The Marmorpalais (or Marble Palace) is a former royal residence in Potsdam, near Berlin in Germany, built on the grounds of the extensive Neuer Garten on the shores of the Heiliger See. The palace was commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia and designed in the early Neoclassical style by the architects Carl von Gontard and Carl Gotthard Langhans. Despite the name, brick is the main material. The palace remained in use by the Hohenzollern family until the early 20th century. It served as a military museum under communist rule, but has since been restored and is once again open to the public.
The Marmorpalais was reserved as a summer residence for the private use of the king, who had an artistic temperament.[1] With this new construction the nephew and successor of Frederick the Great dissociated himself from his childless uncle, whom he disliked and who favored earlier Baroque and Rococo forms.
The red brick Marmorpalais was originally a two-story square building. A fine view of the surrounding gardens and lakes is possible from a round pavilion on the flat roof of the cubical structure. Among other buildings, the little castle on the Pfaueninsel in the Havel river was constructed as an eye-catcher. A stairway and gallery accessed from the roof lead into the belvedere. Sculptured putti carrying a basket of fruit decorate the tip of the pavilion. The palace got its name from the grey and white Silesianmarble used for the decorative elements and partitioning structures.
Boat moorings could be approached by members of the court via a large terrace on the lake side of the palace, from which a stairway led down to the water. The king enjoyed extensive boat rides; even Charlottenburg Palace on the Spree river in Berlin could be reached by boat from here.
On the nearby lake shore is to be found the palace kitchen, which was built 1788-1790 by Langhans in the romantic style of a half-sunken classical temple ruin. An underground corridor provides a connection with an artificial grotto on the ground floor of the palace which served as a dining room in summertime.
The Marmorpalais is closely associated with Wilhelmine Enke (also spelled Encke), known popularly as "Beautiful Wilhelmine". As Frederick William II's mistress she had a great influence on the interior decoration of the palace; in 1796 she was made Countess Lichtenau.
After only a few years of use the palace was considered to be too small, and in 1797 construction started on two side wings designed by Michael Philipp Boumann. The architect connected these single-story, rectangular extensions to the right and left of the main entrance on the garden side of the palace with galleries in the form of quarter circles. The marble required to decorate these extensions was obtained by removing Frederick William's colonnades from Park Sanssouci and incorporating the pillars in the new building. This garden architecture designed by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff had originally stood on the main boulevard connecting Sanssouci Palace and the New Palace.
Historical map of the Potsdam surroundings, 1773. Heiliger See is the small lake in the NE quadrant
When the king died in November 1797, just the shell of the extensions had been completed. His son and successor, Frederick William III of Prussia, being uninterested in the project, only had the exterior finished.
This was still the situation in the 1830s when Prince Wilhelm (William), later Kaiser William I, and his spouse Augusta moved into the Marmorpalais while they awaited the completion of their new residence at Babelsberg Palace (1833-1835-1849). His brother, King Frederick William IV of Prussia, known as "a royal nostalgic romanticist", commissioned the architect Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse to complete the unfinished interior structure and fittings for the two side extensions between 1843 and 1848. Frescos with scenes from the Nibelungenlied were added to the outside to decorate the colonnade walls.
The building's technical and sanitary facilities were updated when Prince Wilhelm (William), later Kaiser Wilhelm II, and his family lived in the Marmorpalais from 1881 until he acceded to the throne in 1888.[1]
The last royal inhabitants of the Marmorpalais were Prince Wilhelm, eldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and his spouse Cecilie, who lived there for most of the year between 1904 and 1917, when they moved to nearby Cecilienhof Palace, built for them in the Neuer Garten.[1]
After the German monarchy came to an end in 1918, the Marmorpalais was placed under the control of the Prussian palaces administration in 1926 as a result of a settlement between the Free State of Prussia and the Hohenzollern family regarding property claims. It opened as a palace museum in 1932, with restored interior furnishings from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Toward the end of World War II the palace suffered serious damage when the north wing was hit by an incendiary bomb, and the main building by a grenade. Its condition further deteriorated after the war, over a period of time when the Soviet Red Army used it as a venue for an officers' mess, beginning in 1946.[2]
In 1961, the East German GDR Army Museum was established in the building. Inside, historic military equipment, uniforms and historic documents were on display and on the outside, cannon, a T-34 tank, a high-speed patrol boat, a MiG fighter airplane and a rocket were exhibited. The weapons were removed in 1989.
