LANGHANS, Carl Gotthard - b. 1732 Landeshut, d. 1808 Grüneiche - WGA

LANGHANS, Carl Gotthard

(b. 1732 Landeshut, d. 1808 Grüneiche)

German architect, born in Landeshut, Silesia (now Kamienna Góra in Poland). He was not educated as an architect. He studied law from 1753 to 1757 in Halle, and then mathematics and languages, and engaged himself autodidactically with architecture, at which he concentrated primarily on the antique texts of the Roman architecture theorist Vitruvius (and the new version by the classics enthusiast Johann Joachim Winckelmann).

His first draft of “zum Schifflein Christi” for the Protestant Church in 1764 in Groß-Glogau earned him his first recognition as an architect, and in the same year, an appointment as building inspector for the Count of Hatzfeld, whose war-ravaged palace he had rebuilt to his own design between 1766 and 1774.

Langhans was able to afford a trip in 1768-69 thanks to the support of the Count of Hatzfeld. When he was later assigned to be the leader of the Breslau war and dominion chamber, he visited the countries of England, Holland, Belgium, and France.

Through the intervention of the Count of Hatzfeld, he also became known in the royal court in Berlin. As his first work in the service of the royal family, he built in 1766 the stairwell and the Muschelsaal in Rheinsberg Palace. His designs were used in the construction of the The Princely Pheasantry in Pszczyna-Porêba in southern Poland. His best-known work is the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

His son Carl Ferdinand Langhans (1781-1869) was also an architect.

Daylight view

King Frederick William II of Prussia (reigned 1786–97) decided to make Berlin a cultural centre dominated by German artists. Among the architects he called to Berlin were Carl Gotthard Langhans and David Gilly, who, with Heinrich Gentz, created a severe but inventive style in the 1790s that was indebted to Ledoux as well as to Johann Winckelmann’s call for a return to the spirit of ancient Greek architecture. The great early monument of the Berlin school was the Brandenburg Gate (1789-93) by Langhans. Distantly inspired by the propylaea on the Acropolis in Athens, it was the first of the ceremonial Doric gateways to rise in modern Europe.

Langhans designed the Brandenburg Gate on the model of the propylaea on the Acropolis in Athens. Just as in Pericles’s day the citizens of Athens entered the shrines on the Acropolis through the ancient gate, so the citizens of Berlin were to cross the threshold into the new Athens on the Spree through the Brandenburg Gate.

In accordance with contemporary taste, Langhans added Attic bases to the Doric columns. In 1806, Johann Gottfried Schadow’s Quadriga on the top was carted off to Paris by Napoleon, only to return in triumph in 1814. Since then, the Brandenburg Gate has become a national monument.

Send Postcard Learn More

Nocturnal view

King Frederick William II of Prussia (reigned 1786-97) decided to make Berlin a cultural centre dominated by German artists. Among the architects he called to Berlin were Carl Gotthard Langhans and David Gilly, who, with Heinrich Gentz, created a severe but inventive style in the 1790s that was indebted to Ledoux as well as to Johann Winckelmann’s call for a return to the spirit of ancient Greek architecture. The great early monument of the Berlin school was the Brandenburg Gate (1789-93) by Langhans. Distantly inspired by the propylaea on the Acropolis in Athens, it was the first of the ceremonial Doric gateways to rise in modern Europe.

Send Postcard Learn More