw fractured views

an unsigned and undated sheet in the Persius archive clearly shows

from outside back into the room, while in the ballroom he made

a ground-floor plan in which this opening has been filled in, hastily

use of the mise-en-abyme - the effect of placing two mirrors oppo-

scribbled in pencil. Some time between the drawing of the sections

site each other to reflect infinite views of a scene - to manipulate

and the start of construction, the decision was made to wall up the

scale and depth. The same device was also deployed in the Berlin

axial garden entrance and to give the space over instead to a cen-

palace of Prince August. In both spaces, the use of mirrors not only

trally located fireplace, with a mirror above.16

fractured the static architectural and landscape views in and out,

but also manipulated the reflection of the moving bodies of the

In the original building, then, the visitor would have entered

centrally from the garden and immediately been presented with
views of the Havel ahead. But in the new plan the architecture
obstructs this privileged outlook. The visitor, now approaching

revellers inside.

Further afield in Potsdam, a favourite summer retreat of

the Prussian princes, Schinkel also had a mirror installed into from one of the new entrances in the side wings, is forced to choose
a small casino or pleasure pavilion that he was renovating at the
which way to turn on reaching the central room: towards the lake,
or towards the mirrored
edge of the grounds of
Schloss Glienicke.13 Here

reflection of the lake - the

the mirror sits above a

of the central of three

choice is no longer clear.

By framing a picture of
the site and bringing it

rooms arranged in a stag-

into the interior, the mir-

gered row, opposite a set

ror wall confuses the rep-

fireplace on the rear wall

of doors that lead onto a

resentational hierarchy

raised terrace overlook-

by which the framed pic-

ing the River Havel. How-

ture is subordinate to the

ever, it is not this view

'real thing'.
On the other side of

that is privileged by the

architecture, but rather

the mirror, facing the gar-

its representation. The

den, a Pompeiian-style

visitor, after roving about

fresco was introduced.

the gardens, enters the

pavilion obliquely from

Painted over this now

blind wall, the fresco

one of the multiple

becomes a frustrating

entry points that perforate the otherwise rigid block. Turningtease.

to For rather than being able to walk directly through the buildencounter the strategically located mirror, they see themselves
ing and see the actual view, as was the case prior to the pavilion's
and the landscape behind them suspended in the glass, in perrenovation, the visitor is confronted with an imaginary view from
fect alignment with the central axis of the building. But as in
antiquity. Placed directly in front of this framed recollection was
Soane's upstairs drawing room, the scene dissolves the moment
a new stone 'lookout' bench, facing back toward the villa. Both
they move.
bench and fresco behave as blocking devices. Rather than being
able to contemplate a river landscape, visitors are forced to turn
Schinkel used a grey wash to habitually represent the location
of mirrors in his wall elevations, but in his coloured elevation of
their backs on the Havel and sit amongst the collection of fragthe mantelpiece mirror at Glienicke he actually painted in the view,

ments and souvenirs from Prince Carl's Italian travels strewn about

clearly wishing to make explicit what would be seen in the glass.

This reflection, however, is not rendered accurately, as the depth

flates with that of nineteenth-century Prussia, byway of picturesque

and detail of the room is not shown (and neither is the person look-

ing into it). Because of this omission, the mirror framing the blue
sky and distant riverbank seems at first to be a window; and in fact,
before Schinkel introduced this reflected scene,

there was originally an opening here. We can

actually trace how it came to disappear through
a series of rough sketches preserved by Ludwig

the garden: in the mind's eye a landscape of Italian antiquity conEngland. This highly associative landscape is the Janus face to the
reflected landscape on the other side of the wall. The blocking of
the garden facade not only disperses the visitor's line of approach
to the pavilion, but also redirects their gaze to

Above: Karl Friedrich Schinkel,

what lies behind them on both sides of the wall.

design for wall painting, south room,

In this
Schloss Glienicke, 1825
Right: Karl Friedrich Schinkel,

Persius, the project architect charged with the

execution of the construction.14 For example,

design for wall painting, middle

Schloss Glienicke, 1825

an early drawing shows two cross-sections of

bpk / Kupferstichkabinett, smb

Berlin State Museums

sense, the casino is an unexpected view-

ing machine, designed to present us with two

salon,
landscapes, back-to-back.
Alongside mirrors augmenting spatial
distortions, Schinkel's Biedermeier interiors
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Ludwig August Most,

View of Berlin from the Roof of the Museum, 1830

National Museum, Pozna

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Karl Friedrich Schinkel,

Allegory ofBeuth, Riding Pegasus
over an Industrial Landscape, 1837
Berlin State Museums

