Sunday, 26 May 2024 Berlin: Charlottenburg

Written 14 August 2024

When a private house was renovated to become the Hotel Henri, some interesting configurations resulted. For example, not only was the dresser/chest of drawers in the closet, but the closet included a full-size window, as big as the one with the view of the courtyard, but fortunately in frosted glass.

The hotel supplied free bottled water (Staatl Faschingen brand), clearly labeled "still," but actually slightly sparkling and horribly sour.

The breakfast buffet was relatively small but quite adequate. Here at the right is the bread table—seedy and plain bread buns in one basket and croissants in the other. A small slate next to the ice-cream-cone portion cups claims that the strawberry and apricot jams and the chocolate hazelnut spread are house made. No claims about the honey, and I don't remember what was in the white crock.

Beyond are glass jars offering several cereals, nuts, seeds, dried fruit, and other sprinkles and additives. Even a small bowl of whole fruit.

On the cold table were vegetables, cut fruit, butter, cold cuts, and cheeses.

The hot offerings were scrambled eggs, bacon, Berliner boulettes, and soft-boiled eggs (in the basket).

Our expedition for the day was to drive to Charlottenburg Palace, on the west edge of the city. In 1695, Frederick I (Old Fritz's grandfather) gave his wife of 11 years, Sophia Charlotte of Hanover, a 500-year-old village named Lietzow. She renamed it Charlottenburg, and Frederick commissioned construction of a "modest summer residence, originally called Lützenburg Castle. Unfortunately Sophia Charlotte died of pneumonia in 1705, at which point the name was changed to Charlottenburg Palace. Over the generations, it was added to and expanded and finally ended up as a "striking Baroque palace."

Sophia Charlotte was another of those smart and cultivated princesses, author, musician, collector, friend of philosophers. (And, I learned later, her older brother, also from Hanover, succeeded to the British throne as George I!). Her successors continued to contribute to the palace's grandeur, both indoors and out.

When we arrived, some sort of fair for children was set up in the vast forecourt outside the gates, . . .

. . . but once we waded through it and stepped through the gates into the courtyard, we had this unobstructed view of the central section of the palace.

The equestrian statue is of Frederick I's father, which was only moved here in 1952.

The four figures chained to its base represent the four temperaments of antiquity (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic). I'm guessing we're seeing melancholic and sanguine here.

At the right here is an aerial photo of the palace and its gardens was posted in the entrance hall. You can see that the courtyard outside the main gate is ordinarily a parking lot, but because the fair was set up there, all the parkingincluding a lot of vans and panel trucks belonging to the fair people—was crowded into the overflow lot, under the first six rows of trees to the left of it.

We spent the morning touring the "old palace," (the central section with the two wings embracing the statue in the courtyard). Then we had to walk back out through the gate, turn left, and cross half the regular parking lot and all of the overflow lot to reach the end of the narrow orange building in front of the palace and separate from it. That's the "small orangerie," which now houses the palace's lunch room for tourists.

Then we went back in and spent the afternoon touring the New Wing and the New Pavilion (marked by the last two labels at the right).

Unfortunately, most areas of old palace were off limits to photographs, but I did get a few. We were shown quite a few furnished and highly decorated rooms, like the one at the left here. And the decoration of the chapel (right) was stunning, in an almost literal sense. Talk about Baroque!

In a large central rotunda surrounded by red arches, the marble floor included many cross sections, at different angles, of molluscs, like razor clams, fossilized in the stone.

Other rooms were hung with tapestries, one of them contained a beautiful harpsichord the sides of which were painted with Japanese scenes (Sophie Charlotte played the harpsichord).

At the left here is a menu, dated 24 May 1913, for the "Königlich Mittagstafel," the royal midday table. It starts with turtle soup, then proceeded through turbot, Italian-style chicken, English lobster salad, ham casserole with fresh morels, cold venison with salad, aratichoke bottoms with marc, Dutch bombe (an ice cream dessert, I think), cheese sticks, and dessert (unspecified). Wow.

