Profession: architect

While not a complete architectural original, Adam had a great influence not only on British neoclassicism, but from Russia to the U.S. Dominant in his brothers’ partnership, he was a member of Smith’s weekly dining club in Edinburgh, travelled in Italy with Ramsay, befriended and learned from Piranesi, designed his friend Hume’s tomb, and commissioned Kauffman and her husband to paint decorative features. Walpole and Garrick commissioned work from him, while he himself hired the young stonemason Telford. Boulton proudly told him how he was training up “plain country lads” instead of employing established (but awkward) craftsmen.

Langhans and David Gilly were both persuaded to move to Berlin around the same time, and together oversaw the development of a distinct Prussian school of architecture, with Langhans becoming a friend as well as close colleague. Gilly taught many students, including his son Friedrich, Klenze and — most notably — Schinkel (who as a student and as Friedrich Gilly’s close friend) lived in the Gilly household. The architectural academy that Gilly — an enlightened and influential teacher — started was as significant as the journals he also founded.

Langhans and David Gilly (to become friends as well as colleagues) moved to Berlin within a year of one another, persuaded by the Prussian king following successful careers elsewhere. Together they were responsible for initiating a distinct Prussian school of architecture, founded in neo-classicism, though unafraid later to embrace gothic influences. David Gilly’s son Friedrich was one of the students at the academy that Langhans and he set up: Langhans also joined the younger Gilly and others, including Schinkel and Gentz, in a dynamic group who met to discuss and advance their architectural ideas.

Gilly’s theorising made him the effective leader of those, notably Schinkel, who founded Berlin’s architectural tradition; Gilly himself, dying young, built very little. His father David Gilly taught him from youth, with Langhans another of his teachers. He took Schinkel under his wing when the 16-year-old came to live in the Gillys’ house, becoming Schinkel’s close friend and mentor. These two, with Gentz and Langhans, formed an influential group of progressive architects (consciously looking to the model of Plato’s Academy). Gilly was highly charismatic; Wackenrode was suitably awed, describing him as god-like.

Carstens was one of his teachers. Gentz’s friend David Gilly, his son Friedrich and Langhans, were colleagues who together with Gentz taught Schinkel (who later collaborated with Gentz). With Friedrich Gilly, Gentz formed the ‘Private Society of Young Architects’, an influential group who debated ideas and critiqued one anothers’ work; Schinkel was another member. Gentz worked with Humboldt on the setting-up of Berlin University, and (closely) with Goethe on a theatre and a palace, bringing an uncluttered simplicity in place of rococo flamboyance; he also got to know Wieland and Schiller in Weimar.