Prussia (Art & Architecture)

Rating:
Summary: ...a grand tour
Review: This big, beautiful book, superbly illustrated, printed and bound, offers a wealth of information in five hundred pages after oversized pages of the development and summit of Prussia's art and architecture. In splendid photographs, it shows in impressive detail the progression of Prussian culture and spirit, from the March of Brandenburg to its establishment as a kingdom, Frederick the Great's reign, to its eventual fate as the singular unifier of the German Empire.

Examples of Prussian sculpture, painting, architecture, urban planning and landscape design abound in these pages. The palaces of Potsdam (the principal example being Sanssouci) and Berlin (Charlottenburg), the numerous examples of church architecture which include the Marienkirche in Prenzlau and Berlin to the different periods of Gothic, Romanesque, Baroque, Rococo, Neo-classical and Biedermeier periods, are all represented and discussed.

Major painters like Schirmer, Weidemann, Gartner, Kruger, and others; the corresponding architectural works of von Arnim, Hoffmann, Stuler, van der Rohe, Grunberg, von Erdmannsdorff, Gropius and others; the fine sculptures of Georg Ebenhech, Heymuller, Kollwitz, Schluter, the two Rantz brothers and the Wohler father and sons team and others are all here. And it would not be complete without including the works of the celebrated architect, painter and landscape gardener Georg von Knobelsdorff.

This is another superlative production by the publishing house of Konemann and its contributors--a labor of love can be gleaned throughout these pages. With its heavy paper and quality binding, it is sometimes a wonder it came at such a reasonable price!

The book isn't only recommended for architecture and art students but also to established designers and urban planners, who may be willing to invoke the grandeur of the past, maybe not at such a scale but to otherwise improve in the style of some of our architecture without reverting completely to Neo-classicism. What a contrast it would be to juxtapose these works from the sometimes soulless and uninspired design that we sometimes see around us, all in the name of functionality and economies of scale. But then the past cannot really compare with the new. In terms of technical grandeur and brilliance, there isn't really any comparison.