Old Botanical Garden at Cologne Cathedral

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Botanical garden and cathedral, steel engraving, around 1820
The unfinished cathedral around 1824. After Max Hasak : The Cologne Cathedral , 1911.

The old botanical garden at the Cathedral to Cologne originated in 1801 from the northeast before being built cathedral lying garden grounds of the Jesuit order and the adjacent grounds of by the secularization affected Maximinenstraße monastery . The former property of these canceled corporations was in the following period the core of the emerging botanical garden, to which the green areas of the cathedral area were connected. His successor was the Cologne Flora .

history

Drawing of the "Heimann Plan", cathedral area 1819
Section of the core and original garden

The history of the first botanical garden in Cologne goes back to the 17th century. The Jesuit order, which is also based in Cologne, built the Church of the Assumption of Mary and the college behind it on a larger plot of land with garden areas at the back in 1629 on Marzellenstrasse . The students at the college used this large garden, which was specially planted with ornamental plants, as a place to relax and stay. When the Jesuit order was abolished in 1773, the college building and its real estate fell to the municipal high school and foundation fund in Cologne . Ferdinand Franz Wallraf (1748–1824) took care of the abandoned garden of the Jesuit college in 1784. “With his own resources, he had the neglected greenhouses restored there for study purposes and 2500 new plants purchased.” Wallraf “has held botanical lectures since 1784 and took over the supervision of the botanical garden associated with the professorship.” During the French occupation, the institute was subordinate to Central school in which the schools and the University of Cologne were combined.

The teaching required by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution set new preferences in the educational system . So the natural sciences with the subject botany gained in importance. Then in 1801 the garden, which was already part of the central school, was transformed into a botanical garden for teaching purposes. The professor of mineralogy , botany and zoology , Johann Stoll, who taught at the central school, got the school administration commission to hire a scientifically trained gardener for the garden. Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe was then appointed to the office.

In 1805 a decree appeared under Napoleon , according to which not only the former Jesuit estates, but also the former Augustinian convent on Maximinenstrasse, were designated for teaching purposes. The school administration had this church and the monastery building demolished and determined the areas now gained, including the previously existing and usefully owned monastery garden, to expand the botanical garden, which now had a total area of ​​approx. 5.5 acres .

Leading personalities

Former gardener's house at the first city garden (19th century)

The first scientific director of the institute was Professor Dr. Stoll employed who laid out the botanical garden with Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe. Weyhe, the gardening specialist, stayed in this position for two years and moved to Düsseldorf in 1803 as royal gardening director . Wilhelm Anton Berkenkamp took his place. Stoll died in 1804. He was followed by Professor Dr. Cassel, who made a name for himself in the field of “natural plant families taking into account their healing power”, the “textbook of the natural plant order” and especially through his work on “Morphonomica botanica”. In 1810 Berkenkamp was able to expand the garden and in 1816 a catalog of plants covering the entire inventory of the garden was published. In the same year, Cassel accepted an appointment at the University of Ghent .

Wilhelm Anton Berkenkamp died in 1826. Jakob Greiß took over the management of the Botanical Garden in his place . After his death in 1853, Anton Strauss , who also directed the expansion of the city garden from 1864–1866, took over its function.

Garden budget

Table of a list of costs 1815

The funds approved by the botanical gardener Wilhelm Anton Berkenkamp for the maintenance of the garden and his own livelihood were modest. For the years 1804–1809, they amounted to 1,800 francs per year . When the costs increased due to the inclusion of the garden area of ​​the former Maximinenkloster, the payments were raised to 3,405 francs from 1809 to 1815. Only when Berkenkamp showed the city council by means of dedicated cost statements that he himself only had 604 francs left to live was the garden's budget set at 4,000 francs, and the gardener also received a vacant official apartment. Despite a further improvement in 1823 (after the end of the French era in 1815), the gardener's annual income after deducting costs never exceeded 350 thalers . When he took up the position of Berkenkamp's successor in 1826, Jakob Greiß received an annual salary of 850 thalers with an also vacant residence.

Use and areas of the garden

use

In the early days of the garden, greenhouses were primarily used for teaching purposes and not for mass production to supply all urban green spaces, and also for research purposes by the institute. For the lower area, Professor Stoll obtained the construction of the first heatable greenhouse as early as 1802, several of which were subsequently built. In 1806 his "Catalog of Plants and Shrubs of the Botanical Garden of Cologne" was published for the first time, in which 3,934 cultivated plants were listed according to the Linnaeus system . In 1816 a modified plant catalog by Berkenkamp appeared in Latin with a German preface, in which, however, the number of plants described had decreased.

With the loss of importance of natural science teaching that began at the institute during the Prussian period , combined with the departure of Professor Cassel in 1817, the quality and range of botany classes decreased . This tendency continued (Berkenkamp taught until his death in 1826, also Greiß in his early days) until the end of the 1830s the teaching was completely stopped.

In 1842 a spa house was built in the garden, colonnades were built on the west side of the wall to the "Hexengasschen" and a resourceful businessman opened a bar of mineral water. As a result of these innovations, the Botanical Garden developed into a place of entertainment.

Garden areas

In its early days, the garden was only accessible to the public at certain times via the “Hexengässchen” entrance. It was at the end of a cul-de-sac branching north from Trankgasse .

The garden was divided into a lower and an upper section, with a height difference of 3.5 to 4 meters between them.

The individual areas extended from the rear properties with their rear buildings and gardens on Marcellenstrasse and Maximinenstrasse and Trankgasse to the cathedral area. To the west, the no longer existing “Herrengässchen” formed the border.

Even the south side of the cathedral, the cathedral courtyard, had been planted in addition to the garden area with symmetrically arranged borders and 73 linden trees since 1822.

