Sanssouci

Sanssouci (German pronunciation:

After World War II, the palace became a tourist attraction in East Germany. Following German reunification in 1990, Frederick's body was returned to the palace and buried in a new tomb overlooking the gardens he had created. Sanssouci and its extensive gardens became a World Heritage Site in 1990 under the protection of UNESCO;^[2] in 1995, the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg was established to care for Sanssouci and the other former imperial palaces in and around Berlin. These palaces are now visited by more than two million people each year from all over the world.

Ethos of Sanssouci

The location and layout of Sanssouci above a

This concept of a grand palace designed to impress has led to the comparison of the palaces of Potsdam to Versailles,[6] with Sanssouci being thrust into the role of one of the Trianons. This analogy, though easy to understand, ignores the original merits of the concept behind Sanssouci, the palace for which the whole park and setting were created. Unlike the Trianons, Sanssouci was not an afterthought to escape the larger palace, for the simple reason that the larger palace did not exist at the time of Sanssouci's conception; and once it did, Frederick almost never stayed in the New Palace except on rare occasions when entertaining diplomats he wished to impress. It is true, however, that Sanssouci was intended to be a private place of retreat rather than display of power, strength and architectural merit. Unlike the Trianons, Sanssouci was designed to be a whole unto itself.

Sanssouci is small, with the principal block (or

In the park, east of the palace, is the Sanssouci Picture Gallery, built from 1755 to 1764 under the supervision of the architect Johann Gottfried Büring. It stands on the site of a former greenhouse, where Frederick raised tropical fruit. The Picture Gallery is the oldest extant museum built for a ruler in Germany. Like the palace itself, it is a long, low building, dominated by a central domed bow of three bays.

To the west is the New Chambers, built between 1771 and 1775 as accommodation for guests and with rooms to entertain them. The building mirrors the Picture Gallery externally, thus adding to the symmetry of the Sanssouci ensemble.

Following the death of Frederick a new era began, a visible sign of which was the change in architectural styles.

It was no coincidence that Frederick selected the

The palace has a single-storey principal block with two flanking side

By contrast, the north entrance façade is more restrained. Segmented colonnades of 88 Corinthian columns—two deep—curve outwards from the palace building to enclose the semicircular cour d'honneur. As on the south side, a balustrade with sandstone vases decorates the roof of the main corps de logis.

Flanking the corps de logis are two secondary wings, providing the large service accommodation and domestic offices necessary to serve an 18th-century monarch, even when in retreat from the world. In Frederick's time, these single-storey wings were covered with foliage to screen their mundane purpose. The eastern wing housed the secretaries', gardeners' and servants' rooms, while the west wing held the palace kitchen, stables and a remise (

Frederick regularly occupied the palace each summer throughout his lifetime, but after his death in 1786 it remained mostly unoccupied and neglected until the mid-19th century. In 1840, 100 years after Frederick's accession to the throne, his great-grandnephew Frederick William IV and his wife moved into the guest rooms. The royal couple retained the existing furniture and replaced missing pieces with furniture from Frederick's time. The room in which Frederick had died was intended to be restored to its original state, but this plan was never executed because of a lack of authentic documents and plans. However, the armchair in which Frederick had died was returned to the palace in 1843.^{[citation needed]}

The principal entrance area, consisting of two halls, the "Entrance Hall" and the "Marble Hall", is at the centre, thus providing common rooms for the assembly of guests and the court, while the principal rooms flanking the Marble Hall become progressively more intimate and private, in the tradition of the Baroque concept of state rooms. Thus, the Marble Hall was the principal reception room beneath the central dome. Five guest rooms adjoined the Marble Hall to the west, while the King's apartments lay to the east - an audience room, music room, study, bedroom, library, and a long gallery on the north side.

The palace is generally entered through the Entrance Hall, where the restrained form of the classical external colonnade was continued into the interior. The walls of the rectangular room were subdivided by ten pairs of Corinthian columns made of white stucco marble with gilded capitals. Three overdoor reliefs with themes from the myth of Bacchus reflected the vineyard theme created outside. Georg Franz Ebenhech was responsible for gilded stucco works. The strict classical elegance was relieved by a painted ceiling executed by the Swedish-born painter Johann Harper, depicting the goddess Flora with her acolytes, throwing flowers down from the sky.

The white-and-gold oval Marmorsaal ("Marble Hall"), as the principal reception room, was the setting for celebrations in the palace, its dome crowned by a cupola. White Carrara marble was used for the paired columns, above which stucco putti dangle their feet from the cornice. The dome is white with gilded ornament, and the floor is of Italian marble intarsia inlaid in compartments radiating from a central trelliswork oval. Three arch-headed windows face the garden; opposite them, in two niches flanking the doorway, figures of Venus Urania, the goddess of free nature and life, and Apollo, the god of the arts, by the French sculptor François Gaspard Adam, established the iconography of Sanssouci as a place where art was joined with nature.

