Hints about landscaping
The title of a richly illustrated book by Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau , which was published by Hallberger in Stuttgart in 1834, is allied to the description of its practical application in Muskau . With him, Pückler was able to bring his landscaping intentions closer to a wider audience. It became one of the most successful and formative specialist books on landscape design of the 19th century and, according to Adrian von Buttlar, is considered the “last famous work in garden literature”.
Emergence
Count Hermann von Pückler (1785–1871), married to the daughter of State Chancellor Hardenberg since 1817 , was raised to hereditary prince status in 1822. In 1811 he inherited the extensive "estate of Muskau" on both sides of the Lusatian Neisse. As early as 1815, he began to round off the huge estates and decorate them with landscaping and began to invest significant financial resources for this. Due to Pückler's constantly strained financial situation, Hardenberg had disinherited his daughter prior to the marriage.
A good decade after he started redesigning the landscape in Muskau, Pückler came up with the idea of writing a garden design textbook, which, however, should be less a manual than an aesthetic textbook. At Christmas 1825 he wrote to his wife Lucie: “[...] I was very busy yesterday. You know that I have the plan to publish a little pamphlet on landscape gardening, combined with an atlas containing the map of Muskau Park and the most beautiful views, in the Reptonian manner, as it was and is. That it is now good to put something like this on at times in order to be able to improve it for a year or two ... Although everything is only kept as brief as possible, and nothing is said as part of the matter and ... not more than 50 to 60 printed Pages will contain, I am convinced that it will be of great benefit, and can contribute substantially to awakening the richer part of the nation to a greater taste and sense of beauty than they have hitherto shown. […] ”The aforementioned“ Reptonian manner ”refers to the British garden designer Humphry Repton and his works Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803) and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816).
The layout of the Muskau landscape park and the lavish lifestyle of the prince brought him to the brink of financial ruin. The couple agreed that the easiest way to remedy the financial misery was to remarry the prince with a rich heiress and in 1826 they divorced by mutual agreement without separating. From 1825 to 1829 the prince spent extended periods of time in Great Britain, studying both society and gardening there. However, without finding a suitable spouse, especially since his intentions had not gone unnoticed in British society.
The most important result of Pückler's British studies were his literary works, such as the generally known and popular letters of a deceased (4 volumes 1830 to 1831) or Tutti Frutti (5 volumes 1834). The “hints” thus arose in a fruitful phase of Pückler's literary work. While the other works of Pückler were published under a pseudonym, the “Allusions” appeared under his real name.
After publication, Pückler embarked on a six-year journey until 1840, from which he brought many experiences and a lover to Muskau, but not the financial resources that were important to him. In 1845 he was forced to sell Muskau and to implement his landscape gardening ambitions in the much smaller Branitzer Park . So when the publication of the "Hints" was still thinking about the realization of the individual parking lots according to the description of the three journeys, they now became a legacy for the new owner, Prince Frederick of the Netherlands .
role models
Of course, Pückler knew the classical literature on landscape gardening, according to Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld's extensive theory of garden art (5 volumes, 1779–1785). Or Humphry Repton's (1752-1818) three most important writings: Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1795), Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), and Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816) and Friedrich Ludwig Sckell's (1750–1823) contributions to visual garden art for budding gardeners and garden lovers (1818 and 1825).
Pückler essentially followed these models in the description and in parts of the illustration. In this he differs from the garden literature that appeared after him, such as Hermann Jäger's garden art and gardens otherwise and now (Berlin 1888), which already reflect the design methods in the sense of a garden art story. However, the “hints” differ from the aforementioned works in their literary quality, namely the ironic humor and the many very painterly illustrations as panels of hand-colored lithographs.
Illustrations
Karl Friedrich Schinkel had been planning Muskau renovations and new buildings since 1820 for the four years younger Prince. Accordingly, he also included him in the considerations for the artistic decoration of his landscape garden book. Schinkel initially suggested Friedrich Eduard Meyerheim as the painter , while Pückler thought of Franz Michaelis , who also worked as a lithographer, but was rejected by Schinkel. Instead, Schinkel brought in the painter August Wilhelm Ferdinand Schirmer , who, as a master painter for KPM , had dealt extensively with the representation of landscape vedutas .
On May 1, 1832, Schinkel wrote to Pückler: “ I have become firmly convinced that two artists are necessary: a draftsman and a lithographer. Above all, the draftsman is to be selected from the most skilled landscape painters, and a true artist in this subject does not bother with drawing on stone, which requires a very special technical knowledge and skill that can only be gained by continuously pursuing this art. The actual landscape painter has neither the time nor the sense for this. However, he ensures that the lithographer receives characteristic originals in a light, appealing manner that is suitable for lithography. I have now found such a draftsman in our excellent landscape painter Schirmer, who has made very cheap and acceptable conditions for the present purpose. [...] For the lithographs, once good originals have been made, there are several artists both in Berlin and elsewhere. For the time being, Mr. Schirmer and I have chosen the lithographer Herrmann here, who has delivered a lot of successful stone prints. He can only set the conditions when the originals are presented to him, which should be thought of first. "
Schirmer set the condition to receive an advance payment due to his tense financial and family circumstances and to make the necessary stay in Muskau as time-efficient as possible, for which he calculated 14 days. Pückler accepted and so Schirmer traveled to Muskau in June 1832. The preparation of the views took about a year. It was certainly a challenge for Schirmer, since only about a third of the facilities were designed with garden art.
