III. Potsdam — the Playground of the Hohenzollerns.

It would be as unjust to form an estimate of the Hohenzollerns or of their capital without visiting Potsdam as to form an estimate of Germany without visiting Bavaria. For Potsdam is more than „the Prussian Versailles.“ It represents the complement of those sterner Hohenzollern qualities which are embodied in the city of blood and iron.

Cold, colorless Berlin may well be seen on the gray days of standard Prussian weather. Sunlight seems exotic there. But the characteristic charm of Potsdam is revealed only when skies are bright and flowers are in bloom.


One should prepare himself for the visit by spending a while with the „History of Frederick the Great,“ and by studying, in the National Gallery, the pictures of Menzel, who created for our eyes the great character whom Carlyle created for our imaginations.

On the morning when the traveler awakes with the prospect of a sunny day in Sans Souci, he should chasten himself, leaving his Berlin-irritated critical faculty to seek what it may devour in the city, and with a free heart come away for a day of pure pleasure in the playground of the Hohenzollerns.

It is customary to visit Potsdam by rail and plunge at once into the rococo interior of the castle. But it is far better to rise early and alight at Wannsee; for a better approach is by boat, or, better still, on foot through the pines and beside the quiet waters of that string of lakes called the River Havel.

One passes the Peacock Island, the home of the Great Elector's alchemist, where Frederick William III planted his famous garden of roses. It is a memorable experience to emerge from the perfume, the color, the breathless peace of wood and water, upon the magnificent sweep of road that skirts the Jungfern-See and to catch the first faint glimpse of the spires and domes of Potsdam.

Near the bridge of Glienicke flashes out a glint of „the glory that was Greece,“ — a copy of the choragic monument of Lysicrates, — to remind the wayfarer of Voltaire's exclamation: „Potsdam is Sparta and Athens in one.“

Prince Leopold, who lives here in the lovely park of Glienicke, is no lover of art, and has made himself unpopular by refusing admittance to the castle and the hunting-lodge which the Great Elector built for himself in the days of elk and wildcat; but a Berlin painter who once made his way inside by impersonating an official has told me of the neglected ancient marbles and the wonderful Venetian cloister he saw there.

Beyond the southern waters the Tudor Gothic of Babelsberg Castle shows through the trees, a style rare in these Northern lands and harmonizing with the Flatow-Turm, which was copied from Frankfort's finest gate-tower. The first German emperor spent his last days at Babelsberg, and nowhere else may you have so vivid an impression of the character of that plain, kindly, ascetic old soldier.

Across the bridge and beyond the „Berlin Suburb,“ the Marble Palace rises from among the trees beside the Holy Lake, the birthplace and home of the present crown prince. Seen from the opposite shore, the building has a really monumental effect, and the classical forms are handled with unusual elegance. Gontard, the architect of the twin towers in Berlin's Gendarmen-Markt, created in this palace the sincerest example of the „Wig style.“

Through these grounds, along the shore of the Jungfern-See, a charming path leads to the Pfingstberg, with its huge, unfinished belvedere in the style of the Florentine Renaissance.

It is difficult not to spend days among these outposts of Potsdam. Indeed, it is an achievement to gain a clear idea of the town, so numerous are its interesting points and so widely dispersed.

The way to the oldest part leads through the drowsy Dutch quarter, the austere red-brick houses of which, with their unfamiliar gables, were built by Frederick William I in a curious fit of enthusiasm for the architecture of Holland. Through a courtly old street flows a canal — a dozing canal — the function of which is to float its groups of stately swans and to convince the traveler that he is in some quiet corner of Amsterdam.

Beside the Church of the Holy Ghost, in the shadow of Potsdam's finest steeple, one may linger, watching the informal river life and enjoying the quaint houses that huddle on the banks. This is the site of Potsdam's earliest civilization. Here in the swamp lived the ancient Semnones until, in the fourth century, they were driven away by the Wends, who called the place „Potzdupimi,“ „Under the Oaks.“ These people gave their Slavic names to all the places of the neighborhood. It is interesting to know that, although most of these names have lived, the remnants of the elder Teutonic population managed to preserve traces of their ancient religion; for the legend of „The Wild Hunt“ is a chapter from the life of Odin; and even the modern belief in the nightly apparition of a white horse near the Long Bridge may be traceable to Odin's horse Sleipnir.