Starting in 1984, the National People's Army made plans for a fundamental restoration as the building continued to fall into disrepair. These plans came to fruition in 1988 and the work continued in late autumn 1990 after the return of the property to the palaces administration. Since 14 April 2006 all 40 rooms have been renovated and opened to the public. Repair of the exterior surface was completed in autumn 2009 after several years of restoration work.
Beginning in 1790, Carl Gotthard Langhans was commissioned with designing the interior rooms. Marble fireplaces and antique sculpture were a prominent feature in decisions about the decorative furnishings; these had been purchased in Italy for the Marmorpalais by the architect Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff. This Saxon nobleman, who was already famous for planning and executing early Neoclassical buildings in Dessau-Wörlitz, had been invited to work in Berlin in 1787.
On the ground floor of the main building there is a vestibule leading to a stairway extending the entire height of the building. Behind it is a large room designed as a grotto and used in the summertime as a dining room. This room is situated on the eastern side of the palace and faces the lake. Because of its shady location and the calm, cool effect of its greyish blue marble paneling its occupants enjoyed a pleasant room climate. On either side of this middle axis there were six private rooms serving as royal living quarters.
Upstairs, the rooms are grouped around the central marble stairway. The largest room, the concert hall, extended across the entire lake side of the palace. It was later used as a salon during the reign of the German Kaisers. The furnishings and decorative architecture of the rooms reflected a taste for the Neoclassical style, the only exception being the so-called Oriental cabinet on the upper floor, which Langhans designed as a Turkish tent with a divan.
Detail from a 1900 map of Potsdam showing the location of the Marmorpalais
Hagen from the Nibelungenlied, fresco detail from the colonnade
The Marmorpalais in 1964 in use as German Army Museum with a Soviet MiG-17 fighter plane in the courtyard
Frederick William II was King of Prussia from 1786 until his death in 1797. He was in personal union the Prince-elector of Brandenburg and sovereign prince of the Canton of Neuchâtel. As a defensive reaction to the French Revolution, Frederick William II ended the German Dualism between Prussia and Austria. Domestically, he turned away from the enlightened style of government of his predecessor and introduced a tightened system of censorship and religious control. The king was an important patron of the arts especially in the field of music. As a skilled cellist he enjoyed the dedication of various cello-centric compositions by composers Mozart, Haydn, Boccherini and Beethoven. He was also responsible for some of the most notable architecture in Prussia, including the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and the Marble Palace and Orangery in the New Garden, Potsdam.
Bellevue Palace, located in Berlin's Tiergarten district, has been the official residence of the president of Germany since 1994. The schloss is situated on the banks of the Spree river, near the Berlin Victory Column, along the northern edge of the Großer Tiergarten park. Its name – the French for "beautiful view" – derives from its scenic prospect over the Spree's course.
Cecilienhof Palace is a palace in Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany, built from 1914 to 1917 in the layout of an English Tudor manor house. Cecilienhof was the last palace built by the House of Hohenzollern that ruled the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Empire until the end of World War I. It is famous for having been the location of the Potsdam Conference in 1945, in which the leaders of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States made important decisions affecting the shape of post World War II Europe and Asia. Cecilienhof has been part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990.
Schloss Charlottenburg is a Baroque palace in Berlin, located in Charlottenburg, a district of the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf borough.
Carl Philipp Christian von Gontard was a German architect who worked primarily in Berlin, Potsdam, and Bayreuth in the style of late Baroque Classicism. Next to Knobelsdorff, he was considered the most important architect of the era of Frederick the Great of Prussia.
The New Chambers is part of the ensemble of Sanssouci palace in Sanssouci Park, Potsdam, Germany. They were constructed for King Frederick the Great of Prussia from 1771 to 1775.
Charlottenhof Palace or Charlottenhof Manor is a former royal palace located southwest of Sanssouci Palace in Sanssouci Park at Potsdam, Germany. It is best known as the summer residence of Crown Prince Frederick William. Today it is maintained by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg.