The family collected porcelain, some of which was on display. I was struck by this amazing piece that depicts a little fairy of some kind (chubby toddler with gauzy blue and gold wings) looking perturbed and carrying what could be a butterfly net having an encounter with a hornet. What's a little disturbing is that, if you blow the photo up to full size, you see that the hornet is thrusting its proboscis deep into the fairy's abdomen, drawing a good-sized trickle of blood! Yikes!

The whole second floor was full of china and silver, and it included as well, a display about the traditional German spiked helmet. It included a photo of the word for "German" in German sign language—a loose fist held with the thumb against the forehead and the index finger pointing straight up. German sign is in the same group as French and American (but not British) sign, so I looked up the American sign for German—two were listed, one of which was the same reference to the pointed helmet.

The lunch menu was limited, offering only soup with bread (which I chose) and sausages with potato salad (here's Leon's plate).

The dessert choices were a little more exciting. I went for the chocolate Louisatorte—that's Louisa, one of the princesses who grew up in the palace, on the little white-chocolate decorative pastille.

The other choice was this torte that layered raspberries on top of chocolate cake, yellow cake, and cream filling.

Nice lunch.

On the way back for our afternoon's touring, I got this shot of a linden branch in full bloom. They've been in bud everywhere we've been, with maybe a few blooms—enough to scent the nearby air—but this was the first I'd seen that were completely open. Lindens are what the French call "tilleuil," and their flowers make delicious tea, a favorite after-dinner beverage of mine when we dine in France.

We also passed this statue ot Frederick I, first king of Prussia, who built this palace.

Photography in the new wing was not restricted. I'll start with this rack of portable folding stools, next to the cloak room as usual, from which I immediately appropriated a stool to take with me.

This beautiful little marble statue by Albert Wolff, maybe half life size, depicts sisters Luise and Friederiecke of Prussia (granddaughters of Sophia Charlotte, I think). Luise may be the same Louisa the torte was named for. And I think their brother was Old Fritz.

A highlight for David and me, in the new wing, was version 2 (of five the painter did) of Jacques-Louis David's "Napoleon Crossing the Alps." (We're fans of David.) Versions 3 and 5 are in the Palace of Versailles, where I think we've seen them; Version 4 is in Vienna; and Version 1, started out in Madrid but was plundered from there by Joseph Bonaparte, who took it to, of all places, New Jersey, where it stayed until 1949, when a descendent bequeathed it to the Château de Malmaison (about 15 km west of Paris), where it is today. The versions differ in things like the color of the horse, the color of the billowing cloak, and the background sky.

At the right here is "Elizabeth Christine's Japanese Room." People are perched among the fanciful greenery doing things like shooting an arrow at a bird, playing musical instruments, and serving food to a guy on a throne.

Most of the new wing was dedicated to painting, which I tooks lots of shots of, few of which were very successful. I did get a decent photo, though, of this 1834 panorama of Berlin from the roof of the Friedrichswerder Church by Eduard Gaertner. It was actually painted in two panels, displayed here at an angle to one another.

Below them were explanatory drawings. The one at the right here identifies the major structures in the image, like (left to right) the dome of St. Hedwig's (Catholic) Church; the low, flat royal library, the Opera House (with the bluish roof behind the pinacle), and the university ("formerly Prince Henry's palace). It even points out the middle one of the three figures standing by the parapet as Alexander Humboldt!

I also liked this model of the palace with illustrations and explanations (in both braille and print) of notable people, indicating particular places in the buildings where the lived or partied.

For example, at the left here is Elizabeth Christine, she of the Japanese room, with a line indicating where in the palace she stayed overnight on her way to her wedding. I photographed most of them and can read the text when I blow them up.

Next, we visited the New Pavilion, built in 1824–25 by Frederick William III (the one who succeeded Old Fritz's successor, I'm pretty sure). It's the little building at the extreme right in the aerial view above. It displays art of the "Schinkel period."

