In the late 17th century the island was called
Kaninchenwerder ("Rabbit Island") after a rabbit breeding station set up by
Elector Frederick William I of Brandenburg of the
Hohenzollern dynasty. From 1685, he gave the chemist
Johann Kunckel financial aid to build a glass foundry in the east of the island, the whole of which became Kunckel's property. Here Kunckel discovered a process to produce artificial ruby (red) glass. After the elector's death in 1688, however, Kunckel gained no further support from Frederick William's heir. In 1689, the foundry was destroyed by a fire (possibly caused by arson), and Kunckel left in 1692 for
Stockholm to work for the King of Sweden. The island remained unused for about 100 years until, in 1793, the
Prussian king
Frederick William II, a descendant of Frederick William I, acquired the island and had the Pfaueninsel castle built for himself and his mistress
Wilhelmine Enke in 1794–97. The small
Lustschloss was placed on the western tip of the island, visible from the king's residence at the
Marmorpalais in Potsdam. It was designed as a summer residence for the King by Johann Gottlieb Brendel. Around it an
English garden was created, including a
dairy shaped like a
gothic revival church on the other end of the island. One of the garden designers was Johann August Eyserbeck who died in 1801. In 1804, Ferdinand Fintelmann took over as royal gardener. '' by
Carl Blechen (1834) Frederick William's successor,
Frederick William III, turned the island into a model farm and in 1821–34 had the park redesigned by
Peter Joseph Lenné and
Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who planned several auxiliary buildings. The king also laid out a
menagerie modelled on the
Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes in Paris, in which exotic animals including alligators, buffalos, kangaroos, monkeys, chameleons, wolves, eagles, lions, lamas, bears, beavers and peacocks were housed. This initially stretched between the castle and the
Kavaliershaus, but was altered by Lenné in 1824. Buildings were designed in the Italian villa style and included grottos and an aviary (which still remains today). The number of animals peaked at over 900, from over 100 species. Frederick William III was very fond of his animals, often feeding many of them personally. He also made his collection accessible to the people of Berlin. However, this created such an onslaught on the small island, that from 1821 the public was allowed on the island only three days a week. Nevertheless, public interest remained so high that the special trains running from Berlin were often overcrowded. In 1830
Harry Maitey, the first
native Hawaiian who came to Prussia, was assigned as assistant to the engine master on the island. In 1842,
Frederick William IV transferred all the animals to the
Berlin Zoo, which opened its gates in 1844 as the first of its kind in Germany. The
Palmenhaus ("House of Palms") was erected in 1831, based on a design by Schinkel. It housed exotic plants like tobacco, canna lilies, mangold, bananas, artichokes and rhubarb and was praised by explorer
Alexander von Humboldt. It caught fire for unknown reasons in the night of 19/20 May 1880 and burnt to the ground. It was suggested that the fire was due to a stray spark from the chimney, as the
Palmenhaus had been built out of wood. It was not rebuilt, but stone columns still trace the outline of the building. On 15 August 1936, the German government celebrated the closing of the
1936 Olympic Summer Games on the island, with fireworks and an
Italian Night party involving a thousand invited guests. In the post-World War II period, the Pfaueninsel was part of
West Berlin. It was situated right next to the border to
East Germany. On the shore of
Sacrow to the north and west were the
Grenzsicherungsanlagen (
fortifications of the inner German border) of the German Democratic Republic. In the 1960s, the Pfaueninsel served as an outdoor location for a number of films of the
German Edgar Wallace series. ==Today==