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History.
BERLIN.
49
impression produced by the defeat of the Prussian army in 1806
and by the French occupation of the city, which lasted till the
end of 1808, was largely counterbalanced by the foundation of the
University in 1809. After the establishment of peace in 1815,
art, science, and commerce began to flourish anew. The uni¬
versity took the highest rank among the learned institutions of
Germany; William and Alexander von Humboldt, Karl Ritter,
Hegel, Savigny, Schleiermacher, Bbckh, Lachmann, and many
other famous men lived and worked at Berlin; and the drama¬
tic art also attained a high standard. At this period the most
distinguished architect was Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841), who
was equally capable as a painter, as his sketches for the frescoes
of the hall of the old museum testify (see p. 72), and many ad¬
mirable buildings, both in the classical and Gothic style, were
erected by this great master in Berlin and the environs. It was
his aim to build as the ancient Greeks would have built had they
lived among us, and it was due to his teaching that the foundation-
stone of a national artistic revival was laid. He was the architect
of the Royal Guard House (1818; p. 59), the Royal Theatre (1821;
p. 121), the Old Museum (1828; p. 71), the Academy of Architecture
(1834; p. 158), and the Friedrichs-Werder Church (p. 159, in the
Gothic style) at Berlin, of the Palaces of Babelsberg (p. 198),
Glienicke (p. 198), and Charlottenhof (p. 196), and the Church of
St. Nicholas at Potsdam (p. 192), while his numerous designs exer¬
cised no inconsiderable influence on the architecture of other coun¬
tries. Berlin architects long counted it the highest fame to be
reckoned among his pupils. As Schinkel reigned supreme at Berlin
in the province of architecture, so did Chr. D. Rauch (1777-1857)
in that of sculpture, eclipsing his senior, G. Schadow, and still more
so his contemporary, Fr. Tieck. In him the hero-worship of the
period of the wars of independence found an admirable illustrator,
and portrait-sculpture now received a new impulse. Far inferior to
these architects and sculptors were the painters of this period (Wach,
K. Begas, Hensel, Klober, K. Blechen, and F. Krilger), whose
names are hardly known out of their native place. — The long years
of peace in the latter part of this reign contributed materially to
the external prosperity of Berlin. Commerce and industry, the latter
stimulated by the exertions of Beuth, were greatly benefited by the
construction of highroads, the foundation of the Zollverein, and the
abolition of the monopoly of the guilds; and the city now began to
lose the official and garrison-like air with which it had hitherto
been pervaded. In 1838 the railway to Potsdam was opened. From
201,000 in 1819 the population had in 1840 increased to 329,000.
During the following reign, that of Frederick William IV.
(1840-61), the cultivation of art seemed likely to progress far more
rapidly. The favourable conditions of that monarch's reign were
Baedeker's Berlin. 3rd Edit. 4