Adolph Menzel paints Berlin — Berlinfographics

01Sanssouci, 1850–1852

His most popular picture — and he said he painted it for the chandelier

Menzel worked out the composition in 1848. In the spring of 1850 the Potsdam sugar manufacturer Ludwig von Jacobs ordered the picture, and at the beginning of August 1852 it was finished — and at once Menzel’s most popular work. Reproduced thousands of times, it came to prop up the official legend of Prussia, the museum’s catalogue says, without the painter’s doing.

It shows an evening concert in the music room at Sanssouci for Frederick’s sister Wilhelmine, on her last visit to Potsdam in 1750. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach is at the harpsichord. Menzel gave the king the sharp features of the old “Alter Fritz” — an anachronism: Frederick is 38 here.

Menzel, in old age

“Der König steht da wie ein Kommis, der Sonntags Muttern etwas vorflötet […]. Überhaupt habe ich’s bloß gemalt des Kronleuchters wegen.”

“The king stands there like a shop clerk piping a tune to his mum on a Sunday […]. Anyway, I only painted it for the sake of the chandelier.” Quoted in the Nationalgalerie’s catalogue entry for the picture.

The young Menzel, painted in profile by his friend Eduard Meyerheim, 1839. The Nationalgalerie bought the portrait from the Meyerheim family in 1884.Friedrich Eduard Meyerheim, 1839. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

02The wall

Six pictures across 75 Berlin years, hung to scale

6pictures, to scaleAdolph Menzel
1815–1905

The young Menzel, by Eduard Meyerheim, 1839.Friedrich Eduard Meyerheim, 1839. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

1815 · Breslau

Born in Breslau, in Berlin from 1830

Adolph Menzel was born in Breslau on 8 December 1815. In 1830 the family moved to Berlin; when his father died in 1832, he took over the lithographic press at 17 and kept his mother and siblings.

Source: Neue Deutsche Biographie

A sunlit, almost empty room: a thin white curtain billows from an open balcony door, two chairs, a mirror reflecting a lit wall, a bright patch of light on the bare wall. — “Das Balkonzimmer”, 1845.Adolph von Menzel, 1845. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

1845

“Das Balkonzimmer”

A room of the family flat in the Schöneberger Straße, then at the southern edge of Berlin, almost empty. It opens the series of painted interiors he made only until about 1848. 58 × 47 cm.

Source: SMB, Inv. A I 744

Pale station buildings beside an open sandy square with a street lamp, a carriage and a few figures. — The Potsdamer Bahnhof, by Carl Daniel Freydanck, c. 1840.Carl Daniel Freydanck, 1840. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

1847

“Die Berlin-Potsdamer Bahn”

The line to Potsdam had run since 1838; Menzel took it to visit his best friend. Of all his pictures, it is the only one to show the railway in a landscape. 42 × 52 cm — the smallest of the six.

Source: SMB, Inv. A I 643

A candle-lit rococo music room: a man in a plain blue coat plays the flute at a music stand in the centre, musicians wait at the right, court ladies and gentlemen listen at the left under a chandelier. — “Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci”, 1850–52.Adolph von Menzel, 1850–1852. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

1850–1852

“Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci”

Ordered in 1850, finished in August 1852. At 142 × 205 cm it is a history painting’s size — the scale he would later give to factory work.

Source: SMB, Inv. A I 206

A full-length photograph of an elderly man with side whiskers in military uniform with decorations. — Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, c. 1865–75.Unknown photographer, c. 1865-75. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

31 July 1870

“Abreise König Wilhelms I. zur Armee”

Back in Berlin as war with France broke out, Menzel watched from the window of a restaurant on Unter den Linden as the king drove to the Potsdamer Bahnhof. He painted it the next year. 63 × 78 cm.

Source: SMB, Inv. A I 323

A dark gouache: figures by the white glow of a furnace and a steam hammer in a forge. — Self-portrait with a worker at the steam hammer, 1872.Adolph von Menzel, 1872. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

1872–1875

“Eisenwalzwerk (Moderne Cyklopen)”

In the late summer of 1872 he travelled to Königshütte in Upper Silesia to draw the works. The result, 158 × 254 cm, is the largest of the six.

Source: SMB, Inv. A I 201

A loose oil sketch in warm browns and golds of a crowded ballroom with figures in uniforms and gowns. — Degas’s copy from memory, “Le Souper au bal (d’après Menzel)”.Edgar Degas, 1879. Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

1878

“Das Ballsouper”

Already under way in September 1876, the year after the rolling mill: the other end of the same society. 71 × 90 cm.

Source: SMB, Inv. A I 902

A tinted postcard of a temple-like museum building on a high base with a grand double staircase and an equestrian statue. — The Nationalgalerie, Berlin, postcard, c. 1912.Unknown author, 1912. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

All six

The rolling mill has 18 times the canvas of the railway

Hung side by side at their true sizes, the six show where Menzel put his effort: Das Eisenwalzwerk covers 4.01 m², Berlin-Potsdamer Eisenbahn 0.22 m².

