Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century. - book reviews

Architectural Review, The, August, 1996 by James Stevens Curl

Gottfried Semper (1803-79) was regarded in his lifetime as the successor to Schinkel as Germany's greatest architect, although his explosive personality, boozing, duelling, and fornicating often led to difficulties. His writings established his reputation as a prescient theorist, and he can with justification be described as the Viollet-le-Duc of Central Europe. He had a profound influence on many architects, notably Otto Wagner, Berlage, Root, and Sullivan. His two early stays in Paris (1826-27 and 1829-30) brought him into contact with the new ideas about polychromy in Classical architecture that were to be developed in his own work. From France too came his rational, luminously clear, Renaissance-based architecture.

Semper's reputation has suffered from a view that little of artistic value was produced in the period 1830-1900. Yet his early works in Dresden included important buildings such as the first Hoftheater (1838-41 - destroyed), the Gemaldegalerie (1839-55), the Villa Rosa (1839), and the Oppenheim Palais (1845-48). Unfortunately, his career in that city came to an end when he was involved (with his friend, the composer Richard Wagner) in the political upheavals of 1848-49, and had to flee Saxony.

After a penurious time in London (where eventually he was taken up first by Edwin Chadwick and then by Henry Cole), he became a Professor at the Department of Practical Art before accepting a new teaching post in Zurich. While in Switzerland he designed a number of buildings, including what is now the ETH-Zurich, and Winterthur town-hall.

Semper then contributed to the creation of the architecture on Vienna's Ringstrasse in collaboration with Carl von Hasenauer: his works include the two great museums facing the Maria-Theresa-Platz (1872-81) and the Burgtheater (1871-88). The latter had elements in common with Semper's designs for the Munich Festspielhaus which would have outshone the Paris Opera as the grandest theatre of the nineteenth century as well as being his greatest achievement, had it been realised. The drawings show very clearly how his ideas influenced Richard Wagner in the design of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, notably the orchestra invisible to the audience. However, Semper's second Holtheater in Dresden, now the Semperoper (1870-78), demonstrates his mastery of a rich polychrome architectural language, confident, serving its purpose, and festive.

Mallgrave's attractive book is handsomely illustrated, though there are too many typographical errors for comfort.

JAMES STEVENS CURL