Unger, Georg Christian

Georg Christian Unger (1743–1812)

Georg Christian Unger, born 1743 in Bayreuth, died 1799 in Berlin, was a German architect and builders of Frederick the Great in Potsdam and Berlin. He was a pupil of Gontard, with whom he worked. Together they designed the very fine triumphal arch at Potsdam, and with Boumann the Royal Library with its curved façade to the Forum Fridericianum, Berlin. He designed 26–7 Breiterstrasse, Potsdam, based on Inigo Jones's proposals for the Palace of Whitehall published in Vitruvius Britannicus. For some 260 buildings Unger delivered the draft, many of them realized he developed himself from the claim a new Frederick II Building type: the citizen's Palace, a bourgeois family home with the appearance of a palace. In Berlin Unger created a large number of buildings alone 40 Unter den Linden, 13 Palais am Gendarmenmarkt and about 40 in the Leipziger Strasse.

Important Buildings:

Old Royal Library at the Bebelplatz in Berlin, reconstructed 1963-1969
Reconstruction of the New Chambers in Potsdam
Belvedere on the Klausberg in Potsdam
Village Church in Eiche
Head of the Long house in Potsdam
Towers at the German and French Cathedral in Berlin, Gendarmenmarkt, with Gontard
Small Brandenburg Gate in Potsdam, with Carl von Gontard
Hiller-Brandtsche houses in Potsdam