Greek Revival Architecture - Germany and France

Germany and France

In Germany, the Greek revival is predominantly found in two centres, Berlin and Munich. In both locales, Doric was the court style rather than a popular movement, and was heavily patronised by Frederick William II and Ludwig I as the expression of their desires for their respective seats to become the capital of Germany. The earliest Greek building was the Brandenburg Gate (1788–91) by Carl Gotthard Langhans, who modelled it on the Propylaea. Ten years after the death of Frederick the Great, the Berlin Akademie initiated a competition for a monument to the king that would promote "morality and patriotism."

Friedrich Gilly's unexecuted design for a temple raised above the Leipziger Platz caught the tenor of high idealism that the Germans sought in Greek architecture and was enormously influential on Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Leo von Klenze. Schinkel was in a position to stamp his mark on Berlin after the catastrophe of the French occupation ended in 1813; his work on what is now the Altes Museum, Schauspielhaus, and the Neue Wache transformed that city. Similarly, in Munich von Klenze's Glyptothek and Walhalla were the fulfillment of Gilly's vision of an orderly and moral German world.

By comparison, the Greek revival in France was never popular with either the state or the public. What little there is started with Charles De Wailly's crypt in the church of St Leu-St Gilles (1773–80), and Claude Nicolas Ledoux's Barriere des Bonshommes (1785–89). First-hand evidence of Greek architecture was of very little importance to the French, due to the influence of Marc-Antoine Laugier's doctrines that sought to discern the principles of the Greeks instead of their mere practices. It would take until Laboustre's Neo-Grec of the Second Empire for the Greek revival to flower briefly in France.

At the cultural edges of Europe, in the Swedish region of western Finland, Greek Revival motifs might be grafted on a purely baroque design, as in the design for Oravais Church by Jacob Rijf, 1792 (illustration, right). A Greek Doric order, rendered in the anomalous form of pilasters, contrasts with the hipped roof and boldly-scaled cupola and lantern, of wholly traditional baroque inspiration.