POMONA'S TEMPLE

K.F. Schinkel 'Entwurf für den Pomonatempel bei Potsdam' (1800)

Karl Friedrich Schinkel, on the death of Friedrich Gilly, left the Bauakademie in order to complete his master's unfinished projects. During this period, the young Schinkel, only nineteen years old, received his first commission. The still almost unknown Temple of Pomona in Potsdam. A pavilion in the gardens of the Pfingstberg, then Judenberg, owned by the wife of the cartographer and privy councillor Carl Ludwig von Oesfeld.

Richard Peter 'Pomonatempel am Pfingstberg, Vorderfront' (1945)

In the 18th century, the Pfingstberg was a land planted with vineyards which was later transformed into a garden. In fact, there had already been a small building, intended for leisure, with the same name. In honor of the Roman goddess, with no Greek equivalent or feast on the calendar, Pomona: patrona pomorum, lady of fruits. But not only of fruits but, by extension, of fruit trees and the hortus, during its cropping and also flowering.

'Pomonatempel auf dem Pfingstberg' (1981)

Schinkel, however, located his small temple on a higher site than the previous one. To be able to enjoy a magnificent panoramic view, he turned the roof into a roof, accessible from a back staircase. In a way, it could be said that this first work, a simple prostyle with its four ionic order columns, foreshadows elements that we can find in other projects, subsequent to his trip to Italy. Such as the Mausoleum for Queen Louise in Charlottenburg, or the Neue Wache in Unter den Linden.

Leo Seidel 'Der Pomonatempel heute' (2020)

Years later, between 1847 and 1863, the gardener and landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenné was commissioned by Frederick William IV of Prussia to design a Belvedere on the same site, which is now part of the Neuer Garten. Lenné decided to keep the Temple and decided to incorporate it into his garden. But what he could not avoid was that, after 1945, the temple would be abandoned and turned, paradoxically, into a real romantic ruin. But it has finally been rebuilt, though with a rather dubious aesthetic criterion.

BERLIN NOTES (XLV)

Hans-Günter Quaschinsky 'Berlin, Bernauer Straße, Grenze' (1955)

They are all making plans alone. The plan is a tunnel, or you would have to go straight out into the desert, would have to free the camel from the zoo, untie it, saddle it up, ride on it through Brandenburg. You could depend on the camel.

It must be a "disharmony." Something is seeping through the whole city; everyone is sure they have read or heard "disharmony," and some even thought about it, but publicly it’s nowhere to be found. Still more trees are being planted, all in the sand, trees from the desert experience.

Berlin has been tidied up. (…) The sand is everywhere now – in the shoes, on the coal. (…) Below it, a pub is still open in Alt-Moabit, but no one understands how it’s possible. After all, the city has been tidied up. The owner pours double schnapps, then buys a round himself; his pub was the best, the oldest, always full of people. But these people are no longer in Berlin. (…) No one wants to talk anymore either, they speak only to say something, anything, and in any case everything runs out of the corners of their mouths and away, everything double.

At night all Berlin is a place for turnover and exchange. Everything gets mixed up in confusion, then some people pull away. Espionage has an easy time of it, every collapse is transparent. Everyone is out to get rid of his own secret, to surrender his news, to break down during interrogation. Everyone has everyone else on his neck, and in the dim light no one can check the bill foisted on them. Outside it’s morning again, it’s too bright. 

INGEBORG BACHMANN 'Ein Ort für Zufälle' (1964)