Late in the thirteenth century Potsdam was mentioned in a mortgage as a Stedeken, or little city, and obliged to send as its military contingent to the league of cities „enen Wegener und enen Schütt“ — one mailed halberdier and one crossbowman.

The Hohenzollerns came to the Mark of Brandenburg in 1416. But they were a busy race and paid small attention to Potsdam, which they mortgaged over and over again to princes, abbots, knights, and other financiers of those days.

From these early rulers and the Thirty Years' War Potsdam suffered many things, and gained, importance only with the rise of its mighty neighbor Berlin. Then it became the royal playground.

The Town Castle was begun by the Great Elector, and finished by Frederick the Great, in a pleasant classical style in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation of architecture. Its noble colonnade is the first thing to greet the traveler coming from the station, and the mellow orange tint of its walls is grateful after the colorless facades of Berlin. Indeed, this color contrast between the cities is symbolic; for one is the office of the Hohenzollerns, the other their garden.

The castle stands for the two men who have done most for Potsdam: Frederick William I, who cared for its utility, and his great son, who developed its beauty. The rooms of the Spartan king have been left as bare and forbidding as even his taste could have desired. Above his death-bed are two atrocious pictures painted by him while he had the gout (In tormentis pinxit F. W.), one of which portrays a nude female with two left feet. And here are a chair and a clock which he constructed under the same grim conditions of „torment.“ Memories of the notorious Tobacco Parliament still hang about the castle. This function was at once an informal council of state and a royal „rough-house.“ It is not definitely known in which room it was held, for Frederick the Great loathed smoke and obliterated all traces of the odious custom; but one cannot wander through the west wing without imagining the fat king and his courtiers seated about a table with pipes, beer, and pans of glowing peat, having their Brobdingnagian fun with poor Dr. Gundling, author. President of the Academy of Sciences, and court fool. Carlyle declared that the art of writing was to Frederick William I „little better that of vomiting long coils of wonderful ribbon for the idlers of the market-place.“ And so the court, in need of diversion, put the drunken Gundling to bed with young bears. When he refused to attend „Parliament“ they broke down his door and forced him out with fireworks. Between the doctor and the minor court fool they arranged a duel first of burning peat-pans, then of blank cartridges in which the sublime goat's-hair wig of Gundling was mortally burned. And, to crown all, the king presented him with a coffin shaped like a wine-cask, in which he was actually buried, to the horror of the clergy. His grave with its pitiful mock epitaph may still be seen in the church at Bornstadt.

Frederick the Great ushered in a more humane period, and it is a relief to pass on to his rooms, which have been preserved as religiously as the study of Goethe at Frankfort. There is the confidential dining-room, the trap-door table of which communi- cated with the kitchen, an invention of Frederick's to foil long-eared servants.

The library consists of the works of Voltaire, some of the king's own writings unbound, and French translations of the classics. For French was his language; he read little German, and never learned to speak or write it correctly. Before Napoleon's invasion, the silver furniture was painted black, a needless precaution; for the conqueror allowed nothing but the paintings to be disturbed, and merely cut a strip of silk as a souvenir from Frederick's desk in the writing-room. Here the upholstery is much torn by the claws of the king's favorite dog, and his pet brass gargoyle still disgorges warm air from a corner. Outside the window is the „Petition Linden,“ where any subject with a grievance used to wait for the kindly Frederick, who believed in the „square deal.“ In case they had to wait too long, they would climb the tree and flutter their petitions from its branches. Then Frederick would see the reflection in the mirror by his desk, and come to the window.

His answer to one of these petitions in the second month of his reign brought him world-wide renown. The Fiscal-General sent in a complaint that the Roman Catholics were proselytizing. On the margin Frederick, in his wretched German, annotated this sentence:

„Die Religionen Müsen alle Tollerirt werden, und Mus der Fiscal nuhr das Auge darauf haben, das keine der andern abrug Tuhe, den hier mus ein jeder nach seiner Fasson Selich werden.“ („All religions must be tolerated, and the Fiscal must have an eye that none encroach unjustly on the other; for in this country every one must get to heaven in his own way.“)

The Town Castle possesses one of the most friendly of palace interiors. There the brilliant rococo decorations of Knobelsdorff ramble about, naively unconcerned with the structural and the official. And — blessed change from Berlin usage — the guides are men, not weapons of offense.

