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| 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.
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| 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.
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| '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.
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| 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.