Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff

With his interior design and the backing of the king, he created the basis for the Frederician Rococo style at Rheinsberg, which was the residence of the crown prince and later monarch.

After leaving military service he arranged to be trained in various painting techniques by the Prussian court painter Antoine Pesne, with whom he shared a lifelong friendship.

Heinrich Ludwig Manger, as an architect more a technician than an artist, wrote with a critical undertone in 1789 in his Baugeschichte von Potsdam, that Knobelsdorff designed his buildings "merely in a perspective and picturesque way", but praised his paintings.

Knobelsdorff's ideal models, the Englishmen Inigo Jones (1573–1652) and William Kent (1684–1748) as well as the Frenchman Claude Perrault (1613–1688), likewise grew into their professions in a roundabout way and were no longer young men when they turned to architecture.

After his failed attempt to flee Prussia and subsequent imprisonment in Küstrin, (now Polish Kostrzyn nad Odrą), Frederick had just been granted somewhat more freedom of movement by his strict father.

His recorded his impressions in a travel sketchbook which contains almost one hundred pencil drawings, but only of part of his trip since on the return stretch he broke his arm in a traffic accident between Rome and Florence.

Knobelsdorff wrote to the crown prince that "The castrati here cannot be tempted to leave [...] regular employment, especially for those from the poorer classes, is the reason why they prefer 100 Rthlr (Reichstaler) in Rome to thousands abroad.

Rheinsberg Palace and the modest household of the crown prince became a place of relaxed communion and artistic creativity, quite in contrast to the dry, matter-of-fact atmosphere at the Berlin court of the soldier-king.

This was where Frederick and Knobelsdorff discussed architecture and city planning, and developed their first ideas for an extensive program of construction which was to be realized when the crown prince assumed the throne.

Knobelsdorff designed an extensive building complex with inner courtyards and in front a cour d'honneur and semicircular colonnades just north of the street Unter den Linden.

The final square bore little resemblance to the original plan, but was highly praised already by contemporaries and also in this form caused the royal architect to achieve great eminence.

For the frontage of the externally modestly structured building the architect followed the model of two views from Colin Campbell's "Vitruvius Britannicus", one of the most important collections of architectonic engravings, which included works of English Palladian architecture.

The Tiergarten, in times past the private hunting grounds of the Electors and greatly neglected under Frederick's father, was to be turned into the public park and gardens of the royal residence city Berlin.

The actual work began with the improvement of the main axis of the park, a path which extended the boulevard Unter den Linden through the Tiergarten to Charlottenburg (now Strasse des 17.

To the south Knobelsdorff arranged for three so-called labyrinths (these were actually mazes) in the pattern of famous French parks—areas separated off with artistically designed intertwined hedgerows.

Especially in the eastern part of the park near the Brandenburg Gate there was a dense network of pathways which constantly intersected and contained many "salons" and "cabinets"—small enclosed areas so to speak "furnished" with benches and fountains.

Knobelsdorff's successor, the court gardener Justus Ehrenreich Sello, began the modification of these late Barock pleasure grounds in the style of the new ideal of an English landscape park.

A number of biographers were of the opinion that Knobelsdorff used his property in the Tiergarten only to spend the idyllic summer months there together with his family each year, but this land was actually intensively cultivated as both a fruit and a vegetable garden, and turned out to be a useful investment.

Monbijou Palace started out as a single-storey pavilion with gardens on the Spree and was the summer residence, and after 1740 the widow's seat, of queen Sophie Dorothee of Prussia, the mother of Frederick II.

After plans for a new palace residence in Berlin were abandoned, Frederick the Great had the castle rebuilt by Knobelsdorff between 1744 and 1752, with rich interior decorations in rococo style.

Knobelsdorff raised objections to this idea; he wanted to increase the height of the building by adding a souterrain level to serve as a pedestal, plus a basement, and to move it forward to the edge of the terraces since it would otherwise look as if it had sunk into the ground if viewed from the foot of the vineyard hill.

Three French masters of this art, Antoine Watteau, Jules Aurele Meissonier and Jaques de La Joue, had created patterns and models which found wide circulation in the form of etchings and engravings.

Watteau's notion of ornamental grotesques—a frame of fanciful plants and architectonic motifs surrounds a scene showing trees and people undertaking rural pleasures—clearly often served as inspiration.

The long-time bachelor Knobelsdorff had entered into a relationship with the "middle class" daughter of the Charlottenburg sacristan, Schöne, in 1746, thereby earning the disapproval of court society.

Two days later the Berlinische Nachrichten reported, "On the 16th of this month the honorable gentleman, Mr. George Wentzel, Baron of Knobelsdorff, artistic director of all royal palaces, houses and gardens, director-in-chief of all construction in all provinces, as well as finance, war and domain councillor, departed this life after a prolonged illness in the 53rd year of his renowned existence.

This important Italian architect of the High Renaissance published in 1570 the definitive work, "Quattro libri dell´architettura" containing his own creations as well numerous drawings of antique architecture.

Since Frederick recognized the qualities of Knobelsdorff and expected great things of him he immediately bombarded him with work, but also gave him titles and awards and allocated a magnificent house in Leipziger Strasse for his use while in his service.

Frederick the Great had a lively interest in both and developed some pertinent expertise, but remained an outsider for whom concern with architecture could not be the main focus of attention.

In 1747 complete disorder was discovered in the expense accounts managed by the building controller, Fincke, who had for years been involved in major projects under Knobelsdorff's leadership.

After listing 30 pieces of architecture which were realized in Potsdam alone according to his plans, he also writes about Knobelsdorff as a painter: "Although it does not really belong in a history of architecture.—he produced many paintings, all of them directly from nature.