The Antique Temple is a small round temple in the west part of Sanssouci Park in Potsdam. Frederick the Great had the building constructed to house his collection of classical works of art, antique artifacts, coins and antique gems. Carl von Gontard created the building in 1768/69 near the New Palace north of the Central Alley, as a complement to the Temple of Friendship situated south of the Alley. Since 1921 the Antique Temple has been used as a mausoleum for members of the House of Hohenzollern and is not open to the public.
The New Palace is a palace situated on the western side of the Sanssouci park in Potsdam, Germany. The building was begun in 1763, after the end of the Seven Years' War, under King Friedrich II and was completed in 1769. It is considered to be the last great Prussian Baroque palace.
Carl Gotthard Langhans was a Prussian master builder and royal architect. His churches, palaces, grand houses, interiors, city gates and theatres in Silesia, Berlin, Potsdam and elsewhere belong to the earliest examples of Neoclassical architecture in Germany. His best-known work is the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, national symbol of today’s Germany and German reunification in 1989/90.
Sanssouci is a historical building in Potsdam, near Berlin. Built by Prussian King Frederick the Great as his summer palace, it is often counted among the German rivals of Versailles. While Sanssouci is in the more intimate Rococo style and is far smaller than its French Baroque counterpart, it, too, is notable for the numerous temples and follies in the surrounding park. The palace was designed and built by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff between 1745 and 1747 to meet Frederick's need for a private residence where he could escape the pomp and ceremony of the royal court. The palace's name is a French phrase meaning "without worries" or "carefree", emphasising that the palace was meant as a place of relaxation rather than a seat of power.
Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin are a group of palace complexes and extended landscaped gardens located in the Havelland region around Potsdam and the German capital of Berlin. The term was used upon the designation of the cultural ensemble as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1990. It was recognized for the historic unity of its landscape—a unique example of landscape design against the background of monarchic ideas of the Prussian state and common efforts of emancipation.
Wilhelmine, Gräfin von Lichtenau, born as Wilhelmine Enke, also spelled Encke, was the official mistress of King Frederick William II of Prussia from 1769 until 1797 and was elevated by him into the nobility. She is regarded as politically active and influential in the policy of Prussia during his reign.
The New Garden in Potsdam is a park of 102.5 hectares located southwest of Berlin, Germany, in northern Potsdam and bordering on the lakes Heiliger See and Jungfernsee. Starting in 1787, Frederick William II of Prussia (1744-1797) arranged to have a new garden laid out on this site, and the design and landscaping was carried out by Johann August Eyserbeck, who had previously worked on the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm.
The Dairy in the New Garden was built to plans by the master builder, Carl Gotthard Langhans, on the shore of the Jungfernsee lake at the northernmost tip of the New Garden in Potsdam, Germany. Construction was carried out from 1790 to 1792 by Andreas Ludwig Krüger.
Rheinsberg Palace lies in the municipality of Rheinsberg, about 100 kilometres (62 mi) northwest of Berlin in the German district of Ostprignitz-Ruppin.
The Old Market Square is a centrally located square in downtown Potsdam which forms the historical centre of the city. The square consists of the area around St. Nicholas' Church. Today the term refers in particular to the area directly in front of the church. It is bordered by several prestigious historical buildings. The square has been the site of much architectural reconstruction work in recent years which has restored much historic building fabric that was lost in World War Two.
The Old Palace, also called Kaiser Wilhelm Palace (Kaiser-Wilhelm-Palais), is a former royal Prussian residence on Unter den Linden boulevard in Mitte, the historic heart and city center of Berlin. It was built between 1834 and 1837 by order of Prince William of Prussia, who later became William I, German Emperor, according to plans by Carl Ferdinand Langhans in Neoclassical style. Damaged during the Allied bombing in World War II, the Old Palace was rebuilt from 1963 to 1964 as part of the Forum Fridericianum. Since then, the listed building has been home to the law faculty of the Humboldt-Universität.
The Pfaueninsel Palace is a Romantic-style building on the shore of the Havel in Berlin. Constructed on behalf of Frederick William II, the Lustschloss was completed in 1797. Today, the palace is a museum of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg.
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