Monbijou Palace

Monbijou Palace
Monbijou Palace
	Engraving of Monbijou Palace (1703) by Johann Christoph Böcklin
	Location within Berlin Monbijou Palace (Germany)
Alternative names	Hohenzollern Stadtschloss, Monbijou Castle, Schloss Monbijou
General information
Architectural style	Rococo, late-Baroque
Coordinates	52°31′23″N 13°23′49″E / 52.52306°N 13.39694°E
Completed	1706
Demolished	1959
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Eosander von Göthe

Monbijou Palace was a

city palace. Heavily damaged in World War II, the ruins were finally razed by the authorities of East Berlin

in 1959. The palace has not been rebuilt.

Beginnings

In the

prince-elector of Brandenburg. The entire area was devastated in the Thirty Years' War

.

In 1649,

Sophia Dorothea of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. She added a garden with a small summer house, the nucleus of the future palace and grounds. Frederick I

, who became Elector of Brandenburg on the death of his father in 1688 and King in Prussia in 1701, decided to expand the estate.

Count von Wartenberg, his chief minister and favorite, was the developer of a "pleasure house", a small palace of just 400 square meters, erected by the royal architect Eosander von Göthe between 1703 and 1706 in a late Baroque style. Friedrich I presented it to Countess Wartenberg, his mistress.

Residence of queens

From 1712 the little palace served as the summer residence of

masquerade balls

and concerts there, pleasures she had long done without under the Spartan reign of Frederick William I. The palace had its own jetty, since the court members often preferred to arrive in comfort via the waterways instead of being jarred over rough roads.

The palace was long uninhabited after the death of Queen Sophie Dorothea in 1757. In 1786 it became the chief residence of Queen

park of Monbijou Palace close to Monbijoustraße and the Domkandidatenstift.^[3] Julius Carl Raschdorff, who would later design Berlin's Supreme Parish and Collegiate Church, was commissioned to develop the plans for an Anglican church, completed in 1885 and named St. George's Church.^[3]

Hohenzollern Museum

Around 1820, the so-called "Germanic-Slavic Antiquities" were removed from the royal curiosities cabinet (Kunstkammer) and housed in Monbijou Palace as the Museum for National Antiquities (Museum für Vaterländische Alterthümer).

Wilhelm I finally made the palace with its 42 rooms accessible to the public as the "Hohenzollern Museum" in 1877. It was considered to be on the one hand an educational institution of cultural history, and on the other hand a place for the Hohenzollern

dynasty to celebrate its own history and significance.

The museum survived the abolition of the monarchy in Germany in 1918. Its inventory remained in the possession of the dynasty but it was administered by the state, which made Monbijou Palace available for the purpose and assumed responsibility for maintaining the museum in the traditional way. World War II brought this state of affairs to an end. Large parts of the collections had been evacuated, and after the war were looted and brought to the Soviet Union and other places.

As late as 1940/41

Charlottenburg Palace between the nearby Spree sluice and the Berlin Ringbahn

. The war made these plans irrelevant.

War damage and demolition

As a precaution, all the palace windows had already been bricked up in 1940, but the entire building was gutted during an air raid in November 1943 and almost entirely destroyed. The ruins were left in place until 1959, when the East Berlin Magistrate—against the strenuous objection of museum professionals and parts of the

Monbijou Park

. Nearby there is a Monbijou Square, a Monbijou Street, and a Monbijou Bridge for pedestrians connecting both banks of the Spree at the north end of Museum Island.

References

^ Schloss Monbijou, Hohenzollernmuseum: Amtliche Führer. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag. 1930.
^ "About us", on: St George's Anglican Episcopal Church, Berlin, retrieved on 14 May 2012.
^ ^a ^b ^c "St. George's Anglican Church" Archived 2011-01-03 at the Wayback Machine, on: Preussen.de Archived 2017-06-27 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved on 14 May 2012
^ "Graphic Arts Collection". Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg (SPSG). Retrieved 2020-12-23.
^ Chazan, Guy (2020-12-15). "Berlin museum reignites debate over Germany's colonial past". Financial Times. Retrieved 2020-12-23. The forum is a reconstruction of the Hohenzollern Stadtschloss, or city palace, home to the Kings of Prussia and later the Kaisers of the German Reich. Considered one of Germany's finest Baroque buildings, it was destroyed in Allied bombing raids in 1945 and its remains flattened by the East German communists in the 1950s.

External links

Private website about Monbijou (self-published) (de)

[1] Schloss Monbijou, Hohenzollernmuseum: Amtliche Führer. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag. 1930.

[Old_St.George's-2] "About us", on: St George's Anglican Episcopal Church, Berlin, retrieved on 14 May 2012.

[St.George's-3] "St. George's Anglican Church" Archived 2011-01-03 at the Wayback Machine, on: Preussen.de Archived 2017-06-27 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved on 14 May 2012

[4] "Graphic Arts Collection". Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg (SPSG). Retrieved 2020-12-23.

[5] Chazan, Guy (2020-12-15). "Berlin museum reignites debate over Germany's colonial past". Financial Times. Retrieved 2020-12-23. The forum is a reconstruction of the Hohenzollern Stadtschloss, or city palace, home to the Kings of Prussia and later the Kaisers of the German Reich. Considered one of Germany's finest Baroque buildings, it was destroyed in Allied bombing raids in 1945 and its remains flattened by the East German communists in the 1950s.

[3]

Authority control databases
International	VIAF
National	Germany