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display novel manipulations of scale, as landscapes both civic and

panorama of Berlin from the tower of the Rotes Rathaus. Meyden-

pastoral were painstakingly reproduced in miniature in paintings,

wallpapers and on pottery and furniture. In the case of the Glienicke estate, this merging of real topographies with imagined land-

bauer was a pioneer in the use of early photographic technology to

survey buildings and map terrains. He also used the photographic

image to document important buildings for posterity, enabling

scapes of travel and antiquity is aptly illustrated by the lineage of a

them to be reconstructed if ever they were destroyed. 19 To achieve

painting commissioned from the artist Julius Schoppe just after the

this he developed a photogrammetric camera that combined the

completion of the casino. Prince Carl wanted Schoppe's painting,

modelled on a sketch produced by Schinkel during his 1824 Italian

features of a commercial camera with a wide-angle lens suitable for

journey, to be made into a wallpaper panorama in the upper hallway

frame for defining the picture plane, while spirit levels and a tripod

of the west wing of the soon-to-be renovated Schloss Glienicke.17

Though it was perhaps wishful thinking to compare views of the

were used to adjust the camera's vertical and horizontal position.

From his photographs alone, Meydenbauer could plot the extent of

Gulf of Naples with the vista of the damp, swampy Havel, Schinkel's

a building in plan and obtain its height without the need for direct

capturing urban scenes. It had built-in tools such as a mechanical

and Schoppe's design for the wallpaper demonstrates how the real

surveying, relying instead on two known systems of spatial inter-

and the imagined scene were fused into reproductions to be kept as

polation. The first worked backwards from the perspectivai image

in the photograph, using the rules of projective geometry to plot
the vanishing points and a series of vertical points projected onto
a ground plane, which were then intersected with compass lines
to determine the object's orthographic shape. The second system,
often used in surveying,
posited that the location
of any point on the represented object could be
plotted using the inter-

souvenirs, aids for recollection interred in the private interior.

A number of examples are still to be found in Schloss Glienicke. In the upstairs rooms are two side tables with inlaid porcelain painted landscapes attributed to Schinkel. One features all
of his best-known Ber-

lin monuments, includ-

ing the Altes Museum,

Kreuzberg monument,
Friedrichswerder church,

section of lines drawn

Schauspielhaus and Neue

Wache. The other depicts

from markers represent-

a view of the Glienicke

ing two (or more) dif-

estate - not just any view,

ferent camera positions

however, but the reverse

relative to it. In this way,

of the prospect from the

the location of a fixed

casino terrace, looking

point could be deter-

back at the pavilion from

mined from two or more

the opposite bank of

concurrent photographs.
Methods such as

the river.

Such ideal, clean

these illustrate the poten-

toral Potsdam and its

tial of the still image to

be not just a represen-

counterpoint, urban Ber-

tational device but a

images - of both the pas-

generator
a new order in the city. This order was defin
lin - were replicated in numerous household objects during
this of
era,

impersonal
techniques of mathematical surveying, of c
their popularity fuelled not just by their obvious theatrical
delights

it mass-producwas also influenced by the individual surveying the scen

but also by the social transformations that made their

particular
point of view - the position of Meydenbauer's ca
tion possible. For the bourgeoisie, displaying these
reproductions
in the as
case
of Gaertner, the focus of the painter's eye.20 A
inside their homes allowed them to imagine themselves
masters
the minute accuracy of its detail, Gaertner's pan
of the new, enlightened urbs they represented. 'The despite
private individ-

highly
selective:
ual ... expects the interior to keep him in his illusions'
was how
Wal- it constructed its view to take in some m

rather than
ter Benjamin would later sum up that period of development,
whenothers, privileging Schinkel's projects in

A more
true-to-life
scene might have shown the mark
ideal images served to pacify and distract from the grim
realities
of

and
cluttering the unpaved streets or the post
Berlin's rapid industrialisation (between 1810 and 1840
therubbish
city's pop-

ulation more than doubled; and between 1830 and 1847

ing haphazardly
four major to the facades of buildings.21 But Gaer
glossed over 'undesirable' neighbourhoods, and present

workers' uprisings would occur).18

vision
monuments connected both visually and
In Gaertner's orderly Panorama von Berlin the only
hint of
of classical
this

cally across
a network of orderly, untrammelled streets an
unchecked development is a glimpse of the iron foundry
smokeLimitations
early photographic technology meant that t
stacks for the expanding locomotive industry in the
north ofin
the
of produced
omission practised by Gaertner were not so easy to
city, which are just visible on the horizon. But anacts
image
in Meydenbauer's photographic Berlin pa
just one generation later, in 1868, shows a city
Foldout: Eduard Gaertner,
rama, which revealed a city radically tra
radically transformed. Here, Gaertner's camPanorama of Berlin, 1834
formed in the intervening 30 years - a c
era obscura was replaced by the camera of the
Photo Jrg P Anders
now ringed by industry on a colossal sca
architect and surveyor Albrecht Meydenbauer,
Property of the House of Hohenzollern,
HRH Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia / spsg
In Meydenbauer's photographs there is no
who shot the first 360-degree photographic
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hierarchy to the jumble of rooftops - the reach of Berlin already

Pomerania who had studied, like Gaertner, at the Berlin Academy

of Arts. Though he did not specialise in vedute , Most's urban and
In light of the speed of these developments, the moment
of
rural landscapes
possess a similar quality of elaborate, almost

seems indeterminable.