Source: SMB, Inv. A I 201 · SMB, Inv. A I 643

An engraved portrait of an elderly man with a broad forehead, short beard and spectacles. — Menzel in Die Gartenlaube, 1885.unknown engraver after a photograph by Adolph Halwas, 1885. Via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

1905 · Berlin

He died in Berlin, aged 89

Menzel died on 9 February 1905, ennobled since 1898. Two years earlier the Nationalgalerie had bought the Balkonzimmer, in 1903.

Source: Neue Deutsche Biographie · SMB, Inv. A I 744

A crowded city street lined with tall decorated houses and flags; men wave hats and women watch from balconies as an open carriage passes at the left edge. — Adolph Menzel, “Abreise König Wilhelms I. zur Armee am 31. Juli 1870” (King Wilhelm I leaves for the army, 31 July 1870), 1871: the crowd on Unter den Linden as the king’s carriage passes, flags hanging limp. 63 × 78 cm, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Inv. A I 323. Shown whole.Adolph von Menzel, 1871. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

04Unter den Linden, 31 July 1870

He watched the king leave for war from a restaurant window — and painted the crowd, not the king

When war with France broke out, Menzel cut short his summer away and came back to Berlin. From the window of a restaurant on Unter den Linden he saw the commotion as Wilhelm I drove to the Potsdamer Bahnhof. The banker Magnus Herrmann, a friend, ordered the picture.

The carriage has almost left the frame. The king’s friendly wave and the sobbing queen hardly suggest a historic hour; the brick tower of the new Rathaus rises behind, while the royal palace is a shadow. Among the flags, the “sceptical patriot” — the catalogue’s phrase — slipped in a Red Cross flag.

A wide tree-lined avenue with carriages and strollers, classical buildings and the opera house on the right. — Unter den Linden with the opera house, painted by Eduard Gaertner in 1853 — the avenue Menzel watched from a restaurant window in 1870.Eduard Gaertner, 1853. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

05The court, 1878

The court ball, from the buffet — in a hall that never existed

With the rolling mill and the ball supper, the museum writes, Menzel caught both poles of Gründerzeit society; the second picture was already under way in September 1876. He went to the great court balls into old age and was allowed to sketch, sometimes climbing on a table to do it. Every face is an individual and none is a portrait; the gilded hall, which would have had to be in the Berlin palace, was invented.

A crowded gilded ballroom glowing with candlelight: officers in uniform and women in pale gowns eat and drink standing, plates and glasses in hand. — Adolph Menzel, “Das Ballsouper” (The ball supper), 1878: the interval at a court ball, guests crowding the buffet in a gilded hall lit by candles. 71 × 90 cm, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Inv. A I 902. Shown whole.Adolph von Menzel, 1878. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

It was first shown in Paris, in 1879. Edgar Degas was so struck by it that he sketched a copy in oil from memory — today in the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg.

A young man with dark hair in a dark coat and white collar, looking out from a softly lit oil portrait. — Edgar Degas, self-portrait, 1857–58.Edgar Degas, 1857–1858. J. Paul Getty Museum. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

06The edge of the city

Before the kings and the factories, he painted his own room and waste ground by the tracks

“Das Balkonzimmer” shows a room of the flat in the Schöneberger Straße, at what was then the southern edge of Berlin, where Menzel lived with his mother and siblings. The room is strikingly empty. Bought for the Nationalgalerie in 1903, two years before his death, it became, in the museum’s words, the very image of the young Menzel’s art.

“Die Berlin-Potsdamer Bahn” was painted from about where the S-Bahn station Großgörschenstraße stands today, looking across building land to the domes of the Gendarmenmarkt. Menzel, the museum’s catalogue says, was the first in Germany to see such provisional ground outside the city gates as a subject.

A broad brownish landscape under a grey sky; a dark train trailing smoke runs across it on an embankment, a few houses and the faint domes of a city on the horizon. — Adolph Menzel, “Die Berlin-Potsdamer Bahn” (The Berlin–Potsdam railway), 1847: a smoking train crosses open ground at the southern edge of the city, the towers of the Gendarmenmarkt on the skyline. 42 × 52 cm, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Inv. A I 643. Shown whole.Adolph von Menzel, 1847. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

A small yellow station building squeezed between two elevated railway bridges, with cars passing on the road in front. — The S-Bahn station Yorckstraße (Großgörschenstraße) in 2007, about where Menzel stood to paint the railway in 1847.bukk, 2007. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Adolph Menzel · 1815–1905

He painted the king’s flute and the mill’s fire with the same attention. All six now belong to one museum on the Museum Island.

Corrected from our earlier sheet

Das Balkonzimmer — held by: Alte Nationalgalerie (Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).
Abreise König Wilhelms I. — held by: Alte Nationalgalerie (Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).
Ballsouper — size: 71 × 90 cm.
Das Balkonzimmer shows the flat in the Schöneberger Straße, not a later address.
The rolling mill was studied at Königshütte in Upper Silesia; Borsig in Moabit was among further studies in Berlin.
Menzel saw the king leave for war from the window of a restaurant on Unter den Linden.
The Flötenkonzert was composed in 1848 and finished in 1852; the rolling mill was painted 1872–1875.
Menzel died aged 89.

Prussia loved Menzel’s Frederick the Great. Menzel said the king in it “stands there like a shop clerk”