Both Frederick and his father made a point of reviewing the daily drill on the parade-ground south of the castle, and to this day the spring parade at Potsdam is the most brilliant event of its kind. I remember attending one of these pageants at the invitation of the Foreign Office. Even the card of admission was strictly military, prescribing where to stand, what to wear, and exactly when to vacate the rampart in favor of the „allerhochsten Herrschaften.“ After Berlin, the brilliant uniforms were almost blinding. The Lustgarten was a rainbow, and though too small for a parade-ground, it was pleasant to have the trees so near. It lent an added charm of mystery and surprise to have a company suddenly charge out of the wood, leaving between the trunks only the sunlight mirrored from the steel-like surface of the Havel.

Such a scene is characteristic of Potsdam's military life. In no other German city is it so picturesque, and it has had this quality ever since the days of Frederick William I and his mania for tall grenadiers.

Even the uniforms are more attractive than others, and I shall long remember the picture of a military harvest here, the soldiers in scarlet, gold-barred jackets riding as postilions before wagons piled with golden grain. It seems as though troops were forever marching past the obelisk in the Old Market, between the noble portal of the castle and the nobler dome of Schinkel's Church of St. Nicholas. And they step out as though aware of being important and harmonious elements of the composition.

In the Garrison Church, near the barracks which adjoin the Lustgarten, is the tomb of Frederick the Great. His will left directions that he be buried with his favorite dog on the terrace before Sans Souci; but his successor cruelly buried him in church beside his cruel father. When Napoleon visited the place, he bowed the knee and exclaimed, „If this one were alive, I should not now be here.“ Then he stole the conqueror's sword, which hung above the grave. The German people have never forgiven this outrage, and, by way of reparation, have hung the church with mellow old standards captured from French armies. When the first emperor placed his trophies there he exclaimed: „God was with us. His alone is the glory.“ In the royal vault one evening in 1805, Frederick William III and Alexander I of Russia sealed their friendship and laid the foundations of the Russo-German Alliance.

On its way to Sans Souci, the tram passes the Wilhelms-Platz, an eloquent testimony to the practical nature of old Frederick William I. This was the site of the Lazy Lake, and the picturesque canal was dug to drain it; but the lake was too lazy even for canal adventures, and had to be filled in, a labor of years. For the greater part of his reign Frederick William I struggled obstinately with this problem, but the site of the Lazy Lake could not be called terra firma until his son brought more modern methods to bear on it.

The domestic architecture of Potsdam may best be studied in the Nauener, Charlotten, and Hoditz Strassen. Under the two soldier-kings, even the houses were forced into uniform, and one may see whole streets of quaint, two-storied facades, with baldachined windows and tall classical columns topped by putti and plump urns of plenty, a dignified style, staid and self-important perhaps, yet gracious and in perfect harmony with its setting.

As one goes westward, farther and farther from the asperities of Berlin, the atmosphere grows friendlier, and, as it seems, less Prussian, until — wonder of wonders!— there appears a real Italian campanile.

That lover of Italy, Frederick William IV, modeled the Church of Peace after the Roman San Clemente, with a bell-tower copied after Santa Maria in Cosmedin. The corner-stone was laid on the centenary of Sans Souci, and the king wrote to Bishop Eylert:

After much thought, I will name the new suburban church „Christ Church“ or „Church of Peace.“ A church belonging to the grounds of a palace that bears the name „Sans Souci,“ „Care-free,“ strikes me as suitable to dedicate to the eternal Prince of Peace; and so to confront — or, better still, to contrast — the worldly negative „Care-free“ with the spiritually positive „Peace.“

Here in the mausoleum the Emperor Frederick III (father of the present Emperor) lies in a sarcophagus of Greek marble under a dome of Venetian mosaic. But the cloisters are best of all. To come suddenly upon such cloisters in Prussia is as though an arctic explorer should stumble upon „a beaker full of the warm south.“

Near the mausoleum entrance are Ranch's „Moses“ and Thorwaldsen's „Christ,“ the latter a replica of the dominant figure in the Frue Kirke in Copenhagen.

But one forgets them in looking out between the columns of the ivied cloisters to the pools, the gay, shadow-flecked turf, and the May foliage of Sans Souci. I shall never forget the morning I first entered those gardens. Rhododendrons were everywhere in royal purple, lavender, old rose, and white. There were fuchsias and honeysuckles among copper-beeches that grew like single, huge, austere flowers. There were effective arrangements of hawthorn, and the lindens were in full flower. Little daisies made specks of brightness on the springy, swarded banks of a lazy brook, where willows drooped over drowsing lily-pads. There were rosebushes as tall as Frederick William's grenadiers, who used to grow vegetables on the very spot where a goat-footed marble Marsyas now capered gaily to save his skin, among clouds of lilac and great, blooming fruit-trees. Delightfully un-Prussian gardeners snored under sacking in the shade, and their newmown grass lay heaped informally by them on the walks. The branches were full of bird-song, and the thought came that the musical Frederick must have stocked his gardens with songsters as he stocked his palaces with philosophers and painters and musicians. May the birds of Sans Souci prove as hardy a race as the Hohenzollerns themselves!

