Potsdam Botanical Garden
The Potsdam Botanical Garden was laid out in 1950 on the site of the former terrace area on the northern edge of the Sanssouci park . The total area covers an area of around 5 hectares. In the greenhouses and open-air areas open to the public, almost 9,000 plant species are preserved in culture. The University of Potsdam uses the Botanical Garden as an educational and research facility. The listed buildings from the 19th century are managed by the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg .
history
Location and use
The area was used for horticulture long before the Botanical Garden was established, it was used to cultivate local and, above all, Mediterranean fruits and vegetables for the royal table and for sale by the court gardeners as well as flowers to decorate the palace complex. The mulberry avenue, which runs from west to east, divides the botanical garden into two areas. On the south side, on the site of the former court nursery of Sanssouci, are the institute buildings and greenhouses with open spaces. On the north side is the so-called Paradise Garden, created as an “Italian Fruit Garden”, which today serves as a teaching and show garden for Potsdam University.
The former court nursery of Sanssouci
The horticultural use of the area south of the avenue goes back to the time of Frederick II . After the construction of the Sanssouci Palace, an ever-growing garden area developed towards the west, where orangeries and greenhouses were built for cherries, wine, figs and apricots, among other things. The court gardener Philipp Friedrich Krutisch , who was responsible for the vineyard terraces, was the first caretaker of this orangery, which was transferred to the first "orange gardener" Johann Hillner from 1748 and his son Anton Hillner from 1790. After Hillner's death in 1817, Ludwig Sello took over the duties in the orangery area, which has now been combined with the terrace area. His son and successor Hermann Sello expanded the gardening business after 1840, which finally extended from the Neue Kammern to the west of the Sanssouci Palace to the bend in the Maulbeerallee and, on behalf of Friedrich Wilhelm IV. , Laid the Italianizing one according to plans by gardening director Peter Joseph Lenné Paradise Garden on the north side of Maulbeerallee.
There is little information about the planting of open spaces and greenhouses. The awards that Hermann Sello received for fruits, flowers and ornamental foliage plants at the annual exhibitions of the Berlin Horticultural Association give a hint , in which he was a committee member for visual garden art and later also for tree cultivation from 1841 to 1859. The award-winning plants from his territory included "different types of pumpkin, giant strawberries, figs, corn cob assortments, various flowering calceolaria , newly grown epiphyllum , peaches, apricots and melons". Little information is available about the cultures of the subsequent heads of the terrace area - court gardener Ludwig Brasch, from 1876 to 1887 and court gardener Adolf Wundel, from 1887 to 1895.
Paradise garden
The Paradise Garden, also known as Paradiesgärtlein or Paradeisgärtl, which belongs to the former terrace area, extends over an area of around 2.5 hectares. The complex is closely linked to the construction of the orangery castle to the northeast on the Bornstedter ridge, which was built in the Italian Renaissance style from 1851 was built. To beautify the immediate area, Friedrich Wilhelm IV commissioned his garden architect Peter Joseph Lenné to work out plans for an enclosed kitchen garden in the style of an Italian garden , which court gardener Hermann Sello laid out between 1841 and 1845. He planted the garden area in the southern section with wine, corn, pumpkin, artichokes and other vegetables between existing mulberry trees , which he combined with wine festoons and some beds for leafy plants and flowers. The slightly sloping northern and eastern area was planted with deciduous trees and a lawn area. The overall concept was based on the descriptions of the Roman senator and writer Pliny the Elder. J. over his country estates Tuscum and Laurentinum, so that the architects Ludwig Persius and Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse enriched the area with small architectures such as the well house built in 1845/1846, the so-called atrium or Stibadium , and the water cascade built in 1846. The route was also partly covered with pergolas covered with wine, based on the ancient model .
