Gaertner’s Expression of an Emerging German Enlightenment
This recently rediscovered work, dated 1845, exemplifies Gaertner’s views of the Prussian capital. Relating closely to a version of the same date and dimensions in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid (fig. 1), it depicts a view west of the Königliche Oper (Royal Opera) and Unter den Linden, Berlin’s main imperial boulevard. The Königliche Oper, today known as the Staatsoper Berlin (Berlin State Opera) was originally designed by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff.
Evoking a balmy summer’s evening, promenaders, riders, and uniformed soldiers enjoy the serenity of this late period of the day. However, this calm view belies a catastrophic event that unfolded on the site only a few years previously, and therefore would have held a particular poignancy and resonance with Berliners at the t.mes it was painted. On the night of the 18 November 1843, the opera house caught fire and burned down completely save for the outer walls. Its reconstruction started immediately, under the supervision of architect Carl Ferdinand Langhals, and was reopened as soon as December 1844.
Gaertner paints a glorious tribute to the newly resplendent opera house. The front of the Palladian edifice is lit up by the evening sun as its last rays filter through the Corinthian columns and onto the back wall, accentuating the monumentality of the new building. A crowd gather beneath this backdrop, perhaps waiting for the front doors to be opened or just.mes rely enjoying the last of the evening sun. Gaertner often painted his architectural views in the directional light of the late afternoon to add a more atmospheric and romantic connotation to his work. It is fascinating to note that these proto-photographic views are almost exactly contemporaneous with the emergence of photography, making their realism all the more original.
As in other view paintings, Gaertner captures his urban scenes as places inhabited by and in the service of its residents. On the left, three Prussian officers in immaculate military uniform appear in deep conversation beneath the statue of General von Blücher, a Prussian field marshal best known for his contributions during the Napoleonic wars. Slightly to the right of this in the open square a loan horseman wearing a frockcoat and facing away from the viewer dominates the foreground. This particular rider who does not feature in the Thyssen picture, helps differentiate the two paintings. While Gaertner did repeat views, it was always with differences in staffage. He would often include his patrons in his compositions, who by this point were largely a middle class, Bürger clientele. His main patron Frederick III had died five years earlier in 1840.
The square building to the immediate right of the Opera House, was the town palace of Prince Heinrich, future Emperor Wilhelm I, also known as the Altes Palais. The building had only recently been built by Langhals between 1834 and 1837. Here begin the four rows of lime trees that give their name to Unter den Linden, planted along the avenue in 1647. The Equestrian statue of Friedrich II, known as Friedrich der Große (Frederick the Great), is just visible on the right of the composition. As the statue was not actually unveiled until 1851, Gaertner would nevertheless have been aware of the design and size of the statue as this was well publicised by the t.mes of this composition in 1845. It was changes to the figures on the base that delayed the unveiling of the statue for six years. The statue can be seen in a related view painting by the artist looking east towards the opera house and showing the base of the statue in more detail (fig. 2).
The Baroque building on the far right, directly opposite the opera house is the Prinz-Heinrich-Palais, built by Johann Boumann. Today it forms part of Berlin’s Humboldt University. The open square framed by these buildings and at the forefront of the present composition was called the Forum Fridericianum (today known as the Bebelplatz) and served as a military parade ground as evidenced by the marching Prussian soldiers.
After witnessing the Napoleonic invasion of Prussia as a child, Gaertner fled with his mother to Kassel, before returning to Berlin as a teenager. While studying in the studio of theatre set designer Carl Gropius, he honed his skill in perspectival drawing by executing the designs of Gropius’s friend, the great architect, city planner, painter and set designer Karl Friedrich Schinkel. From the 1820s, Gaertner worked on his own and, in the course of the five subsequent decades, painted numerous views of the centre of Berlin for which he became famous. Berlin was now emerging as a centre of German enlightenment thinking and of the rising bourgeoisie. The claritys and grandeur of Gaertner’s views are at once expressions of Enlightenment rationality (as Canaletto’s prospects had been a century earlier) and of renewed national and civic pride.
We are grateful to Professor Helmut Börsch-Supan for his assistance in the cataloguing of this work.