Outline and types

Symmetry and garden art. Drawing of a discount in front of the first Dom-Hotel
Cologne garden art in the 19th century. Drawing / design of a border planting in Gothic forms

The botanical garden was divided into four main sections.

  • The first contained the annual and biennial plants from the free land
  • The second section included the perennial plants of the free land
  • In the third, trees and bushes were grouped together
  • The fourth division was made up of the greenhouse plants

The catalogs published between 1804 and 1826 describe:

The Cologne garden found benevolent support for its plant population from the royal family. Jung cites a corresponding order from the ruler Friedrich Wilhelm from March 1821 to the administration of the Orangery of the Royal Palace in Brühl to hand over 271 plants named in their species to the Botanical Garden in Cologne.

Environment of the cathedral

On the north side of the cathedral stood the church of St. Maria in pasculo ( St. Maria im Pesch ). The small church, which was laid down in 1848, was added to the central, unfinished north wall of the cathedral. To the east, roughly at the point where the Petrusbrunnen donated by Empress Augusta to the Cologne residents around 1870 , was the church of St. Maria ad Gradus , which was demolished in 1817. The back of the church was joined by the cathedral cemetery, which was no longer in use at that time. On the south side still stood the St. John's Church, the theological school (theological faculty of the old university) and the seminary as well as other old buildings that were later demolished as part of the uncovering of the cathedral. The open spaces gained were planted with trees and some of them received artistically designed borders up to ten meters wide.

Railway station versus botanical garden

Remains of the green spaces at the main station around 1900

In 1853 negotiations began between the city and the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft , which led to the construction of the Central Station (completed on December 5, 1859), which marked the beginning of the decline of the inner-city Botanical Garden.

End of the old garden

Negotiations on the cession of the grounds of the Botanical Garden were concluded in December 1857. The construction of tracks and railway stations in the corner of Marzellenstrasse and Maximinenstrasse meant that parts of the garden and a number of groups of trees and walking paths on the north side of the cathedral disappeared. The existing buildings such as greenhouses, farm buildings, the spa house with the colonnades and an imposing fountain with a high fountain were demolished, and the trees and bushes that could still be transplanted were moved to the municipal tree nursery in the city garden.

In the session of the III. Civil Senate of the Royal Court of Appeal in Cologne on March 30, 1859, it was decided that when assessing the value of the botanical garden, taking into account all criteria, the purchase price of the area with its area of ​​128,153 square feet to 1 thaler and 15 Sgr. per square foot. The city ultimately achieved total proceeds of 576,698 marks.

It was also decided that the "Mineral Drinking Water Company", which in 1842 had acquired the right to use the walks in the garden for its spa guests by contract from the city for 25 years, was to be paid compensation of 2,000 thalers.

Development of the cathedral area

In 1865 the city was presented with a draft for the construction of large brick terraces on the north and east sides of the cathedral. The draft was accepted and implemented after examination. First there was a flight of stairs with a lining wall on the north side. In 1868, double staircases, each 5.02 m wide, were created on the east side, overcoming a total height of 4.40 m, in order to create the upper walkway there. A water basin was placed between the two wings of the stairs, from the middle of which rose a well crowned by a figure of St. Peter, patron saint of the cathedral .

Under Anton Strauss, who had drawn up a design for the redesign of the area around the cathedral in 1887, urban gardening in the cathedral area continued.

Herman Robert Jung, who later became Cologne's horticultural director, reported that in 1896 a splendid specimen of “Salisburia adiantifolia” (synonym for Ginkgo biloba ) was found in the grounds of the city garden as the last remnant of the former plant population of the Old Botanical Garden.

See also

literature

  • Hermann Robert Jung : The gardens at Cologne Cathedral, then and now. A contribution to the history of the uncovering of Cologne Cathedral . . in: Journal of Horticulture and Garden Art No. 1 to 5. 1896
  • Werner Adams: From the botanical garden to urban greenery, 200 years of Cologne green spaces . . Cologne 2001 Publishing Group Bachem ISBN 3-7616-1460-8
  • Joachim Bauer / Carmen Kohls: Cologne under French and Prussian rule , in: Werner Adams / Joachim Bauer (eds.) "From the Botanical Garden to the Urban Green - 200 Years of Cologne Green" (Stadtspuren - Monuments in Cologne, Volume 30) Bachem Verlag, Cologne 2001 ISBN 3-7616-1460-8
  • Carl Dietmar: Die Chronik Kölns , Chronik Verlag, Dortmund 1991, ISBN 3-611-00193-7
  • K. Napp-Zinn: The Cologne botany between old and new university . In: Studies on the History of the University of Cologne, Volume 2, Cologne 1985

Web links

Commons : Old Botanical Garden at Cologne Cathedral  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Regine Boeff, University of Cologne. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on July 15, 2020 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.ub.uni-koeln.de ; different within the history of flora at Akademie für uns Kölsche Sproch ( memento from March 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Heinz Finger, Cathedral Library: At the end of the Jesuit order ( Memento of June 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 12 kB)
  3. ↑ a b c d e f H. R. Jung: The gardens at Cologne Cathedral, then and now
  4. ↑ K. Napp-Zinn: The Cologne botany between old and new university . In: Studies on the history of the University of Cologne, Volume 2, Cologne 1985, p. 13 ff.
  5. ↑ K. Napp-Zinn: The Cologne botany between old and new university . In: Studies on the history of the University of Cologne, Volume 2, Cologne 1985, p. 130.
  6. ^ Carl Dietmar: Die Chronik Kölns , Chronik Verlag, Dortmund 1991, ISBN 3-611-00193-7 , p. 251.
  7. ↑ Taler or Mark, in the period before 1871 different currency names were used