Along the Maulbeerallee in the south as well as on the driveway to the dragon house to the northwest and on to the Belvedere on the Klausberg , Ludwig Persius had the garden enclosed with a sandstone pergola between 1842 and 1844, which was replaced around 1900 by a sandstone wall with a wooden arcade. In 1844 he designed the main entrance on Maulbeerallee based on the model of the stibadium in Tuscum described by Pliny with a pergola supported by four terracotta columns and a marble tub with a gargoyle mask. He had hermen set up on both sides of this so-called bagnerole , which are no longer placed there today. The entrance created in 1857 on the north-west corner, on today's Kronprinzenweg, was designed by Friedrich August Stüler and was also flanked by herms, which are no longer preserved, made by the sculptor Eduard Stützel .
The gardens after the end of the monarchy
After the First World War and the end of the monarchy, the gardens and parks were subordinated to the "Crown Administration" in the Prussian Ministry of Finance in Berlin in 1919, from 1923 to 1927 "Prussian Crown Estate Administration", then "Administration of the State Palaces and Gardens". The former royal gardens were now to be looked after and preserved as an art and cultural asset from a conservation point of view. The terrace area was headed from 1896 (from 1896 to 1897 provisionally) garden director Friedrich Kunert . In addition to Georg Potente, he was the second garden director in Sanssouci and responsible for the area of plant cultivation. He published numerous articles in gardening magazines, including on a peach greenhouse, potted fruit and rose culture. Under his leadership, a palm house and four other greenhouses were built between 1908 and 1912 during the imperial era, some of which are still preserved today and can be visited. Some fruit houses, following the interests of Wilhelm II , were also used for flower cultivation, which included orchids, carnations, knight stars and other flowers, their own violet house.
When Kunert retired, Paul Kache was given office and duties as his successor from October 1, 1929 to 1945. Under him, the paradise garden got a different look in 1937. According to the plans of the horticultural inspector Heinz Scheffler, a garden was created in the style of a show garden with southern crops, leaf and water plants at a newly created pond with a stream in the middle of the garden and summer flowers, whereby the design of the plant by Hermann Sello was lost.
Development after the Second World War
After the Second World War, Sanssouci Park was under the control of the Plenipotentiary of the Red Army , Lieutenant Colonel of the Guard Yevgeny Fyodorovich Ludschuweit, from April 27, 1945 , and was no longer open to the public until June 4, 1946. The Brandenburg provincial government was responsible for managing the Potsdam facilities . In the first year after the war, parts of the former court gardening facility became a branch of the Moscow Botanical Garden , the botanical department of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union , which was set up in Potsdam by Wolfgang Müller-Stoll in collaboration with the head gardener Joseph Seidelmann. In 1950 the former court gardener and the paradise garden as a botanical garden went to the "Brandenburg University of Education" founded in 1948, which was renamed the Potsdam University of Education in 1951 and was given the nickname "Karl Liebknecht" in 1971. For many years, Müller-Stoll headed the Botanical Institute at the state university. Since 1991 the Botanical Garden has belonged to the University of Potsdam, which was founded on July 15 of the same year .
Today's use of the facility as a botanical garden
Since the botanical garden was founded, the area has no longer been functionally related to the Sanssouci park, but is used by the University of Potsdam as an educational and research facility. As part of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences in Potsdam-Golm , the Institute for Biochemistry and Molecular Physiology, the Institute for Ecology and Nature Conservation and the Institute for Systematics and Didactics of Biology are located on the Maulbeerallee. Every year around 250 students (as of 2008) of the botany department gain knowledge of biosystematics , morphology , bioecology and geobotany .
Part of the garden area is available for research purposes, with nature conservation and botanical species protection playing an important role. On some beds, protected, endangered wild plants from the indigenous region are preserved in culture and made available for reintroduction into the wild. In this context, the Potsdam Botanical Garden cooperates under the direction of the Brandenburg State Environment Agency with the Botanical Garden Berlin , the Spreewald Heidegarten Langengrassau in the municipality of Heideblick and the Botanical Association of Berlin and Brandenburg. He also participates in the national and international exchange of plant material between botanical gardens, university facilities and comparable public research institutions based on the agreements of the international nature conservation treaty, the Biodiversity Convention (CBD).
The “Friends of the Botanical Garden of the University of Potsdam e. V. “supports the Botanical Garden with financial means and participates in guided tours and events in order to impart botanical and horticultural knowledge in connection with biological species protection to the public and to present the ecological and cultural importance of plants. For schoolchildren and preschoolers, the Biology Didactics department offers experience-oriented lessons in the “green classroom”, which teaches knowledge about plants and insects directly in the garden.
