Michele Cometa
Western Mosques. Ornamentalism and Orientalism in Nineteenth-century German Architecture
Western Mosques.pdf
Who walks towards Unter den Linden, coming from Alexanderplatz can see on the right, opposite to the Liebknecht Brücke, that joins the mainland to the Museuminseln, the blinding flashes of an oriental dome, a filigree reflecting the sunshine, especially in the evening hours of the Berlin late Summer. It is an image that both fascinates and produces a singular "estrangement", forcing the casual visitor like the most skilful architect to contemplate a "A Thousand and One Night" like background.
In spite of Berlin.
Or better: Thanks to a city, which seems almost to withdraw in that far point of the horizon, beyond the channel, beyond the Neoclassical National Galery, in order to make room for an icon that the city historian only hardly can lead back to a systematic picture. It is one of the many Western mosques, the famous Synagogue in the Oranienburgerstrasse, recently restored, that the Berliner Eduard Knoblauch built with the collaboration of August Stüler, between 1859 and 1866. A look to the internal decoration, today lost, doesn't leave doubts about the Moorish inspiration, surely enriched by Byzantine-Sicilian echoes.
This isolated Moorish building, a perfect synthesis of Islamic-Indian elements and Mozarabian iconography, is the symbol of a passion that for some decades tried, even in Berlin, even in Germany, to impose itself, and, as we will see, with fateful social and anthropological implications. A mosque for the hebrew community?
Germany Orientalism Moorish Style Wilhelma
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