Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann
Pöppelmann built the Zwinger in Dresden, a festival ground of pavilions and galleries filled with sculpture. With Augustus the Strong as patron he made Dresden one of Europe’s Baroque capitals.
Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann was born in 1662 in Herford in Westphalia. He came to Dresden in 1680, where he worked in the building office and slowly rose through the ranks. In 1705 he was put in charge of the Elector’s buildings, a position he held for the rest of his life. Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and from 1697 King of Poland, wanted to make Dresden a splendid residence city, and Pöppelmann became his most important architect. In 1710 he travelled to Vienna and Rome to study the architecture there.
Pöppelmann’s masterpiece is the Zwinger, built in 1710–1728 as a festival ground and collection building beside the palace. He worked with the sculptor Balthasar Permoser, and together they created galleries and pavilions in which sculpture and architecture flow together. He also built the pleasure palace of Pillnitz on the Elbe, with Chinese-inspired roofs, and redesigned the palace at Moritzburg. He led the work on the new bridge over the Elbe in Dresden and made plans for a new royal palace, which was never built.
Pöppelmann died in Dresden in 1736. The Zwinger became his legacy and one of the best-known works of the German Baroque. Dresden was largely destroyed in the bombing of February 1945, but the Zwinger and several of his buildings have been rebuilt. His way of uniting architecture and sculpture in festive scenography influenced the Saxon and Polish Baroque. Pillnitz with its exotic roofs also shows the period’s interest in Asia, which can be seen as well in the Chinese Pavilion at Drottningholm.