Greenhouses and cold house
Around 4,600 tropical and subtropical plant species are cultivated in the greenhouses open to the public, which extend over an area of around 3,000 m². The entrance to the houses connected by a connecting corridor is on the east side of the palm house, which houses various types of palm, including ficus , banana trees and giant bamboo. Two dwarf palms in pots belonged to the former terrace quarter of Sanssouci and are estimated to be over 100 years old.
The connecting corridor is followed by the epiphyte house and the useful plant house, the "house of tropical leaf diversity" and the cactus house on the south side. The epiphyte house shows numerous epiphytes growing up trunks and wires from tropical and subtropical regions that take root without contact with the ground, such as the various genera of the bromeliad family or the numerous arum plants with their long aerial roots. Crop plants from the tropics and subtropics can be found in the next house, which are represented by shrubs of cassava and guava , coffee and cocoa trees, cotton shrubs , sugar cane and dwarf bananas . The “House of Tropical Foliage” shows tropical and subtropical ornamental plants such as begonias, Gesneria plants , a special collection of arum plants and carnivorous plants, and in the cactus house, leaf and stem succulents are cultivated in addition to the cacti that give their name . On the north side, from west to east, are the aquarium hall equipped with aquatic and marsh plants and the Victoria House , built in 1913, named after the giant water lily Victoria cruziana , which is native to South America , as well as the orchid and fern house.
To the north of the greenhouse, along the surrounding wall to the Maulbeerallee, the approximately 93-meter-long cold house extends, in which in the east-facing area, the Mediterranean house, potted plants are housed at temperatures around 5 ° C for wintering, which are native to Australia, the Mediterranean region and Asia can only be set up here outdoors in the summer months. To the east there is an area with succulents . In summer the building is also used for exhibitions and cultural events.
Planting the open areas
Around 4,000 plant species are preserved in cultivation on the open land on both sides of the Maulbeerallee, of which around 50 are threatened with extinction in the state of Brandenburg. The south-facing area shows a strip in the south-east with woody species of a Central European deciduous forest and its typical spring bloomers . This is followed to the west by two pedunculate oaks that are more than 200 years old, as well as various perennials and woody plants from the Far East, including shrub species of the witch hazel, which is native to East Asia and North America . This is followed by an arboretum (fruticetum) with deciduous trees, which include various types of maple , and an arboretum (pinetum) with coniferous trees, in which a primeval sequoia was planted in 1958 , the seeds of which came from the wild in China in 1956. The arboretum is bordered to the north by a primrose and fern quarter, followed by the morphological- biological department. For teaching purposes, transformations of the basic organs such as leaf, sprout and root metamorphoses, seed and fruit forms as well as pollination mechanisms are illustrated and in the genetic section variants of the growth forms of leaves, fruits, generic and species hybrids . In other beds, crops for human nutrition grow, such as buckwheat containing protein and starch , various types of vegetables and grains, potatoes and sunflowers with their oil-containing seeds, and the section with medicinal and aromatic plants shows different species with biological-pharmaceutical properties which essential oil , alkaloids , saponins , flavonoids and other substances can be obtained. Another section cultivates protected and endangered plants that are under nature protection in Germany, which include spring Adonis , common pasque flower , great anemone , cross gentian , diptame , spring knot flower , large-flowered foxglove and arnica .