Here at the right is its largest room, with windows looking out on the palace gardens.

Here's a closer view of the little gilt table in the curve of the blue settee. I think it's enameled, but it could be porcelain. Around the center of flowers and fruit are a series of scenes of Berlin.

In a display case nearby was this magnificently overdecorated stein, which I think we were told was the prize, or at least a commemoration of, a tournament that was held here.

Now I'm tearing my hair trying to keep the family relationships of the Hohenzollerns straight, so I may get some of this wrong, but as I understand it, this tournament coincided with the birthday of FW III's eldest daughter, Charlotte (full name Friederike Luise Charlotte Wilhelmine of Prussia), who later married Tsar Nicholas I. And just to make my genealogical difficulties worse, when she converted to the Orthodox church on that occasion, she changed her name to Alexandra Feodorovna! I always assumed "Feodor" was Russian for Theodore, but maybe it actually means Frederick.

My notes say that this beautiful portrait is of Louisa at 17 years old. I found no label indicating who painted it or just what Louisa we're talking about. I'm guessing Charlotte/Alexandra's mother, Duchess Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.

At the right here is Karl Friedrich Schinkel, architect and painter (expecially of architecture). I encountered several mentions of him earlier but paid scant attention (never having heard of him) before I realized how large he would loom in the 19th century German art world, to the point where the early 19th century came to be known as the "Schinkelzeit," the Schinkel period.

Here are a couple samples of his paintings, which I like very much. We even came across a display in another room of his work as furniture designer, in the form of half a dozen different chairs.

The period from 1815 and 1848 is also, as it happens, called (disparagingly) the Biedermeier period, named for a fictional mediocre poet. It's also said (again disparagingly) to be characterized by "unchallenging" artistic styles.

Other artists of the period that were on display included Caspar David Friedrich, Eduard Gaertner (who sculpted the two princesses), and Carl Blechen, none of whom I remember being mentioned in Art 100 (though I didn't do very well in the course, so maybe I missed them).

Eventually, I returned my handy folding stool, and we headed back to Berlin to get ready for dinner.

The Hotel Henri provided no bar soap, but by the sink was this pump bottle of soft hand soap, on which was printed as list of the "top 5 songs to wash your hands": Que sera sera by Doris Day, Suzanne by Leonard Cohen, Ruby by Nadja Reid, Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac, and As Time Goes By by Dooley Wilson. I only knew three of them.

In the shower were two pumps, marked "for her" and "for him." I have no idea whether the contents differed, but the lists of "top 5 songs to sing in the shower" did. For her: Wonderwall by Oasis, Love Me Tender by Elvis Presley, Dancing Queen by Abba, Stay by Rihanna, and Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Judy Garland. Down to just two.

For him: Yellow Submarine by the Beatles, One by U2, Por una Cabéza by Carlos Gardel, Love is a Drug by Roxy Music, and Knocking on Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan. Down to just one.

All three bottles said, at the bottom, "Every day should be a Henri day!"

For supper, we went a few doors up the street to Gasthaus Krombach, where we started with this terrific mixed appetizer plate for four, which included schmalz, apple remoulade, a Berliner boulette, a head-cheese-like block of aspic with veggies and pork, smoked salmon, horseradish, and pickled herring, all garnished with cucumbers, tomatoes, pickles, and raw red onion!

Alas, don't seem to have photos of the rest of the dinner—I don't remember whether I ran out of battery again or just didn't remember to take any. But from my notes, I know that I had calves' liver, which wasn't as good as the beef liver I'd had elsewhere. It came with mashed potatoes, fried onions, and fried apples.

David had medalions of pork fried with rösti, a sort of fried hash-brown cake that's a specialty of Switzerland.

Gritta had rösti with sunny-side-up eggs on top. In German, the eggs were called "Spiegeleier," mirror eggs.

For dessert, we all split a large hot apple strudel with vanilla sauce, ice cream, and chocolate sprinkles.