Potsdam Again Revisited

My last visit dates back to St. Sylvester 2023, when Red Baron celebrated the transition to the new year in Potsdam.

On the second day of our trip to Berlin, we took the S-Bahn from Berlin Hauptbahnhof (the central station) to Potsdam Hauptbahnhof. We walked across the Havel Bridge to the rebuilt Stadtschloss (City Castle) and the Alter Markt, home to the impressive dome of St. Nicholai church.

The bright yellow, classic-style building was not there during my last visit. It caught our attention. It is a reconstruction of the 1945-destroyed Plögerscher Gasthof, built in 1754 during the time of Frederick the Great.

This reconstructed "inn" has been named Building of the Year 2024 by the association "Stadtbild Deutschland" (Cityscape Germany): The enormous care taken in the detailed work on these facades radiates a high quality that is otherwise unmatched in new buildings.

The Plögersche Gasthof at the corner of Friedrich-Ebert-Straße and Anna-Zielenziger-Straße.
The dome of St. Nikolai Church on the Old Market Square is visible in the background.
©picture alliance/dpa

Wikipedia knows: The figures embody typical hospitable motifs that recall the building's former use as an inn, where people ate, drank, and danced. For example, in addition to a musician with a flute, the goddess of tree fruits, Pomona, and the goddess of agriculture, Ceres, are depicted.

 
We took the tram to Brandenburgerstraße and walked up to the Brandenburg Gate. There are many small shops and cafés.

The outlet of the Royal Porcelain Factory, founded in 1763, caught our attention. Frederick also wanted to earn money with white gold, just like the Saxon and Bavarian kings.

Potsdam's Brandenburg Gate

At the sight of the Brandenburg coat of arms, Red Baron instinctively hummed the state anthem:

Steige hoch, du roter Adler, über Sumpf und Sand Über dunkle Kiefernwälder, heil dir, Mein Brandenburger Land

Soar high, red eagle, over swamp and sand Over dark pine forests, hail to you My Brandenburg Land

On our way to the Sanssouci Park, we passed the Monument of the Three Empresses' Crowns, symbolizing Potsdam's royal identity. The crowns belong to Empress Augusta, wife of Wilhelm I, the first Kaiser of the Second Empire; Victoria, wife of Frederik III, the 99-day Kaiser; and Auguste Viktoria, wife of Wilhelm II, the last German Kaiser.

While approaching the gate to Sanssouci Park, we noticed a lady pulling up in an electric-powered vehicle with benches for disabled visitors.

Passing the Chinese tea pavilion in the mild autumn sun

We travelled with her to the Neues Palais (New Palace), which is now part of the University of Potsdam.

The New Palace without scaffolds (©A.Savin/Wikipedia)

Frederick the Great wanted to show the world that, following the Hubertusburg Peace, a peace of exhaustion, Prussia had still enough money to build a Neues Palais. The building was scaffolded.

Instead, we met roof statues, scrambled in a collection center waiting to be cleaned and restored.

And suddenly, on our way back, we saw Katie, the beautiful hoodie (Corvus cornix), whom I had met before in Potsdam, giving us the cold shoulder.

We arrived at the foot of the Sanssouci hill.

View of the sun-drenched terrace of the famous vineyard and the historic mill of Sanssouci.

We made our way through the park and admired the Prussian accuracy.

Katie had followed us and found a pleasant place to rest.

 

Frederick's grave marker with the obligatory potatoes.

The sun symbol above an entrance to the courtyard of the Sanssouci Palace. The Prussian Elector Friedrich Wilhelm featured the sun on his flag eagle and defiantly claimed "Non soli cedit," meaning he would not yield to the Roi soleil, Louis XIV, whose sun shone everywhere (Fulget ubique).

Promptly, in 1675, the Great Elector suffered a bitter defeat against the Sun King in distant Alsace in the Battle of Türkheim.

We bought tickets to the Sanssouci Palace at the Foundation of Prussian Palaces and Gardens.

There he was, the flute player of Sanssouci. An epigone of the artistic Frederick the Great, of whom his father, who wanted to make his young son a Prussian soldier, said: "Fritz is a Querpfeiffer* and a poet. He doesn't care about soldiers and will ruin all my work. I would like to know what goes on in that little head of his. I know that he doesn't think like me." 

*A traverse flute player, but it could also mean a rebel

A guest room with a sleeping alcove

The interior of the Sanssouci Palace is filled with oil paintings, but they are so far from visitors that it is impossible to make out their motifs.

  

 

 This painting was an exception and depicts King Frederick and his architect, Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, inspecting construction work.

Here is the exciting line of sight in the middle of the castle from one end to the other.

Since I had it with the birds. Here is a white stork (Ciconia ciconia) from the Chinese-style decorated room at Sanssouci.

The grey heron (Ardea cinerea) is also a native bird.

And here comes the star, the Silberreiher (great egret; Ardea alba),

A final view of the Sanssouci Palace. Because of my interest in other birds, Katie was offended and kept her distance.

On our way out, my brother in the walking stick, the Great Frederick, bid us goodbye.

Although time was running short, we took a quick look at the courtyard of the Peace Church near the entrance to Sanssouci Park.

   

On the civil war in South Sudan

Finally, peace, or just hope?

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The Baker's Window in Freiburg's Minster Church

In the Middle Ages, the bakers' guild donated some of the most impressive stained glass windows of Freiburg's Minster church. Red Baron showed the Brezel window in an earlier blog.