In 1996, Beate Schneider explained Schirmer's artistic approach for the “Allusions”: “ The visual artistic implementation of the landscape sections requested by Pückler required precise measurement and perfect descriptive projection. In the composition, Schirmer stuck to proven models from vedute painting. The foreground motifs pushed one behind the other and the light perspective give the views a great sense of depth. With solid skill and quality of craftsmanship, which he had acquired as a view painter at KPM, Schirmer [...] created exact templates for the later lithographs and succeeded in giving Pückler's intellectual designs a realistic reference. "
Schinkel was evidently very impressed by the garden views, because on August 30, 1833 he wrote to Prince Pückler: “... I saw [Schirmer's] work after my return and I was extremely happy about it. If the execution [of the lithographs] is only somewhat similar to the original drawings, the work will by far surpass the English in truth and characteristics of representation. [...] The work turned out well beyond my expectations, and I can only wish your Highness the luck of our finding this artist, because I don't know of anyone else who could have carried out this work with true love for the subject like him. [...] "
Pückler was also very satisfied with the result. Only sheet XII, on which the bed in the shape of a cornucopia “looks so bad”, did not please him, a detail that catches the eye of today's observer. Pückler tried to have a correction made in a letter dated December 25, 1833, but this could no longer be implemented due to lack of time. Schirmer's originals for the lithographs, long believed lost, reappeared in 1992 and were acquired by the Fürst Pückler Museum - Park and Branitz Castle in Cottbus.
Schirmer's illustrations in the “Allusions” did not represent the actual, but the intended state. The castle is also depicted accordingly in a shape designed by Schinkel but never actually implemented. The castle complex, which is reminiscent of the Löwenburg in Wilhelmshöhe , was also not started to build, as was the published mausoleum buildings.
The fact that Schirmer showed such a great skill in depicting parts of the Muskau Park that had already been started but not yet finished led to Prince Carl of Prussia employing Schirmer as a garden co-designer in Glienicke from 1834 onwards. Schirmer produced at least four vedutas of the park there, which became famous through lithographs.
dedication
Pückler dedicated the work to Prince Carl of Prussia, who masterfully dabbled in the design of Glienicke Park as a princely garden designer. The dedication, a mixture of self-adornment and flattery, reads:
"[...] I have always admired Your Royal Highness as a model of that kind of knightly amiability, which is mixed with the most effective magic for our German heart through genuine cosiness. "
“ Your Highness is also a protector and connoisseur of the beautiful where it is to be found, and in recent times you have also given your active attention to the subject of this book - garden art in the higher sense. [...] "
“ So please allow me, my lord, to adorn this attempt at landscape gardening with your illustrious name, while I dare to humbly dedicate it to you as a weak sign of my highest veneration. "
" Your Royal Highness the submissive Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau. "
It is not known whether Prince Carl was honored by the dedication. Although he consulted the “hints” for his designs in Glienicke, it is noticeable that he visibly stayed away from Pückler when he designed the Babelsberger Park, which is adjacent to Glienicke. The prince made particular use of the prince's six-year absence due to travel to be explained by Rehder Pückler's staff members. Politically, the arch-conservative prince and the prince, who was politically active and very liberal in the Prussian mansion, were diametrically opposed to each other.
structure
The hints are divided into two parts. In the first, Pückler presented his theoretical design methods. In the second, he described Muskauer Park in relation to the statements made in the first part. The writing therefore extensively reflects Pückler's landscape gardening intentions.
- First division
- Basic idea and plan of a garden
- Size and extent
- Enclosure
- Grouping in large, and building
- Park and gardens
- About the creation of park, meadow and garden lawns
- Moving larger trees and their grouping. Plantings at all.
