Who was Caspar Theyß?
As part of our project in the Caspar-Theyß Straße we set out to discover who the great personality behind the name after which the street is named was.
Caspar Theyß was a master builder of the Renaissance in Berlin and in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. If you google his name you will encounter countless spelling variations of it, which is due to the change of language of the last centuries. There is only little information about his background and education. He was mentioned for the first time in a civil letter. A year later he received a house in the former Heilige-Geist-Straße as a gift from the Elector. He operated the “Society for the exploitation of wealth of the Middle March”, which he founded together with the Electoral Council, a master builder and some mint masters. In the period around 1544, he also built the „Salzwerk Beelitz“. It is believed that at that time he was also appointed to master millwright. Before that he took over the construction management for the Residential Palace in “Cölln an der Spree”, which was built on the model of the Hartenfels castle.
Today Caspar Theyß serves as the main character for the Brandenburg construction industry of the Renaissance. Over the years he was instrumental for the building of a multitude of Renaissance buildings. His works, among other things, include elements of the St. Nikolai Church in Spandau, the Grunewald Hunting Castle, as well as numerous other hunting lodges. However, none of his buildings remain in their original state. They were either demolished, fitted with elements of Baroque period or replaced by contemporary new buildings.
In Berlin a street passing through the districts of Schmargendorf and Grunewald was named after Caspar Theyß. The capital was the last place he lived in before he died in the year 1550. Ultimately he was laid to rest in the graveyard of St. Nicholas Church in the district of Mitte.