The grounds were full of surprises. I came upon masses of fern backed by feathery spruces, dwarf cypresses, and curious, glistening trees that crawled on the ground, smothered in ivy.

At three, the old gardeners whom I had left snoring at eleven were still making music in the shade, and I rejoiced to find that here the discipline of the land was suitably relaxed.

Berlin is strictly business to the Hohenzollerns; but they do not let that grim affair spoil the sweetness of Potsdam. The people seem human and sympathetic, the martial statuary gentle and amateurish after the ferocity of Berlin. Even the four Romans about one of the fountains who are hurrying away with the four Sabines are doing it like gentlemen, and the frowns of the ladies are palpably assumed. A lion and a tiger, both on the verge of purring, watch you as you climb toward an arch surmounted by the most genial eagle in the world. Beside the main fountain there is a statue of Mars shying a little javelin. His dog-like wolf is joyously on the bound to retrieve it, and you fancy that the man of might is about to wink at Mercury, who is placidly tying his winged shoes over beyond the goldfishes, and at Diana, who is taking a roguish ride on an inimitable dragon.

The Germans are an out-of-door people, and this place is a continual rendezvous for picnics. From the splendid fountain little Noah's-ark evergreens run uphill to my favorite bit of rococo. With a childish gravity Sans Souci, in pale orange, sits up there above its enormous terraces, with its flat, water-green cupola and its dear, absurd statues, which one can take no more seriously than an idyl of Lancret or a fete of Watteau. I shall always see it as in that first glimpse, with a foreground of happy goldfish and Germans, through a veil of iridescent spray, and flanked by masses of foliage. I particularly like Carlyle's account of the tiny palace:

One of the most characteristic traits, extensively symbolical of Friedrich's intentions and outlooks at this Epoch, is his installing of himself in the little Dwelling-House, which has since become so celebrated under the name of Sans-Souci. The plan of Sans-Souci, — an elegant commodious little „Country Box,“ quite of modest pretensions, one story high; on the pleasant Hill-top near Potsdam, with other little green Hills, and pleasant views of land and water, all round, — had been sketched in part by Friedrich himself; and the diggings and terracings of the Hillside were just beginning, when he quitted for the Last War. (Second Silesian.) April 14, 1745. . . . the foundationstone was laid (Knobelsdorff being architect,) . . . and the work, which had been steadily proceeding while the Master struggled in those dangerous battles and adventures far away from it, was in good forwardness at his return. An object of cheerful interest to him; prophetic of calmer years ahead.

It was not till May 1747, that the formal occupation took place. . . . For the next Forty Years, especially as years advanced, he spent the most of his days and nights in this little Mansion; which became more and more his favourite retreat, whenever the noises and scenic etiquettes were not inexorable. „Sans-Souci“; which we may translate „No- Bother.“ A busy place this too, but of the quiet kind; and more a home to him than any of the Three fine Palaces (ultimately Four), which lay always waiting for him in the neighborhood. . . .

Certainly it is a significant feature of Friedrich; and discloses the inborn proclivity he had to retirement, to study and reflection, as the chosen element of human life. Why he fell upon so ambitious a title for his Royal Cottage? „No-Bother“ was not practically a thing he, of all men, could consider possible in this world: at the utmost perhaps, by good care, „Less-Bother!“ The name, it appears, came by accident. He had prepared his Tomb, and various Tombs, in the skirts of this new Cottage: looking at these, as the building of them went on, he was heard to say, one day (Spring 1746), D'Argens strolling beside him: „Oui, alors je serai sans souci (Once there, one will be out of bother)!“ A saying which was rumoured of, and repeated in society, being by such a man. Out of which rumour in society, and the evident aim of the Cottage Royal, there was gradually born, as Venus from the froth of the sea, this name, „Sans-Souci.“


The lines of orange-trees before the castle recall a celebrated flash of diplomacy. Frederick once complained to the French ambassador that his oranges did not thrive in such a cold climate. This was so painfully evident as to give the courtier a bad moment. Then he answered: „Your Majesty may at least console himself with the thought that however it may be with your orange-trees, your laurels can never fade.“

The guide through this toy palace was unfortunately of the aggravated Berlin type. But even he could not entirely spoil one's pleasure in the mementos of this mighty age and in the pure French style of the decoration, one of the most brilliant examples of rococo art in the land. I longed to shut the door upon the fellow and his guttural voice, and dream of the great little man who talked such bad German and of the Versailles of his ideals.