SchinkePs emergence is curiously timely, coinciding with a moment

exaggerated reality. In transmitting a kind of objective, analytical
of calm between the upheavals of the Napoleonic wars and thedistance
'rich from its subjects, this style also proved to be particularly
and muddy torrent' of Germany's mass industrialisation.22 Berlin's
useful in reconstructions and, like Meydenbauer's photographs,

population, particularly its middle classes, seemed to revelMost's

in this
paintings were used after the Second World War to aid in the
moment of suspension, enjoying newfound individual freedoms
rebuilding of certain structures, not least the Ducal Castle in Most's
and prosperity while remaining collectively bound to a visionbirthplace,
of the Szczecin. In his Blick auf Berlin vom Dach des Museum ,

Prussian state. Emblematic of these dualities is a Schinkel 1830,

painting
Most offers an elevated view of Berlin, foregrounded by the
of 1837, which he dedicated to his friend Peter Beuth, directorrooftop
of the
of the Altes Museum and by various promenading Berlin-

Prussian department of trade and manufacturing. Part private

ers.joke,
Like Meydenbauer, and like a similar set of figures in Gaert-

part tribute, the painting - titled Allegorie auf Beuth, denner's

Pegasus
panorama (which also includes the artist himself, his wife and
ber einer Industriestadt reitend {Allegory of Beuth , Riding children,
PegasusSchinkel, Beuth and even Alexander von Humboldt), this
over an Industrial Town ) - shows a naked androgynous figureviewing
astride
public are all surveyors, taking the image of the city and
it within a newly ordered system, just as the visitor
the white winged horse of Greek mythology, riding over thereconstructing
town's

to the
Glienicke pavilion does with the pastoral landscape. All of
belching chimney-stacks, heading towards a distant mythic
Mediterranean landscape. Through the smoke, front and centre,
these
wesurveyors,
are
with their backs to us, are acutely aware (as are we)
their place within the panorama of the city. Yet in their removal
allowed a furtive keyhole glimpse into a corner of Beuth'sofoffice,
presumably the very interior from which the directives shaping
from the
this
scene, as they contemplate the environment from Schinnew city were to emanate. This scene is certainly not the placid
kel'sand
raised viewing platforms, they are also given to understand
ordered urbs depicted by Gaertner, but an agglomeration thattheir
could
separation from it. Schinkel's interventions therefore insert

be read equally as majestic or terrifying, seemingly a vision

themselves
of aninto the city; at the same time, they behave as an apparaurban landscape yet to come, and one that reconciles the two
tus togreat
construct new images of that city.
And
so even if the urban interior did not feature in Gaertner's
themes of modernist theology: Utopian idealism coupled with
the
chosen genre, the veduta , his panorama already presents Berlin as
redemptive forces of technology. Accordingly, Beuth's city incorpo-

rates both poetry and pragmatism, antique mythology andone

future
vast interior in which all the objects of the city are collected and
vision. And the figure on the horse, riding above it all, is theredisplayed:
master
an interior in which images, impressions and conflaof this mechanical creation.

tions of history, imagination and desire all come together to form a

new landscape whose intrinsic value derives from the very effect of
The privileged vista of the bourgeois Berliner, torn between
presentation. That Schinkel presented his own landscapes with a
the impulse to maintain a separation from the city and the its
desire
similar theatrical flair was not so surprising, given his work prior to
to play a guiding role in its transformation, is famously captured
in another of Schinkel's drawings, which frames the view of Berlin
becoming an architect. For in 1807, aged 26, after returning from his

as seen through the double-height colonnade in front of histravels

Altes in Italy, Schinkel had been unable to find any architectural
commissions
- Berlin was under sanction and occupied by NapoMuseum. The extreme oblique perspective of the composition
leon's troops - and so he began instead to collaborate with a wellangled towards the twin towers of Schinkel's own Friedrichswerder
known
church in the distance - details the exact opposing view to the
one theatrical impresario, Wilhelm Gropius. Father of Schinkel's
friend
in Gaertner's panorama, which was painted from the roof of
the Carl Gropius (Gaertner's future instructor in the painting of
stage sets), the elder Gropius owned a mask factory and mechanichurch looking back at the museum. And as with his church, Schinkel was concerned that the roof of his museum should be accessible
cal puppet theatre. Soon Schinkel was involved with the design of
numerous backdrops, in addition to assisting with the creation of
to visitors - a privilege which was itself captured in another paintfestive window displays for shops, a Gropius speciality.
ing from the same period by Ludwig Most, an artist from Western
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During this time Schinkel unveiled his own ongoing experimechanisms of the illusion the viewers are observing (they ima
ments with 'deceptive illusory images'23 in an upstairs room the
at 22atmosphere occurs spontaneously, even as they are aware th

