2006 Germany €10 Silver Coin "Karl F. Schinkel"

• Issue date:
• Mint: Stuttgart (F)
• Denomination: €10
• Quality: Proof/Uncirculated
• Limits: 300,000/1.6 million
• Alloy: 92.5% Sterling Silver
• Diameter: 32.50 mm
• Weight: 18 grams
• Design: Axel Bertram
• Box/Capsule: No/Yes
• Certificate: No


• Image shows proof quality


• Edge lettering: DER MENSCH BILDE SICH IN ALLEM SCHÖN ()

This issue celebrates the important Prussian architect and painter Karl Friedrich Schinkel.

Born on March 13, 1781 in Neuruppin (Brandenburg), Schinkel was the most prominent architect of neoclassicism in Prussia. After returning to Berlin from his first trip to Italy in 1805, Schinkel started to earn his living as a painter. When he saw Caspar David Friedrich's painting "Monk by the sea" (Der Mönch am Meer) at the 1810 Berlin art exhibition, he decided that he would never reach such a mastership in painting and turned to architecture instead. After Napoleon's defeat, Schinkel oversaw the Prussian Building Commission. In this position, he was not only responsible for reshaping the still relatively unspectacular city of Berlin into a representative capital for Prussia, but also oversaw projects in the expanded Prussian territories spanning from the Rhineland in the West to Königsberg in the East.

Schinkel's style is defined by a turn to Greek rather than Imperial Roman architecture, in an attempt to turn away from the style that was linked to the recent French occupiers. His most famous buildings are found in and around Berlin and include Neue Wache (1816-1818), the Schauspielhaus (1819-1821) at the Gendarmenmarkt, which replaced the earlier theater that was destroyed by fire in 1817, and the Old Museum (Altes Museum) on Museum Island (1823-1830).

Schinkel, however, is noted as much for his theoretical work and his architectual drafts as for the relatively few buildings that were actually executed to his designs. Maybe his merits are best shown in his non-executed plans for the transformation of the Athenian Acropolis into a royal palace for the new Kingdom of Greece and for the erection of the Orianda Palace in the Crimea. He also designed the famed Iron Cross medal of Prussia.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel passed away on October 9, 1841 at the age of 60.