The golden Nike and Gendarmenmarkt in art — Fechhelm and Hasenpflug

The figure BerliNike calls the golden Nike has stood on the dome of the French Cathedral since the 1780s. There is no painting of her alone: she is five metres sixty tall and sixty metres above the square, and the painters saw her as a dot above the dome. What they painted was her house. This page presents three views of Gendarmenmarkt from the tower's first four decades, two by Carl Traugott Fechhelm, shortly after completion, and one by Carl Hasenpflug, when Schinkel's Schauspielhaus had just been finished. The building history of the square is in the guide to Gendarmenmarkt.

BerliNike (Nike)The golden figure on the dome of the French Cathedral at Gendarmenmarkt.French Cathedral, Gendarmenmarkt · Dome figure since 1818Talk to the figure →

Fechhelm: the new tower, 1785 and 1788

Carl Traugott Fechhelm was the youngest brother of the painter Carl Friedrich Fechhelm, who gave him his first lessons; he became a full member of the Berlin Academy and exhibited there in 1786, 1789 and 1791.⁵ Wikimedia Commons gives his dates as 1747/48 to 1819.² Both of his views of Gendarmenmarkt belong to the Märkisches Museum in Berlin.¹²

The picture of 1785 shows the square from the corner of Markgrafen- and Jägerstraße.¹ It was made in the year the dome tower was completed: the tower had been added to the French Friedrichstadt church between 1780 and 1785 after plans by Carl von Gontard and finished under Georg Christian Unger.⁶ The figure is already on top. In front of the tower, market people trade, because Gendarmenmarkt was then what its name still says: a market.

Three years later Fechhelm painted the square again, this time with the French comedy theatre and the French Cathedral.² The comedy theatre stood in the middle of the square, where the Konzerthaus stands today; it was the predecessor of the National Theatre, which burned down in 1817, and of the Schauspielhaus that Schinkel built afterwards.⁹ In Fechhelm's picture the tower with its figure rises above everything around it.

Hasenpflug: both domes and Schinkel's Schauspielhaus, 1822

Carl Hasenpflug was born in Berlin in 1802 and died in Halberstadt in 1858.⁴ In 1820 he began an apprenticeship as a decorative painter in the workshop of Carl Wilhelm Gropius; with his Gendarmenmarkt he made his debut at the Berlin Academy exhibition of 1822.⁴ The list of works on Wikipedia dates the painting to 1824 and gives oil on canvas, 84 by 131.7 centimetres, private collection; Wikimedia Commons gives 1822 and documents the image with an auction lot.³⁴ The two statements contradict each other, and this page gives both.

The picture shows the square with both dome towers and, in the middle, the Schauspielhaus that Karl Friedrich Schinkel had built between 1818 and 1821.⁹ Hasenpflug thus painted Gendarmenmarkt in exactly the shape it has kept to this day, in the year it was completed.

The figure on the dome

What appears on all three pictures as a dot above the dome is a representation of Religion; opposite, on the German Cathedral, stands her counterpart, Virtue. Both figures were originally chased in copper by Heinrich Friedrich Kambly and re-created in 1985 by Achim Kühn; the sculptural programme of the French Cathedral was made after drawings by Bernhard Rode with the participation of Daniel Chodowiecki.⁷ The figure is gilded and 5.60 metres tall.⁸ So the figure Fechhelm and Hasenpflug saw was Kambly's original; whoever looks up today sees the re-creation of 1985. She is not an ancient goddess of victory; BerliNike reads her as the golden Nike and says so openly. The dome burned out in the Second World War and was reconstructed from 1981; in 1987 the tower was handed back to the public with its viewing balustrade and carillon.⁶

1. 1780Construction of the two dome towers on Gendarmenmarkt begins after plans by Carl von Gontard.
2. 1785The tower of the French Cathedral is completed; Carl Traugott Fechhelm paints the square from the corner of Markgrafen- and Jägerstraße.
3. 1788Fechhelm paints Gendarmenmarkt with the French comedy theatre and the French Cathedral.
4. 1817The National Theatre in the middle of the square burns down.
5. 1821Schinkel's Schauspielhaus is finished.
6. 1822Carl Hasenpflug exhibits his Gendarmenmarkt at the Berlin Academy exhibition.
7. 1981Reconstruction of the burnt-out dome begins.
8. 1985Achim Kühn re-creates the figure on the dome.
9. 1987The tower is handed back with viewing balustrade and carillon.