Breitestrasse, where he lodged with two of Gropius's sons, and then

is deliberately manipulated). For this effect to work, they must
later in a larger space at 16 Spittelmarkt, and even, as his ambitions
nalise certain impressions, then project their own associations b
grew, at the nearby royal stables. One such show presented a numonto the image, 'completing' the work through their own respo

ber of architectural monuments from all over the world compressed

Or as Schinkel himself would write, 'All art must be viewed wi

onto a single, illuminated picture plane, while others re-enacted

certain disposition.'27
recent dramatic events from the Napoleonic campaign, such asFrom two-dimensional pictures and backdrops, Schinkel w

The Fire of Moscow, which Schinkel staged in 1812. Here, audiences

eventually turn his attention to ways of manufacturing Stimm
experienced a kind of simulated terror, as the features of the image
through the three-dimensional display of architecture. In

appeared to move under illumination, exposing the lick of a flame

respects the consummate result of these experiments - the r

over the city or crowds of people apparently surging over a bridge

tory of a number of his more unusual optical manipulations - i

in the foreground. These effects were achieved by painting onto

rotunda at the very centre of his Altes Museum, a space physic
a transparent material using distemper, which was then lit inconnected
difto the galleries that surround it, and at the centre o

fering intensities from behind to create the necessary illusion.

museum's plan, yet also independent, disconnected from th
One spectator described the feeling of being 'pulled in' to thecirculation
cenroute. The journey to this heart of Stimmung i

tre of the image, as if the picture plane had suddenly developed

depicted in the three famous engraved perspectives of the
Museum published in Schinkel's Sammlung- a set of drawing
These works, along with Schinkel's association with a 'commerreveals an almost ceremonial procession that begins on Unt
cial' family of entrepreneurs such as the Gropiuses, were dismissed
Linden, where the entire museum is presented obliquely fro
a volumetric depth.24

by some of his colleagues and critics, who found it hard to reconcile

far side of the Schlossbrcke; and then moves inside the raised

the image of the educated architect with that of a purveyor of poputibule, from where the viewer looks back at the framed view o

lar illusion.25 Schinkel himself had no such qualms - the shows

he and finally ends in the circular display hall of the rotunda
city;
staged supported him financially for ten years, helped him furtherIn both the drawing of the rotunda and in the actual rotund

his graphic and painterly skills, and eventually even brought the
him floor pattern - rather than the commonly photographed

his first royal commission in 1810: an interior for Queen Luise's -bedthat is revealed to be the strongest aspect of the composition
chamber, no less, granted after the queen herself had attended one
particular, its concentric rings of dark inlaid stone appear to g

of his optical performances. It was also through his light shows and,
exponentially out towards the edge of the space along with the

later, his set designs for the royal opera, that Schinkel became
an intersecting them, creating the perception of an extr
lines

expert in manufacturing Stimmung , which has no one-to-one Engexaggerated room depth. At first this seems merely a conse

lish translation but is usually defined as 'mood', 'atmosphere'

ofor
its perspective, with the vanishing point of the drawing dic
'ambiance'. For Schinkel, an image transmitting Stimmung could
ing that this is how the lines must appear. But a glance at
provoke a sense of spatial or temporal dislocation,26 which in kel's
turn floor plan of the same space reveals that the offset di

created in the viewer an emotive - if heavily manipulated - response.

of the inlaid rings does indeed increase incrementally (mir

And so just as the highly associative landscape at Schloss Glienicke,

the reflected ceiling plan showing the division of the coffers i
experienced through its mirrored interior, becomes an important
cupola above), as if they had been thrown outwards by a centri

agent in recollecting landscapes past, present and imagined,force

the operating at the centre of the floor. When one is physicall
picture emitting Stimmung conflates history,
sent in the space something even more discon
Albrecht Meyenbauer,
imagination and desire. The manner of its prescerting happens. Viewed from the edge of th
photographie panorama of Berlin, 1868
entation, too, engenders a sense of displaceroom, the rotunda seems a pleasant, even quit
Brandenburg State Office
ment that might evoke a simulated reality, but
for

at the same time also makes apparent all the

the Preservation of Historical Monuments

and Archaeological Museum

ordinary circular hall, but if the visitor chooses

to cross the floor and stand in the very middle

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of the space, the offset rings of the floor suddenly appear to 'correct'