The adjoining room served as both an audience room and the Dining Room. It is decorated with paintings by French 18th-century artists, including

The bookcases contained approximately 2,100 volumes of Greek and Roman writings and historiographies and also a collection of French literature of the 17th and 18th centuries with a heavy emphasis on the works of Voltaire. The books were bound in brown or red goat leather and richly gilded.

The north facing gallery overlooked the forecourt. Here, again, Frederick deviated from French room design, which would have placed service rooms in this location. Recessed into the inner wall of this long room were

To the west were the guest rooms in which were lodged those friends of the King considered intimate enough to be invited to this most private of his palaces. Two of Frederick's visitors were sufficiently distinguished and frequent that the rooms they occupied were named after them. The Rothenburg room is named after the Count of Rothenburg, who inhabited his circular room until his death in 1751. This room balances the palace architecturally with the library. The Voltaire Room was frequently occupied by the philosopher during his stay in Potsdam between 1750 and 1753.[15] The Voltaire Room was remarkable for its decoration, which gave it the alternative name of the "Flower Room". On a yellow lacquered wall panel were superimposed, colourful, richly adorned wood carvings. Apes, parrots, cranes, storks, fruits, flowers, garlands gave the room a cheerful and natural character. Johann Christian Hoppenhaupt (the younger) [de] designed the room between 1752 and 1753 from sketches made by Frederick.

The terraced gardens

The

Nearby was a kitchen garden, which Frederick William I had laid out sometime prior to 1715. The Soldier King jokingly gave this simple garden the name "My Marly",^[16] in reference to the very similar garden at the summer residence of Louis XIV in Marly-le-Roi.

In his plans for the grounds, Frederick attached great importance on the combination of both an ornamental and a practical garden, thus demonstrating his belief that art and nature should be united.

The Park

Following the terracing of the vineyard and the completion of the palace, Frederick turned his attention to the landscaping of the greater vicinity of the palace and thus began the creation of Sanssouci Park. In his organisation of the park, Frederick continued what he had begun in Neuruppin and Rheinsberg.^[17] A straight main avenue was laid out, ultimately 2.5 km long, beginning in the east at the 1748 obelisk and extended over the years to the New Palace, which marks its western end.

Continuing the horticultural theme of the terraced gardens, 3,000 fruit trees were planted in the park, and

Frederick invested heavily in a vain attempt to introduce a fountain system in Sanssouci Park, attempting to emulate the other great Baroque gardens of Europe. Hydraulics at this stage were still in their infancy, and despite the building of pumping houses and reservoirs, the fountains at Sanssouci remained silent and still for the next 100 years. The invention of steam power solved the problems a century later, and thus the reservoir finally fulfilled its purpose.^[18] From around 1842, the Prussian Royal family were finally able to marvel at such features as the Great Fountain below the vineyard terraces, shooting jets of water to a height of 38 metres. The pumping station itself became another garden pavilion, disguised as a Turkish mosque, with its chimney becoming a minaret.

The park was expanded under Frederick William III, and later under his son Frederick William IV. The architects

After the

Following the end of the war, most of the items that had been moved to Rheinsberg were transferred as bounty to the Soviet Union; only a small fraction were returned to the palace in 1958. The artistic pieces from Bernterode found by American soldiers were first shipped to Wiesbaden to the "Central Art Collecting Point" and in 1957 went to Charlottenburg palace in West Berlin.^[22]

Compared to many similar buildings, the palace fared well during almost 50 years under Communist jurisdiction in East Germany. The

The palace and park of Sanssouci, often described as the "Prussian Versailles", are a synthesis of the artistic movements of the 18th century in the cities and courts of Europe. That ensemble is a unique example of the architectural creations and landscape design against the backdrop of the intellectual background of monarchic ideas of the state.[6]

In 1991, following German reunification, Frederick's casket was interred in the terrace of the vineyard of Sanssouci – in the still existing crypt he had built there – after dark, without pomp, in accordance with his will.^[23]

The library of Frederick was returned in 1992 to its former home at Sanssouci. Thirty-six oil paintings followed between 1993 and 1995. In 1995, the Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens in Berlin-Brandenburg was formed. The organisation's job is to administer and care for Sanssouci and the other former royal palaces in Berlin and Brandenburg.^[24]

See also

• Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin
• List of Baroque residences
• List of sights of Potsdam

Notes and references

External links

• Official website
• ICOMOS evaluation of the World Heritage Site
• Images from Sanssouci
• Interactive Panorama: Sanssouci Garden
• 360° foto
• Official flyer of Palaces and Gardens in Berlin and Brandenburg
• Virtual tour of the Sanssouci provided by Google Arts & Culture
• Media related to Schloss Sanssouci at Wikimedia Commons