The stylistic debate, 1830-1900

In the first half of the nineteenth century German architects and theorists were engaged in a vigorous debate over which architectural style was most appropriate to the age and the location. Initially only two models were admitted, the Classical style of Greece and the Gothic style of Northern Europe. While the structural premises of these two styles - based, respectively, on the beam and the vault - were quite different, there was a strong belief in the possibility of fusing them in a new style that would combine the best attributes of both. Karl Friedrich Schinkel succeeded in doing exactly this in his design for the Bauakademie in Berlin (1831-6) in which the structural principles of the Gothic vault were combined with the formal and decorative elements of Neo-Classicism. An alternative to Schinkel's brilliant reconciliation of the Greek and the Gothic was the invention of a third, alternative style, and this was achieved with Friedrich von Gärtner's Staatsbibliothek in Munich (1831-42), in the Neo-Romanesque 'Rundbogenstil'. Between 1830 and 1840 the respective virtues of the three styles now on offer were the subject of lively discussion, as was the most likely means of resolving the conflict. The most promising development came from the realm of materials, with the emergence of iron as a building material.