of spatial displacement caused by the effect of Stimmung is predi-

themselves and to converge into a square grid of equidistant pro-

cated not on the body's immersion within a simulated scene, but

portions, which in turn has the effect of making the floor seem to

rather on its emersion or expulsion from it. The visitor, in this sense,

tilt up into a flattened canvas. At the same time, and again only from

is first enveloped and then pushed away from the space as the floor

the central standpoint, the walls appear to be pulling upwards and

recedes then rises up like a tide - which induces the light-headedness. What is therefore most striking about the rotunda is this
overlap between the sensory,
spatial experience of the build-

inwards, conspiring to reduce everything to a single pictorial plane,

the force of which is to induce an

instant feeling of vertigo as the

visitor feels themselves plunging through the floor. The only

ing and its two-dimensional surface treatment. Of course, all of

remedy is to step away from the

this is quite deliberate, and in

centre, which immediately has

order to stimulate what Schin-

the effect of pulling the body out

kel referred to as the essential

of a distorted drawing and back

aspect of 'tension' ( Spannung )

into a more reassuringly conven-

in a work of art, he orchestrates

tional piece of architecture.

a transition from being within

architecture to the experience

Schinkel, of course, was no

stranger to the complexities of

the kind of corrective perspec-

of being without.30 One moment

you feel yourself to be actively

engaged in the construction of

tive he used in the decoration

your
surroundings
- not least by your movement through the buildof the rotunda floor, and interestingly the object with
which
he
ing a
- the
next, you are thrown back into the role of mere spectator,
displayed his confidence with these techniques was again
panoperceiving
rama, painted for the Berlin Opera House over a period
of fourthe building's flattened surfaces from a position seemingly, beyond
months when he was 27 years old. The Panorama von Palermo
which them.

is somehow impossible to describe these effects without

opened to rave reviews on 30 August 1808, was housed in It
a temporecourse
rary wooden rotunda constructed on the city's Opernplatz,
just to
in the experiences of the user, so that a second-person
narrative ('at one moment you feel this', 'at another moment you
front of St Hedwig's church. At 4.5m high and 27m in circumference
feel in
that')
becomes essential to the articulation of the architecture.
the panorama was modest compared to similar attractions
Lon-

These oscillations are also paralleled by the seemingly irreconcildon and Paris, yet large enough to achieve a sufficiently all-encom-

passing effect. Schinkel paid

able conflict between pictorial

for the structure out of his own

representation (the image of

pocket, then sold the entire work

it throughout Germany (its

architecture) and three-dimensional space (architecture experienced empirically) - a paradox

final whereabouts went undocu-

that Schinkel was all too aware

mented, but it was rumoured to

of, and continued to grapple

with throughout his career.
That is, to construct one's sur-

to Wilhelm Gropius, who toured

have been bought by a wealthy

Italian for the interior of his

roundings as an image pre-

villa in Naples).29 Because the

panorama was exhibited in a
circular space, its design had to

cludes the possibility of true

participation, yet being fully

account for the distortions that

immersed in the architecture

occur when sketches made on a

also denies a comprehension of

flat plane are applied to a cylin-

the broader view. In this respect,

drical surface. As can be seen in

the rotunda is a stage on which

this conundrum plays itself

Schinkel's setup drawing, which

out asthe
an allegory for the uncertain relationship of the Biedermeier
may have been used for the attraction's advertising pamphlet,
citizen to the encroaching metropolis, the museum's public inteoutlines of the buildings have to be shown curved when depicted
rior allowing the enacting, as a kind of ritual, of the conflicting
on a flat surface so that they will be 'corrected' and appear orthogonal when seen in the round. The black circle at the centre of the dia-

desires of immersion within, and removal from, the tumult of the

gram represents the raised viewing platform, accessed from below,modern city.31
upon which visitors would stand to view the immersive show.

Schinkel was very obviously aware of the importance of the

rotunda, not just within his own body of work, but for architecture
Standing in the middle of the Altes Museum rotunda, the viewer

is offered an experience seemingly akin to that of being placedasina whole, and would often refer to it rather immodestly as a kind
of 'pantheon', even if the aim of this Altes Museum gallery was not
the centre of one of these urban panoramas, even if there are two
to transport the visitor towards some higher, celestial realm, but to
important differences: firstly, what is being displayed in the rotunda

insist on the corporeal, and more grounded, qualities of the archiis not a painting of a landscape but the building itself, along with its
tecture itself - something advertised by the fact that it is not a roof
array of sculptures, and secondly, unlike the panorama, this sense
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or symbolic oculus that sells the space but a decorated floor.32 And if

