Frederick William IV

(1795-1861, King 1848-1858)

Early Christian churches, renaissance palaces and rural residential homes in Italy were the models for the buildings of Frederick William. As crown prince, he was already active as an architect in Potsdam, and often put his ideas down on paper himself. His buildings from later years earned him the nickname "Romanticist on the Throne".

His years as crown prince and king proved to be very fruitful for the development of Potsdam. Together with Schinkel, Lenné, Persius, and other important artists, and based on the inheritance of his ancestors, he created that landscape in and around Potsdam which is today considered part of the most important treasures of European culture. The already existing palaces and parks of the 17th and 18th centuries merged with his Italianate structures into a scenic unity.

Frederick William IV planned his buildings as an absolute monarch and thus ignored the real social conditions of his time. Financial limitations on the one hand and the meanwhile legally guaranteed status of property ownership by the citizens on the other hand led to a series of his plans not being realised or realised only in parts.

Many of his works of conversion or extension can be found in Sanssouci park (the Peace Church 1845-1855), on Pfingstberg hill (Belvedere 1847-1863), in Babelsberg Park and in Sacrow (Church of the Redeemer 1841-1844).

Besides the "Mosque" in the Breite Straße , the most conspicuous buildings in the cityscape are numerous so-called Italian "turreted villas" mostly built by Persius.

Friedrich Mielke wrote: "The Potsdam palace plans of Frederick William do ... not have a political background of any kind. For the general public both the development of the plans as well as the partial realisation of the buildings remained a puzzle, since the monarch appeared as a creative artist and the palace plans are inventions belonging to him alone. Here a king did not design and act for his people, but an architect who wrestled with his own ideas. The gap between the political vocation and the artistic calling was too great for Frederick William to cope with. The discrepancy was similar for the Prussian King as it was for the Bavarian King Ludwig. However, the latter was addicted to a timeless romanticism and his architectural wishes ranged between French Baroque and medieval Gothic, but the Prussian king had a clear conception from the very beginning, in which the Italianate agricultural style with the Florentine Renaissance, Norman castles and models from the antique were melted into a ensemble characteristic for him."

Frederick William IV found his final resting place in the burial vault of the Peace Church.