Karl Friedrich Schinkel, 1781-1841

Few architects have received as much recognition - and from as many diverse parties - as the man who served in the Konigliche Technische Oberbaudeputation (Royal Office of Works) for over thirty years, ending as Prussia's Oberlandes-baudirektor (Supreme Director of National Public Works). Schinkel's contemporaries praised his strict discipline and unusual versatility, his elegance and rationality, his historical knowledge and artistic certainty of taste. To modernists, Schinkel seems to have anticipated the principles of modern construction in his adherence to objectivity, sensibility, and tectonics. The National Socialists claimed the Prussian state architect as the model of Hellenistic spirit, come to life on Germanic soil. Cultural politicians in the Socialist East cited him when it was necessary for them to oppose the International Modernism of the West with a national program. Finally, Postmodernism found itself confirmed in his liberal handling of historical material, in his appeal to both the historical and the poetic, and in the "endless diversity of the relationships unfolding in social life." Karl Friedrich Schinkel has meant and indeed still means for Central Europe during the last 180 years what Andrea Palladio has meant for the Western world for 450 years. Karl Friedrich Schinkel, 1781-1841: The Drama of Architecture is one of the few English-language books devoted to this great artist. This sumptuous new volume features almost two hundred illustrations depicting Schinkel's famous buildings and designs as well as his panoramic travel sketches and studies. Six scholars and historians have contributed their expertise to this volume in essays that explore Schinkel's remarkable body of work.