When the small farmstead in the south-western corner of Sanssouci park came up for sale in 1825
Hofmarschall von Maltzahn wrote to the King of Prussia to say that the grounds of Sanssouci
would be much improved by the addition of this plot. It was clear that Peter Joseph Lenné who
produced a first plan for the garden as soon as the land was presented to the Crown Prince
later King Friedrich Wilhelm IV was behind the letter.Schinkel the architect of Charlottenhof
and Lenné the designer of the surrounding park had met in 1816 when they were working for
Chancellor Hardenberg in Glienicke between Berlin and Potsdam. They established a community of
interest that architecture critics have compared with the best years of co-operation between
John Nash and Humphry Repton.The palace set on a severe garden axis was built from 1826 to
1829. It was followed from 1829 to 1840 by the freely developing area of the Hofgärtnerhaus and
its adjacent facilities all of which has become known as the Roman Baths. The Crown Prince
involved himself in the planning process contributing over 100 sketches. He called
Charlottenhof my Siam understood as a synonym for a better world and he was pursuing with it
his intention of presenting his own future style of government based on romantic theories of
the state and striving for a harmonious balance of all classes and interests.Charlottenhof is
Schinkels only work to have survived com-plete inside and outside surrounded by Lennés
landscape garden which has also been carefully looked after and preserved.