Scattered through the rooms are many of the better paintings of the Watteau school, and the library is a veritable gem of pure Louis Quinze style, with French classics and a fine bust of Homer.

Voltaire's apartment throws light on the relations between the king and the philosopher, for Frederick himself designed the decorations. There are birds of passage on the walls to symbolize Voltaire's love of travel, peacocks for his vanity, monkeys for his homeliness, squirrels for his love of dainties, and parrots for his curiosity. To crown all, scenes from the fables of La Fontaine are embroidered on the upholstery, to remind him of the author he most detested. This is a faint but significant echo of the heartless generation before, the days of Gundling's bear-baiting.

In the music-room are the king's spinet and musicstand, with an autograph flute sonata by his master Quantz, and the clock that is said to have stopped when Frederick's life ran down — at twenty minutes past two on the morning of August 17, 1786.

In his last days old Fritz was fond of sitting on the terrace outside, looking upon the beauty he had created out of a barren hillside. And one afternoon, as he gazed into the sun, he was heard to murmur, „Perhaps I shall be nearer thee soon.“ In the chamber where he died stands Magnussen's marble of him in his last moments. He is sitting with his favorite dog, looking back with keen, weary eyes upon his life, as though not wholly dissatisfied, but content not to try it again. On his last midnight he noticed the dog shivering with cold. „Throw a quilt over it!“ he commanded. His last utterance came after a severe fit of choking: „La montagne est passee; nous irons mieux.“ („The mountain is passed; we shall go better now.“)

The picture-gallery, with a few good Dutch paintings, lies on one side of the castle, balanced on the other by the famous mill of Sans Souci.

History — or more probably legend — relates that Frederick coveted the mill, and Avhen the miller refused to sell, threatened angrily to bring suit. „Ah,“ retorted the miller, „but there are still judges in Berlin!“ and he kept his mill. It remains one of the most delightful landmarks of Potsdam. In the Sicilian Garden below, in an open space surrounded by beechen arbors, stands a modern Apollo amid scarlet geraniums. I know not whether the humor was conscious or unconscious that placed there the god of war and music and poetry, bending his brazen bow toward the mill, symbolizing the attitude of his eighteenth-century successor and viewed from the terrace above by judicial white philosophers.

Near the obelisk outside the main gate is a delightful wooded spot looking over a sheet of water to the Italian cloisters, a corner where nurses in Spreewald costume like to congregate.

Taking a southern route through the outskirts of town to the New Palace, I came upon such homely scenes as are dear to the dweller in cities. An old man was making rope in a field where women were hoeing; barefoot peasant girls in bright rags were filling a flat-car with sand; behind some crazy palings near a thread of brook I saw a little brother and sister holding a tow-headed baby above a fence to compete in a crowing contest with an appreciative and lusty rooster.

Charlottenhof, an Italian villa built by Schinkel for Frederick William IV, lies in a wilder stretch of Sans Souci park, a charmingly effective bit of architecture, with its loggia and formal garden. It is a cabinet of curiosities and of antiques, many of which the king excavated in Italy. Here Alexander von Humboldt wrote his „Cosmos.“

The New Palace was built by Frederick the Great after the Seven Years' War, in a spirit of bravado, to show the nations that fighting had not drained his purse. It is one of the most elaborate efforts of later baroque art. The creamy sandstone pilasters and statuary, the round, high windows with their putti, are most effective against the light brick of the façade. The effect is more enjoyable from among the distant orange-trees of the eastern garden, where the coarseness of the too abundant statues does not intrude. It is better simply to be aware of the vivacious or sentimental poses outlined against the mellowing sky of late afternoon, and the pleasant harmony of the whole, capped judiciously by the dusky, bronze dome. On the western side this dome has a lighter patina, which does not blend so well with the richer ornamentation of the winged facade. But the outbuildings called Communs balance the palace picturesquely, with their ivied walls and the neglected pavements of the colonnades, between the mossy stones of which the rank, assertive green of earth presses upward. Here the statues, unlike their less fortunate brethren, look as though they had never seen soap, and friendly trees grow close about them. From here there are grandly sweeping vistas north and south, which give an idea of the immensity of the park. It is said that its maintenance costs the Emperor $ 150.000 a year.

