Zprávy památkové péče 2019, 79(4):483-494 | DOI: 10.56112/zpp.2019.4.07

Schmidt's project of hoardings on the Karlštejn Castle towers

Jana Pařízková Čevonová, Marek Pařízek

NPÚ, GnŘ

A characteristic theme of the Neo-Gothic renovation of Karlštejn Castle is its wooden hoarding. The architect Friedrich Schmidt proposed this design on the Great and Marian Tower in early 1888, deviating considerably from his original 1870 project. What prompted Schmidt to make such a major change has not yet been examined in detail; nonetheless, it largely determines the current architectural character of the castle and has always been one of the main points of criticism of its purist reconstruction. This article summarizes the evolution of Schmidt's proposals for roofing the Great and Marian Tower of Karlštejn Castle in 1887-1888 and lists the reasons that led to the implementation of the wooden hoarding of the towers. A well-preserved extensive set of planning documentation was used for this purpose, as were certain neglected written sources primarily from the correspondence between Schmidt and architect Josef Mocker. The meeting of the Landtag on 9 January 1886 marked Schmidt's original 1870 plan for the reconstruction of Karlštejn solely as a starting point which would have to be specified on the basis of new historical and archaeological findings. The castle's condition also required a new assessment, as Schmidt would state a little later. The towers took precedence as its most important heritage elements. In 1887, Schmidt worked out two variants for roofing them while eliminating the originally proposed extensions with open galleries. The reasons that led him to do so can be seen in the technical difficulties caused by the water leaking into the gallery of the Great Tower. If the assumed sequence of designs is correct, then in the older variant he chose a separate architectural concept for each tower that remotely followed their preserved condition. The Great Tower ended with roofed battlements and the closing of the Marian Tower by a floor with windows. In the later variant, the floor with windows was considered similarly for both towers. None of the previously known plans from 1887 envisaged hoarding. The relevant implementation documentation was prepared with regard to the specified program of construction work. After approval in August 1887 by the restoration committee of the castle and the Czech governors, reconstruction began. This, among other things, meant the commencement of detailed field surveys by the construction administration of the castle under the supervision of Mocker. Despite having the plans completed, Schmidt attached great importance to the surveys, still seeking a suitable solution for the extension of the Marian Tower. The oldest reports from October 1887 did not confirm its existence, let alone provide information about its construction. The first and fundamental impulse for later realization came shortly thereafter, in November 1887, from a completely different area. At that time, Mocker had passages from Augustus Sedláček's book on castles and fortresses in the Bohemian kingdom translated to Schmidt. In this publication, only recently available and first published in notebook form, Sedláček presumed wooden hoardings on the Marian Tower. This was probably only a primary idea, since in 1855 Karel Vladislav Zap mentioned the term hoardings (podsebití) for the Marian Tower only in the sense of the preserved gallery of the Great Tower. Sedláček could not support his opinion with historical written reports, relying instead only on architectural analysis. Just a few days later, Mocker's correspondence showed another serious impetus. These were the remains of a corridor set on wooden consoles on the cladding of the burgrave, to which Mocker pointed out in a letter to Schmidt, saying that the Marian Tower could have been terminated by a similar corridor. At the request of Schmidt, consoles, or their remains, were sought below the main cornice of the Marian Tower. The essential argument for the realization of the hoarding finally came with an investigation into the masonry above the cornice of the Marian Chapel where the remains of wooden ties were found, of which Mocker informed Schmidt on 27 December 1887. Jan Střelba was present at the finding; he drew the fragments of the construction with strut beams on the western and eastern sides of the Marian Tower on the now well-known plans, completed on 30 December 1887. He supposed that this was a remnant of a hipped end, but the plan nonetheless contained the handwritten remark "podsebití", or hoarding. Schmidt completed the first plans of the Marian Tower with hoarding before 26 January 1888, when he sent them to Josef Hlávka for consideration. As he mentioned in his accompanying letter, he derived its appearance from the so-called merchant's house in Constance, which he knew from the publication Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture franćaise du XIe au XVIe siècle by Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. He also mentioned his own measurements in Basel and later provided further unspecified German and Czech examples. Older literature subsequently added the castle Pernštejn (Herain 1898), but without a clearer link to Schmidt.
Schmidt justified the proposal to unite the towers, i.e. applying the hoarding to the Great Tower as well regardless of its different state of preservation and the absence of a similar finding to that on the Marian Tower, by the even termination of its main cornice; in his opinion, this meant that the walled gallery above it was not original. He also based his argument on the similarities in the profiling of the main cornices of both towers, suggesting a similar architectural design. Mocker responded only by mentioning the more general architectural and functional similarities with the Marian Tower. Schmidt completed the first plans for the Great Tower with hoarding on 12 February 1888. The central commission was subsequently acquainted with the proposal, and it was generally presumed that the existence of hoarding on the Karlštejn towers had been safely proven. The restoration commission agreed on 9 May 1888, and the project was approved by the Czech governorate on 1 July of the same year. According to current knowledge, only partial design work related to the chimneys and sanctuary of the Marian Tower followed until July 21 and did not bring any changes in terms of the hoarding. In general, it seems that even though Schmidt was aiming towards an exact re-Gothization based on his evidence from research of the castle, it was closer to the opposite in practice, with a more romantic creative approach. He wrote to Josef Hlávka on 13 February 1888 regarding with the design of the connecting corridor between the Marian and Great Tower, mentioning the importance he placed on the research and interpretation of the findings for the project: "My dear friend, history is colossal, and my temperature rises when I think that we would have achieved this knowledge only after the fact." Nonetheless, Schmidt's purist sentiments prevailed over the responsible enthusiasm to determine the "original appearance" of the building, thus allowing for a significant transformational renovation of the towers using a suitable medieval model and with regard to their uniform architectural impact.

Keywords: architecture, 19th century, heritage purism, Karlštejn Castle, Friedrich Schmidt, Josef Mocker, August Sedláček, Josef Hlávka, Jan Střelba, hoarding

Published: December 1, 2019  Show citation