Gottfried Semper (German: [ˈɡɔtfʁiːt ˈzɛmpɐ]; 29 November 1803 – 15 May 1879) was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden and was put on the government's wanted list. He fled first to Zürich and later to London. He returned to Germany after the 1862 amnesty granted to the revolutionaries. Semper wrote extensively on the origins of architecture, especially in his book The Four Elements of Architecture (1851), and was one of the major figures in the controversy surrounding the polychrome architectural style of ancient Greece. He designed works at all scales—from major urban interventions such as the redesign of the Ringstraße in Vienna, to a baton for Richard Wagner. His unrealised design for an opera house in Munich was, without permission, adapted by Wagner for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
Life
Early life (to 1834) Semper was born into a well-to-do industrialist family in Hamburg in 1803. When French troops occupied the city in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars, the family moved to nearby Altona, at the time part of Denmark. The fifth of eight children, he attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg before starting his university education at the University of Göttingen in 1823, where he studied historiography and mathematics. He subsequently studied architecture in 1825 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München under Friedrich von Gärtner. In 1826, Semper travelled to Paris in order to work for the architect Franz Christian Gau, and he was present when the July Revolution of 1830 broke out. Between 1830 and 1833, he travelled to Italy and Greece in order to study the architecture and designs of antiquity. In 1832, he participated for four months in archaeological research at the Acropolis in Athens. During this period, he became very interested in the Biedermeier-inspired polychromy debate, which centered on the question whether buildings in Ancient Greece and Rome had been colorfully painted or not. The drawn reconstructions of the painterly decorations of ancient villas he created in Athens inspired his later designs for the painted decorations in Dresden and Vienna. His 1834 publication Vorläufige Bemerkungen über bemalte Architectur und Plastik bei den Alten (Preliminary Remarks on Polychrome Architecture and Sculpture in Antiquity), in which he took a strong position in favor of polychromy supported by his investigation of pigments on the Trajan's column in Rome, brought him sudden recognition in architectural and aesthetic circles across Europe.
Dresden period (1834–1849)
On September 30, 1834, Semper obtained a post as Professor of Architecture at the Königlichen Akademie der bildenden Künste (today called the Hochschule) in Dresden thanks largely to the efforts and support of his former teacher Franz Christian Gau and swore an oath of allegiance to the King (formerly Elector) of Saxony, Anthony Clement. The flourishing growth of Dresden during this period provided the young architect with considerable creative opportunities. In 1838–1840 a synagogue was built in Dresden to Semper's design, it was ever afterward called the Semper Synagogue and is noted for its Moorish Revival interior style. The Synagogue's exterior was built in romanesque style so as not to call attention to itself. The interior design included not only the Moorish inspired wall decorations but furnishings: specifically, a silver lamp of eternal light, which caught Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima's fancy. They gave a great deal of effort to have a copy of this lamp. Semper's student, Otto Simonson would construct the magnificent Moorish Revival Leipzig synagogue in 1855.
Certain civic structures remain today, such as the Elbe-facing gallery of the Zwinger Palace complex. He designed the Dresden Hoftheater in 1841, which burned down in 1869. It was rebuilt in 1878 by his son to Semper's plans and today is called the Semperoper. Other buildings also remain indelibly attached to his name, such as the Maternity Hospital, the Synagogue (destroyed during the Third Reich), the Oppenheim Palace, and the Villa Rosa built for the banker Martin Wilhelm Oppenheim. This last construction stands as a prototype of German villa architecture. On September 1, 1835, Semper married Bertha Thimmig. The marriage ultimately produced six children. A convinced Republican, Semper took a leading role, along with his friend Richard Wagner, in the May 1849 uprising which swept over the city. He was a member of the Civic Guard (Kommunalgarde) and helped to erect barricades in the streets. When the rebellion collapsed, Semper was considered a leading agitator for democratic change and a ringleader against government authority and he was forced to flee the city. He was destined never to return to the city that would, ironically, become most associated with his architectural (and political) legacy. The Saxon government maintained a warrant for his arrest until 1863. When the Semper-designed Hoftheater burnt down in 1869, King John, on the urging of the citizenry, commissioned Semper to build a new one. Semper produced the plans but left the actual construction to his son, Manfred. "What must I have done in 48, that one persecutes me forever? One single barricade did I construct - it held, because it was practical, and as it was practical, it was beautiful", wrote Semper in dismay.
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