- ways
- water
- Islands
- rock
- Earthworks and planades
- conservation
- Second division
- Description of the Muskau Park and its creation
- First ride
- Second ride
- Third ride
Appreciation
In 1933, shortly before he was released from civil service, Edwin Redslob paid tribute to Pückler's “Allusions” in his function as Reichskunstwart at the end of the foreword: “ Pückler's garden book completes the apprenticeship in landscape gardening, which arose in England from 1760 and then in Germany. It shows more relationship to English than to German literature, within which Pückler's work with Hirschfeld's “History and Theory of Garden Art” (1775) and Ludwig von Sckell's “Observations on Fine Garden Art” (1819) form the triad of major works accompanying the development united. "
“ Pückler's change from entertainment writer to specialist writer is the one surprise of this work. The other surprise, however, is that it is able to give the reader a new relationship to nature, despite being strictly limited to the technical nature of the subject. He no longer walks half gushing, half unsuspecting through the park and landscape: he has been given standards and direction, knowledge and understanding, he has been with a clever master and friend who has given him a lot more than mere technical information - he has come closer to nature and the laws of growth, into which all human work must fit. "
“ This is how Pückler's apparently technically limited work fits into intellectual history. What Goethe began in Weimar, what he and Carl August von Weimar developed as the lifestyle of a new time, was completed at the end of the classicist-romantic epoch in the master of gardening and the art of living, in the Prince of Pückler-Muskau: the strength, To gain worldview from nature, to transfer worldview to nature in a creative way. This makes Prince Pückler's work on landscape gardening a document of intellectual history. "
expenditure
- Fürst-Pückler-Gesellschaft (Hrsg.), Hermann von Pückler-Muskau: Allusions about landscape gardening combined with the description of their practical application in Muskau. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 1933. (Unabridged, but reduced reprint of the 1st edition from 1834, with an introduction by Reichkunstwart Edwin Redslob. VIII p., 276 col., XLIII p. 44 panels in black and white; landscape format 21 × 30 cm.)
- Hermann von Pückler-Muskau: Hints about landscape gardening combined with the description of their practical application in Muskau. Reprint of the 1st edition from 1834. Published by Hans Friedrich, Leipzig 1933. (Unabridged but reduced in size reprint of the 1st edition from 1834. 224 pages. With 44 plates, a portrait and 4 plans folded several times. (New edition under the direction of Theodor Lange.))
- Hermann von Pückler-Muskau: Hints about landscape gardening combined with the description of their practical application in Muskau. Modified reprint of the reprint Berlin 1933, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1977. (With a foreword by Count Lennart Bernadotte and an introduction by Albrecht Kruse-Rodenacker, 155 pages, 44 plates in black and white.)
- Günther Vaupel (Hrsg.), Hermann von Pückler-Muskau: Indications about landscape gardening combined with the description of their practical application in Muskau. Insel, Frankfurt a. M. 1988. (Insel-Taschenbuch, 372 p. 44 ills., 7 color plates. Further editions 1990, 1996, 2000.)
- Harri Günther (Hrsg.) Hermann von Pückler-Muskau: Indications about landscape gardening combined with the description of their practical application in Muskau. Facsimile of the 1834 edition with the original hand-colored atlas of the "Andeutungen" (4 basic plans, 44 panels 35.5 × 52 cm) and a text volume of the "Andeutungen" (227 pages) as well as a new commentary volume by Steffi Wendel and Anne Schäfer (78 pages) Edition Leipzig, Leipzig 1986; New edition: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1996.
- Hermann von Pückler-Muskau: Hints about landscape gardening combined with the description of their practical application in Muskau. New edition. Matrix-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010.
- Foundation for Landscape Studies (Hrsg.) Hermann von Pückler-Muskau: Hints about landscape gardening combined with the description of their practical application in Muskau. Birkhäuser, Basel / Berlin 2014. (New scientific edition with concordance of pages.)
- The text part of the 1834 edition is available online via "HEIDI" of the Heidelberg University Library: https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/pueckler1834a
Individual evidence
- ^ Adrian von Buttlar: The landscape garden. Wilhelm Heyne, Munich 1980, p. 195.
- ↑ quoted from Schneider: Die Gartenansichten ..., 1996, p. 32
- ↑ Beate Schneider: The garden views to Pückler's “Allusions about landscape gardening”, in: Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): August Wilhelm Ferdinand Schirmer, Potsdam 1996, pp. 32–34
- ↑ Prince Hermann Pückler-Muskau, Schriften der Pückler-Gesellschaft, Breslau 1935, p. 84f, here quoted from Schneider: Die Gartenansichten ..., 1996, p. 33
- ^ Schneider: The garden views ..., 1996, p. 33
- ↑ Ludmilla Assing-Grimelli (ed.): Correspondence and diaries of Prince Pückler-Muskau, Berlin 1874, Volume 8, p. 347f, here quoted from Schneider: Die Gartenansichten…, 1996, p. 33
- ^ Schneider: The garden views ..., 1996, note 7
- ^ Berthold Ettrich, Christian Friedrich, Steffen Krestin, Beate Schneider: AW Schirmer watercolors and drawings for Pückler's "Allusions about landscape gardening". Niederlausitzer Landesmuseum Cottbus (publisher), Cottbus 1993.
- ↑ Allusions to landscape gardening, new edition Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag 1933, foreword by Edwin Redslob, p. VIII