The New Palace has 200 rooms, the decoration of which rivals the exuberant fantasy of Sans Souci, but gives only faint echoes of its elegance. For the one is French through and through, the other only an excellent German imitation. But the New Palace contains the best canvas that I have ever seen in a HohenzoUern residence, an „Adoration of the Magi“ in Rubens's least worldly style — a picture akin in spirit to the „Last Supper“ in the Brera at Milan.

The Orangery is a decorative building resembling the belvedere on the Pfingstberg, filled with unimportant sculpture and copies of Raphael, and topped with towers that give an incomparable view of the gardens. On the terrace are the Chinese astronomical instruments which Germany appropriated during the Boxer uprising, remarkable examples of Eastern bronze-casting and of Western greed.

I found the country north of Sans Souci delightful, and the message of the big forget-me-nots that studded the grass on the way to the Ruinenberg was quite redundant. As I sat in the woods thinking it all over, a wanderer went strolling by, actually drawing real music from that antimusical instrument, the harmonica. And the whole place was alive with the spirit of his art.

Above, at the end of a meadow, loomed the artificial ruins which Frederick had built. It struck me as pathetic that the man who had unwillingly made so many modern ruins should have felt a craving for ancient ones. There were three Roman columns, with a fragment of entablature from which young saplings sprouted; a dwarfed pyramid of Cestius, a little round temple, a tower, and a segment of amphitheater about a basin of water which the king had intended as the scene of such naval battles as the Colosseum once staged.

The bloom of a great tree lay like snow on the surface, like eider-down on the earth. Ever since coming upon that Roman campanile below, I had been breathing the atmosphere of Latin lands, and even the exotic Berlin lackey had not made me quite realize where I was. I had just walked in a meadow that might have been trod by the feet of the Gracchi and Brutus to a ruin that might have stood below the Palatine Hill. It remained for the height of the tower, with its broader outlook, to restore me gradually to the German atmosphere.

Southeastward lay Potsdam, with its picturesque steeples and cupolas, and, across the sparkling ribbon of river, the half-timbered walls of the military academy. Southward, beyond the campanile, spread the reaches of the Havel, flecked with the white wings of yachts. In the foreground stood the little house where Frederick had hoped to find peace, and his pathetic ruins, with their snowy sheet of water. In the southwest, over a green, billowy field of grain and an ocean of boughs, rose three towers and the dome of the New Palace. Northward, like a turgid lake, spread the wastes of the parade-ground. On the horizon were etched the spires of Spandau. While to the northeast, beyond the fair waters of three lakes and the long sweep of the Grunewald, I saw, or seemed to see, a huge, dark dome dominating a huge, dark Berlin, even as, viewed from Tivoli across the Campagna, St. Peter's dominates the Eternal City.


Dieses Kapitel ist Teil des Buches Romantic Germany
Potsdam — The Marble Palace on the Holy Lake. Drawn by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Marble Palace on the Holy Lake. Drawn by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — Babelsberg. Drawn by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — Babelsberg. Drawn by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — Old Potsdam on the Havel. Painted by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — Old Potsdam on the Havel. Painted by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Town Castle and the „Petition Linden“. Painted by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Town Castle and the „Petition Linden“. Painted by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Old Market. Painted by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Old Market. Painted by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — Alley in Sans Souci Park. Painted by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — Alley in Sans Souci Park. Painted by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Great Fountain in Sans Souci Park, with the Terraces and Palace in the background. Painted by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Great Fountain in Sans Souci Park, with the Terraces and Palace in the background. Painted by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Statue of the Archer and the Old Mill. Drawn by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Statue of the Archer and the Old Mill. Drawn by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — View of the Palace of Sans Souci from the Ruinenberg. Drawn by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — View of the Palace of Sans Souci from the Ruinenberg. Drawn by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Ruinenberg, the ruins built by Frederick the Great, north of Sans Souci. Drawn by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Ruinenberg, the ruins built by Frederick the Great, north of Sans Souci. Drawn by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Broad Bridge. Painted by Hans Herrmann.

Potsdam — The Broad Bridge. Painted by Hans Herrmann.

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