Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (39.2006)

Fig. 1. Villa Eichhorn in the structure of the city. Ai. Sadebeck, Breslau,
plan, 1865 (fragment).

mann’s works contributed to the emergence of new
independent scientific disciplines — archaeology and
the history of art.
Although German writers lively reacted to Winckel-
mann’s works, the process of implementing Greek
classical rules of construction into architecture was
rather difficult. An exception was the activity of Fried-
rich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff, the architect of the
prince of Anhalt-Dessau Leopold Franz, who designed
the first classicist palace on the European continent
(Wörlitz palace near Dessau, 1769— 1773).6 Von Erd-
mannsdorff was a friend of Winckelmann, and this
was probably the reason why he attempted to apply
Winckelmann’s ideas into architecture.
In Prussia, during the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm
II (1786 — 1797), the official trend in construction
was still influenced by the French baroque, but there
were a few active excellent classicism architects such
as Carl Gotthard Langhans or David Gilly. The final
disunion from Friderician baroque was due to Lang-
hans, who built the Brandenburg Gate (1789— 1791),

and modelled it after the Propylaeum in Athens.7
Langhans’s structures, which already exhibited nu-
merous references to ancient Roman style, became
a pretext to start a discussion on the advantage of the
Greek ideal over the ancient Roman pattern. The
debate on the prédominance between ancient Roman
and Greek art was rooted not only in aesthetics but
also in ideology. Richness and splendour of ancient
Roman architecture could be valued highly as a mani-
fest of sublime culture, but also could be perceived as
a sign of decadence and downfall similar to that ob-
served in the court life before the French révolution.
Greek antiquity, however, was to express the charac-
teristics of simple and honest people who lived close
to nature and were untainted by future civilization.
In the âge of Napoleon, Imperial Roman antiquity was
associated with the imperial France, therefore in Prus-
sia, which had been under French occupation since
1807, it was impossible to accept any form of art in-
spired by Roman works. After Napoléons defeat, and
especially after the Greek uprising against Turks,
Greek classicism was seen as the ‘ideal offreedom’f
Whereas in public buildings the architects of Ber-
lin managed to develop a moderate ‘Greek style’, the
designs of residential buildings were oriented towards
ancient Roman style. While the interest in Roman
residential house was aroused in the 18th Century by
expressive descriptions of the villa of Pliny the Young-
er, excavations in Herculaneum and Pompeii, disco-
veries of the Caesar palace on the Palatine Hill and
the remuants of Hadrian’s villa, the Greek house was
only known from literatuře. In contrast to the works
of British and French architects, Prussian designers
presented their first sketches and designs of the ‘an-
cient house’ relatively late. Karl Friedrich Schinkel,
one of the most versatile authors in that period, picked
up the theme of the ‘ancient house’ during his first trip
to Italy in the years 1803 — 1804.9 At the time the
artist drew landscapes of ‘cottages’, he also designed
a house located near Syracuse, in which the most cru-
cial problém was to fit the structure into the surround-

6 KADATZ, H.-J.: Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff. Der Weg-
bereiter des deutschen Frühklassizismus in Anhalt-Dessau. Berlin
1986.
7 FEIST, P.: Das Brandenburger Tor. Berlin 2004, p. 14.

8 BOTHE, R.: Antikerezeption in Bauten und Entwürfen Berli-
ner Architekten zwischen 1790 und 1870. In: Berlin und die An-
tike. [Cat. Exhib.J Ed. W. ARENHÖVEL. Berlin 1979, p. 294.
9 BÖRSCH-SUPAN, E. : Berliner Baukunst nach Schinkel 1840
- 1870. In: Studien zur Kunst der neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 25.
Passau 1977, p. 89.

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