Palermo reconstructed at a larger scale, with a few alterations made

the Pantheon in Rome enabled humans to grasp, for the first time,

to its view. Though Schinkel would not live to make these changes,

the concept of interior architectural space, then SchinkePs version

Gropius began to make arrangements for the work to be executed to

allowed them to become complicit and implicit in its very con-

SchinkePs original sketch. It was finally displayed in 1844, measur-

struction.33 For it is only the visitor, as the agent operating within

ing over 20m in diameter.35 The prospect of an even more ambitious

certain predetermined parameters, who can animate the spatial

work - this time, a 3om-diameter panorama, presenting all of the

game inside the rotunda. Without this required human act of com-

world's greatest monuments, shown in their respective contexts, but

munion, the architectural object remains latent, inanimate, and the

combined within a single tableau - was also raised by Schinkel in the

architect's work remains incomplete.34

last months of his life, but this project was to remain unrealised.36

This is not to say, of course, that the interior was for Schinkel a

There is an often repeated anecdote about the origins of Schin-

space defined solely by an emotive and incalculable 'personal experience' - or, alternatively, by the affects of its unquantifiable and
destabilising illusions. His architecture remained firmly embedded

kePs trajectory into architecture, in which it is said that after having

in the nineteenth century, to the extent that it was always designed

diately resolved to give up painting for building, realising that his

encountered Caspar David Friedrich's 1818 painting, Der Wanderer

ber dem Nebelmeer ( The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog), he imme-

to assert the importance of the

own efforts on the canvas could

fixed monumental edifice as an

autonomous entity within the city.

never possibly match the mastery

of Friedrich. The story is almost

To a large extent, then, the idea

certainly apocryphal, but its retell-

of the interior persists here in the

ing is perhaps simply an indicator

classical sense of a clearly defined

of the continuing efforts to try and

space understood through its

explain precisely what drove Schin-

removal from, and negation of, the

kel, a man whose private char-

outside world. And yet, within this

removal there is nonetheless the

acter is still notoriously hard to

pin down, despite the vast reposi-

beginnings of a subtle and steady

tory of literature dealing with his

shift in a reading of space that goes

life's work. Friedrich's painting

beyond the familiar dualisms of

object and subject, inside and outside, contained and unbound, and

famously shows a man standing on

instead, by means of framing and

display, looks to draw what is exter-

landscape. Because he stands with

his back to us, we cannot tell for

nal into a new logic of its own mak-

sure whether this man is embold-

ing. In seeking to integrate and

ened by the elevated scene in front

the edge of a precipice, gazing out

over a craggy and misty mountain

restructure the world beyond, the

of him or diminished by it, but

interior ceases to foster a retreat

from his confident stance it seems

from the city, and instead begins,

in a kind of reversal, to expand
across it, with the goal of even-

that he is asserting his own juris-

tually encompassing everything

within its limits.

diction over the surveyed landscape, holding it captive, as it were,

so that it might be remoulded

according to his own ideal. SchinkePs fabled affinity with

This, too, is the ultimate ambition that the panorama sought to Friedrich's painting tempts us to cast him, the emblematic architect
fulfil - an image that aspired to contain and display absolutely eve- of the nineteenth century, as the Wanderer, the emblematic artistic
rything, and which turned landscape (whether urban or rural) into subject of the nineteenth century. And as the Wanderer gazes, sura room. It was this novel shifting of scales that made the attraction veys and imagines, we could easily imagine him moved to proclaim,
so popular. But at the same time there was more to its appeal, for itwith astonishing hubris, the very same words we find in SchinkePs

was through the panorama that the urban citizen was first able to
diary entry for 24 May 1804, recounting his climb to the top of Mount
imagine and even experience new and ideal cities. As one such citiEtna: 'I believed the whole world below me could be grasped with
zen, Schinkel remained fascinated by panoramas his whole life. In
a single look, the distances seemed so small, the breadth of the sea
1840, while strolling in the Tiergarten just two days before he suf- to the shores of Africa, the expanse of southern Calabria, the island
fered the stroke that would eventually end his life, he even expresseditself; everything lay so clearly below me that I thought myself,

in comparison, almost larger:37

a desire to his friend Carl Gropius to have the original Panorama von

Karl Friedrich Schinkel,

engraved perspectives of the Altes Museum

approach, vestibule and rotunda
From Karl Friedrich Schinkel,
Collection of Architectural Designs, 1989

AA

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159

a fireplace could have been installed

elsewhere in the room, so we cannot

1. For a history of this painting see Birgit

Verwiebe, 'Erdenstaub und Himmelsdunst: Eduard Gaertner's Panoramen',

assume this was the only reason for

such a transformative act.

in Eduard Gaertner 1801-1877 (Berlin:

Stiftung Stadtsmuseum Berlin, 2001),

pp 97-111.

2. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Reise nach

Marsha Morton, op cit, pp 427-28, and

surface.' Pimlott saw the painted

Irmgard Wirth, Berliner Biedermeier

delineation of the surfaces in

(Berlin: Rembrandt Verlag, 1972), p 27.

the rotunda as developing its

22. Nikolaus Pevsner, op cit , p 95.

17. See Helmut Brsch-Supan, BildErfindungen (Munich: Deutscher

Kunstverlag, 2007), p 465.
18. Walter Benjamin, Das Passagen-Werk ,
edited by R Tiedemann (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), p 52. See also

method directly from that of the

23. As described by Ludwig Catei in

'Darstellungen von merkwrdigen
Gegenden und berhmten Bauwerken
in der Art der Panoramen', Berlinische

drawings Schinkel made to describe

them, so that 'the picture is fused

Sachen, 29 December 1808. translation

with its actualisation', suggesting

an obvious overlap between the
technique of the drawing and the
technique of adornment of the space

France and Britain in 1826 , translated

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project ,

by Birgit Verwiebe in 'Schinkel's

itself. The net effect of Schinkel's

and edited by David Bindman and

Gottfried Riemann (New Haven, ct:

translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin

Perspective Optical Views: Art Between

Painting and Theatre', in Karl Friedrich

interior - and in this case Pimlott

Yale University Press, 1993), p 112.

Press, 1999), pp 8-9. This suitably direct

translation is taken from Jan Pieper,

Schinkel: The Drama of Architecture

was thus one of acute artificiality,

England, Schottland und Paris im Jahre

1826 , published in English as 'The

English Journey': Journal of a Visit to

McLaughlin (Cambridge, ma: Belknap

3. Ibid, P91.
4. Ibid, pp 108-10.

'The Machine in the Interior: Ludwig

und Poesie , exhibition catalogue,

Persius' Steam Engine House in

Babelsberg Park', Daidalos 53 (1994),

Kupferstichkabinett - Staatliche

p 104. On the growth of Berlin and the

Museen zu Berlin and the Kunsthalle

workers' uprisings, see Marsha

Morton, 'Johann Erdmann Hummel:
A Painter of Biedermeier Berlin', PhD

5. Karl Friedrich Schinkel: Geschichte

der Hypo-Kulturstiftung Munich

(Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2012),

footnote 363.

(Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1990), p 29.

25. In 1814 the Berlin poet Achim von

8. In addition to unceremonious tours

photographs of

in the houses of Nash and Soane,

emulate the drawing, it appears as

a picture of itself' Mark Pimlott,
Without and Within: Essays on Territory

and the Interior (Rotterdam: Episode

Books, 2007), p 20.
29. See Alfred von Wolzogen, Aus Schinkels
Nachlass, volu (Berlin: Knig, 1864),

Arnim wrote to the writer Clemens

Brentano about their mutual friend

19. The Meydenbauer

archive containing
c 20,000

for, 'as the actual space seems to

Bhnenentwrfe, Stage Designs, vol 1

pp 427-28.

7. Ibid, p 79.

makes particular note of the floor -

(Tbingen: Wasmuth, 1994), p 46.

24. Berlinische Nachrichten (also known as
Spenersche Zeitung), 29 December 1808.
English translation by Helmut
Brsch-Supan, Karl Friedrich Schinkel:

dissertation, New York University, 1989,

PP 252-53.

6. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, The English

Journey , op cit , p 116; editor's

Nachrichten von Staats- und gelehrten

P344.

30. See Goerd Peschken (ed) , Karl Friedrich

Schinkel: Das Architektonische Lehrbuch

Schinkel, expressing
concern that 'he

(Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1979

' ' - works hard, but

[2001]), p 115.

31. This is one of the essential arguments

of Tony Bennett in The Birth of the

Schinkel's diary records a visit on

Berlin ,1

Museum: History, Theory, Politics

31 May 1826 to Charles Cockerell 'who

was not at home'. By contrast, in
France Schinkel was received with great

and
lts

(London: Routledge, 1995), though

his analysis is focused more on the
organisation of social relations and
the role of the individual in society
through the museum than on the
organisation of the physical interior

ceremony. Ibid, pp 76, 89, 114.

9. Ibid, p 114.
10. As chronicled in John Summerson,
A New Description of Sir John Soane 's

of the museum itself as a model for

Museum (London: John Soane's

Museum, London, 1966), p 50. Gandy's

the city.

32. In a report detailing the museum's

display strategy to Frederick William

watercolour records the view from the

iii in 1825, Schinkel referred to the

standpoint from which today's visitors

enter the room.

rotunda as having 'das wahre Ansehn

von einem alten Pantheon'. See Alfred

11. Ibid, p 12. The pasticcio was removed

in 1896.

von Wolzogen, op cit , vol m, p 258.

He also referred to the rotunda as

12. Nikolaus Pevsner, 'Schinkel', riba

Journal, January 1952, p 89.

