A Few Days in Potsdam & Berlin

Rather more picturesque than Berlin itself, Potsdam lies some 45 miles southwest of the capital beside the river Havel.

This town is the Versailles of Berlin where successive Electors, and indeed Emperors of Germany escaped the overwhelming formality of court life in the Berlin Schloss. Most famous of these rulers was Frederick the Great, both soldier and scholar. Enamoured of all things French he built here the palace of Sans Souci. A rococo confection filled with gilded ceilings, glittering chandeliers and French works of art, it was here that Frederick entertained his friends, including Voltaire, to musical soirées, and dinners enlivened by witty intellectual conversation. Dotted around the grounds are further royal bolt-holes, a Chinese tea-house, an art gallery, a pump-house disguised as a mosque, and various follies making this estate as unlike as possible to the formality of the capital itself.

Despite the battering that Berlin itself took in World War II, Berlin itself contains many wonders. Not least of these are the five museums crammed on to the Museuminsel in the River Spree. Mostly built in the 19th century, the most striking being the Altes Museum by Karl Schinkel, overlooking the Lustgarten and the colossal, rather overblown, Lutheran cathedral. Behind the Altesmuseum is the equally neo-classical Altesgallerie devoted mostly to German art. The other galleries contain spectacular collections of Ancient Egyptian and Assyrian works of art, not to mention the Pergamanon altar, a vast ancient Greek altar. This was acquired in the 1870’s by the German authorities, anxious to obtain a “trophy-piece” to raise the standing of German museums in the eyes of the world.

The Jewish Museum opened in 2001 is the largest Jewish Museum in Europe built by the unconventional architect Daniel Liebeskind. Unconventional it certainly is in every way. Following no preconceived ideas of what a building, much less a museum should be, it follows a zig-zag outline on a triangular site and is clad in zinc panels.

It recounts the history of the Jews In Germany, the various galleries reached by subterranean passageways, or “axes” leading to the Holocaust Tower and the Garden of Exile. It is both unsettling and bewildering. For the more traditionally minded the neo-classic buildings of Karl Friedrich Schinkel are to be admired for their elegance and symmetry. An immensely cultured man, both artist and architect, he was responsible for the Neue Wache on the Unter den Linden. This guardhouse, built in 1815, precedes some of the finest early 19th century buildings by the architect both here in the centre of Berlin and in Potsdam. The recent rebuilding of the Royal Palace, destroyed after the war by the communists is an unexpected addition to the cityscape. Originally by Andreas Schluter this huge domed building dominates the centre of Berlin, and in the absence of a Royal family accommodates the Humboldt Forum, whilst replicating externally the original.

More melding of old with new in the Reichstag building where we breakfasted prior to flying home. Again reconstructed after 1944 to house the Bundestag, it is surmounted by its dome designed by Norman Foster. Fascinating piece of modern architecture, where you can clamber up inside the dome and look not only all over Berlin, but down into the chamber of the house.

But the visit was not all architecture for the visit also took in the Berlin porcelain factory started in 1763, by Frederick the Great. Still in production creating elegant porcelain dinner services and somewhat surprisingly porcelain replicas of takeaway paper coffee mugs. Posh Starbucks!

Also of the modern era was our dinner in the television tower. Tasty dinner whilst rotating 1207 feet above the city. The tallest building in Germany, it is also known as the “Pope’s Revenge”. Why? because much to the irritation of the Communists, after they had completed it, when the sun shone on the globe at the top of the tower, it formed a cross! It should have been, in a perfect world, a hammer and sickle.