| Abstrakt: |
In 1850, while training in Paris, the young future Dutch court architect Lucas Hermanus Eberson (1822-1889) was awarded the first prize for the third time at the annual competition of the most important national architectural society, the Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Bouwkunst. Due to its combination of a huge domed hexagonal congregation hall with a semi-detached high clock tower at the far end, his winning design for a large protestant church - which would not be published in the society's magazine until 1887 - may be regarded as unique for the Netherlands. And its main features can only be understood when seen in the light of contemporary European architecture. from 1845 onwards by H. D. L. Van Overstraeten in a Byzantine style and possessing the same main features. Its designs were included in the Histoire de l'Architecture en Belgique of A. G. B. Schayes, which was published in 1850. Perhaps even more important for Eberson may have been his German sources, which were threefold. General inspiration could have been derived from one of the few writings about church architecture of the first half of the nineteenth century, the Anweisung zur Architectur des Christlichen Cultus (1824) by the Bavarian court architect Leo von Klenze. Conceived as an official instruction for the state building authorities, the richly illustrated volume was also available outside of Bavaria. It thus also may have been influential in this case, although Klenze did not design domed churches himself. It was, however, precisely one of the main influences of Eberson's project - several rows of windows that reflected the inner division of the central domed space by galleries, later criticised by Klenze as inappropriate because they suggested a residential building. Finally two major German construction projects of those years could boast of receiving close attention from abroad. In Prussia, from the moment of the accession to the throne of Frederick William IV in 1840 onwards, a flood of designs for domed churches for a new Lutheran Cathedral of Berlin - many of them by former pupils of the late Karl Friedrich Schinkel - was produced, which would finally result in the ostentatious building of the Wilhelmine era. In 1828 Schinkel himself had already published several designs of dome churches of the kind featured in his Sammlung Architectonischer Entwürfe, which clearly also had its effects in Holland, as proved in an interesting drawing from around 1860 of the obscure carpenter Berend Adriaan Berends - who, like Eberson, also came from the Dutch border town of Arnhem. In booming commercial Hamburg, after the great city fire of 1842, Gottfried Semper had initially won the competition for the new Nicholas Church with a domed project. However, owing to several machinations, it was not his neo-Renaissance dome church but Scott's traditional Gothic Revivalist basilica that was ultimately executed and its drawings subsequently published. The same was the case with the design by Ludwig Lange, who was awarded third prize, which apart from an internal domed octagon contained a high semi-detached clock tower, just like Eberson's, and therefore may very well have influenced the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