13. After the severe bombing damage to

the pavilion during the Second World
War, the entire casino, including
the mirror in its original location, was
reconstructed from the remaining

building shell using Schinkel's original

drawings and surviving photographs.
14. Historian Johannes Sievers reasonably
contends that the main part of the

design development process would

have been completed in the two

envi-

a pantheon twice in his initial report

on the project for the king in January

for which

1823; see Paul Ortwin Rave, Karl

the architect

Friedrich Schinkel: Lebenswerk, Berlin i

campaigned

(Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1981),

Freundschaftsbriefe,

tirelessly, was finally

established in 1885, and is

33. See Alois Riegl, Historical Grammar

two vols (Frankfurt: Eichborn,

currently in the hands of the

1998), p 702.

Brandenburgisches Landesamt
fr Denkmalpflege in Waldstadt.
One example of this photographic

months between when Prince Carl

preservation is the French Cathedral

in Berlin, reconstructed in 1977

purchased the estate at the beginning

largely on the basis of Meydenbauer 's

of May, and when Schinkel left for Italy

at the end of June 1824; though

P31.

of the Visual Arts (New York, ny: Zone

Books, 2004 [1908]), p 429.

26. In a letter of 1813 to August Wilhelm
This idea comes from Schinkel
Iffland, then director of the 34.
Berlin
himself, when he states: 'The work
Royal Theatre, Schinkel described
architecture should not stand
how his set designs aspired toofthe
a completed object, for the true
'most perfect physical illusionasof
act of imagination, once it has entered
spatial displacement {Ortsversetzung)
into the spirit of the articulated
by the means of art'. Reproduced
in Paul Ortwin Rave, Karl Friedrich
idea, must forever continue to shape

1882 photographs.
20. As early as the fifteenth century

Schinkel may have begun working on

the design before Carl's purchase was
finalised, as there is evidence he visited

Leon Battista Alberti used a similar

our work - leading it on toward the

Schinkel: Lebenswerk, Berlin 1 (Berlin:

method to chart the location of various

infinite.' Author's translation, from

Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1941 [1981]),
Hans Mackowsky (ed), Karl Friedrich
P84.

the site in early April. See Johannes

position in the city. With a tool of his

Sievers, Bauten fr den Prinzen Karl

own invention called the 'Horizon',

von Preussen (Berlin: Deutscher

Kunstverlag, 1942), pp 21, 86.
15. Ibid, p 88. Sievers ascertained that the
written notes on the drawing were in
Schinkel's hand. It seems likely that

any changes - especially a change as

major as this - would have been agreed
with Persius before Schinkel left

for Italy in late June, as after this time

he would not have had another

opportunity to oversee the design

before the majority of the work had

monuments of Rome from a single

Schinkel: Briefe, Tagebuecher, Gedanken

27. Friedmar Apel (ed) , Romantische
Kunstlehre: Bibliothek der Kunstliteratur
(Berlin: Propylen, 1922), p 104.
35. As recounted by Schinkel's
Alberti mapped the azimuthal position
4 (Frankfurt: Frlich and Kaufmann,
contemporary, the sculptor Johann
of the monuments using degrees and
1992), p 195. In German: 'Alles beim
Gottfried Schadow, in Kunstwerke
minutes. His technique is explained
Kunstwerk liegt darin, dass die Natur
und Kunstansichten (Berlin: Verlag
in Leon Battista Alberti, Descriptio
mit einer bestimmten Gesinnung
der Deckerschen, 1849), p 136.
Urbis Romae, c 1444, published in
gesehen wurde.'

English (alongside French and Italian) 28.

as 'Delineation of the City of Rome'
in Leo S Olschki (ed ),Albertiana vol vi,
(Paris: ditions de la Maison des
sciences de l'homme, 2003).
21. For a collection or eyewitness accounts
of the street conditions at this time see

On the connections between the

drawing of the rotunda and the

space itself see Mark Pimlott,

who writes of the engraving that

Friedrich Schinkel als Mensch und als

'The perspective of the interior is,

like its realisation, very delicate, with

Knstler (Dsseldorf: Werner, 1980

fine detail distributed over the entire

160

[1844]), P 420.

37. Georg Friedrich Koch (ed),

Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Lebenswerk,

been completed.
16. Ibid, p 89. Sievers gives the client
requirement for the fireplace as the
primary reason for the walling up
of the garden entrance; however

36. As recounted by Schinkel's friend,

Gustav Friedrich Waagen, in his
biography of the architect, Karl

Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Panorama of Palermo, 1808

Berlin State Museums

bpk / Kupferstichkabinett, smb

AA

vol ig: Die Reisen nach Italien 1803-

1805 und 1824 (Berlin: Deutscher

Kunstverlag, 2006), p 116. Author's
translation.

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