Last Saturday at the Studium Generale, Junior Professor Julia von Ditfurth presented the whole story behind the Baker's Window. Once again, the lecture hall was overcrowded.

Here is a black and white photo of the Baker's Window in 1917. The individual glass panes tell the hagiography of Saint Catherine of Alexandria.

Here is the Baker's Window as it appears to the visitor today. It is immediately apparent that the Brezel from 1917 has not only slipped down one row, but is also represented thrice.

Baker's Window showing the original panes (white)
and the panes created by Fritz Geiges around 1923.

How did that happen? In 1917, the Münsterbauverein (Cathedral Building Association) commissioned Fritz Geiges, Freiburg's renowned glass painter, to restore the cathedral's windows.

Original pane in the lower left: Before the king, Catherine refuses to worship idols..

Fritz did a thorough job. In restoring the Baker's Window, he removed five poorly preserved original panes and handed them over to the Augustiner Museum.

Catherine refuses to worship idols. Geiges's version of 1923.
People look up at the idol statue while Maxentius admonishes Catherine.

Fritz then replaced the missing panes with two copies of the Brezel and three of his "medieval" creations.

At the Day for Monument Preservation in 1925, Geiges's "restorations" were heavily criticized; some even spoke of "restoration vandalism." However, the Münsterbauverein had formulated the objective for the stained glass windows as "restoration to its original condition," allowing Geiges relatively free rein. In contrast, today's maxim is "Never restore, if possible only conserve."

Professor Ditfurth showed more original panes with Catherine's story. She was a Christian, and when the persecutions began under Emperor Maxentius, she went to him and rebuked him for his cruelty. 

Catherine debates the philosophers.

The Emperor summoned 50 of the best pagan philosophers and orators to debate with her, hoping that Catherine would renounce her Christian faith. However, discussing with them, she converted several to Christianity.

The burning of the philosophers.

The converts were burned alive in an oven.

Maxentius gave orders to subject Catherine to terrible tortures and then throw her in prison.

Empress Fausta and Porphyry visit Catherine in prison.

During her imprisonment, more than 200 people visited her. All were converted to Christianity and subsequently martyred.

Catherine's wheel torture

According to the legend, Maxentius tried to win her over by proposing marriage. When Catherine refused, declaring that her spouse was Jesus Christ, he furious emperor condemned Catherine to be tortured on a wheel studded with sharp knives. But at her touch, it shattered.

 
Eventually, the emperor ordered her to be beheaded.

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The Spire of the Freiburg Minster

Red Baron loves the old beauty. When he walks downtown on one particular street, he has the most beautiful spire on earth always in view.

 

©MBV

For ten years, the spire was shrouded in scaffolding for repair, and its intricate filigree structure was hidden from view. It was a sad sight.

Not only was I particularly interested in Professor Hubert's lecture. The lecture hall was so crowded that the head of the Studium Generale, Professor Frick, had to ask those present to keep the emergency aisle clear.

Professor Hubert explained the structure of a tracery composed of rods and their crowning.

 

This is the method used to stabilize high glass windows in cathedrals, as seen in the choir chapel of Reims Cathedral. At the same time, traceries are load-bearing structural elements due to their design.

A cathedral master builder at Freiburg had the ingenious idea of not using the traceries vertically (90°) in the window construction, but to build a spire. 

He tilted the traceries slightly (83°) and arranged them in an octagon. Thus, the inclined construction elements support each other, while the whole structure is held together by a ring anchor. The eight ends of its iron struts are fixed in place in the individual corner stones of the octagon by casting them in lead.

©Benedikt Schaufelberger

This shows the state of construction of the Freiburg Minster around 1300. The choir of the old church, dedicated to St. Nicholas, is still preserved. An octagonal wooden structure is visible at the base of the tower, designed to support the inclined traceries.

To get the octagon symmetrical was a tricky job. In the slide above, the deformations that are not noticeable to the observer from a distance are mapped.

The sight of this spire, sometimes described as a spiritual stone, is simply stunning. Professor Hubert showed breathtaking slides.

       

Converging the filigree construction of the spire into a tip was a delicate and complicated task. Everything had to be held together somehow with iron clamps. Is this medieval botched construction work?

 
This epoch-making construction soon found imitators, and continues to do so today.

Freiburg gave it to the world.

Professor Hubbert showed a non-exhaustive list of churches and profane buildings using the Freiburg model.

Burgos Cathedral has two towers with octagonal spires, whose construction began in 1442. Here is an example of the 19th century:

          

Karl Friedrich Schinkel's plan of 1814/15 for the Cathedral of Freedom in Berlin. A memorial to the wars of liberation against Napoleon on Potsdamer Platz.

     

In a verse, the Gothic tower from 1516 of the Theobalduskirche in the small former Habsburg town of Thann in Alsace challenges Freiburg for the title of most beautiful octagonal spire:

Le clocher de Strasbourg est le plus haut, Celui de Freiburg est le plus gros, Mais le clocher de Thann est le plus beau.

The bell tower in Strasbourg is the tallest, The one in Freiburg is the fattest, But the bell tower in Thann is the most beautiful.

The great Jakob Burghardt protects us from Thann's claim when he states: And Freiburg will probably remain the most beautiful spire on earth.

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