In the Paradise Garden north of Maulbeerallee, the systematically laid out section extends in the southern part , which is divided into a dicot system and a monocot system. Of the dicots, or dicotyledons, plants from around 92 families are cultivated, such as various types of the opiumous magnolia , rose and lip flower family . On the beds to the north with monocots, or monocotyledons, there are various types of bulbs and tuberous plants from the iris , lily and amaryllis families . Four grasslands show a steppe and heather garden, an early blooming and a wild flower meadow. The steppe garden on the west side shows European dry sand and limestone grasslands , a grass steppe native to southwest Siberia and North American prairie grass. In the heather garden it blooms all year round thanks to the coordinated varieties with snow , broom , Cornwall , tree and bell heather , which is endangered by changed environmental conditions in some regions , which are cultivated on an area north of the pond created in 1937 with various marsh and water plants . The early blooming meadow extends along the east side , on which a carpet of flowers with elven crocuses and Elwes snowdrops spreads out in early spring , and a meadow with wild flowers on which wild rose and apple species are cultivated. On the north-eastern side of the garden, it blooms in numerous colors on the rhododendron slope from February / March to August. As one of the first standing Dahurian rhododendron in February / March in bloom and with species of North American hybrids and native to China and after Robert Fortune named Fortune's Rhododendron ends, who discovered this species. 1856 The Alpinum on the north slope shows mountain plants from Central Europe, Asia and North America. In spring, various types of carnations, rock flowers , yellow gentian , the protected diptam and in late spring the rosemary daphne bloom in the rock garden . Some gentian species, bergenias , balloon flowers and outdoor gloxinias from Asia are followed in the eastern part of the Alpinum by plants from North America with the blue of the valley , the large-flowered forest lily , the heart flower and numerous types of beard thread .
Succulents on the south-facing open field
Department with dicots (dicotyledons)
Heather garden
Alpinum
Buildings and garden architecture
Former houses in the court nursery
On the site of the former court gardener there were not only greenhouses, but also houses for employees of the Prussian royal family. As head of the terrace area, Hermann Sello moved from his official apartment in the Roman baths in the Charlottenhof park section to the former master pheasant farm on the south side of Maulbeerallee, which Ludwig Persius redesigned in the Italian country house style in 1841/42. The three-storey residential building with a tower extension, utility wing and a stable building was an extension of the Orangery Palace terrace and was stylistically adapted to the paradise garden on the opposite side of the street with numerous pergolas. It was demolished in 1910 when the anniversary terrace was built. The architect Albert Geyer used some of the components for a new building in a modified form, which began further west on Maulbeerallee in the same year. The house, also known today as “Villa Kache”, was named after the later resident and head of the terrace area, garden director Paul Kache.
Another residential building in the Italian style - since 1910 between Villa Kache and the Jubilee Terrace - was built in 1847 for the widow Persius. On behalf of Friedrich Wilhelm IV, Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse rebuilt the office building of the former court gardener in the pineapple grinder Johann Carl Jacobi (1770–1831), in which the widow of the architect Ludwig Persius moved into an apartment on the upper floor after his death. The two-storey house, built on the plan of a Latin cross , received an arbor on the east side and a loggia with a row of columns on the west side , in which two medallions show the portraits of Friedrich Wilhelm IV and his wife Elisabeth Ludovika of Bavaria . The fencing of the Paradise Garden opposite was repeated on this building with pergolas. Both houses are now used by the University of Potsdam as institute buildings.
Garden architecture in the paradise garden
As the architectural center of the Paradise Garden, which was to serve as a resting place, Persius designed a so-called atrium in the function of a stibadium , which was built in 1845/46 a few meters northeast of the main entrance, according to Friedrich Wilhelm IV's specifications . The atrium desired by the king as a single building was in the ancient house building, however, a centrally located interior room with an open roof, through the opening of which rainwater entered a water basin, the impluvium . A cube-shaped garden pavilion with a slightly rectangular floor plan and a square exedra with a semicircular apse attached to the west was created in the Paradise Garden . The self-contained building was given transparency by the entrances in the south and north and the portal-like opening on the east side in the style of an aedicula with flanking pilasters and a flat triangular gable. Persius placed the inward sloping roof slope, the Compluvium , underneath a circumferential metope - triglyphic frieze so that it is not visible from the outside. The frieze forms the upper end of the plastered brick masonry, which was given the appearance of stone blocks through incised joints. Originally there were 40 colored glass vases of around 50 centimeters high in the open metope fields from the Silesian art glass factory "Gräflich Schaffgottsche Josephinenhütte" in Schreiberhau, today Szklarska Poręba . They "let a colored, almost magical light into the interior and also gave the small building a lively color on the outside." During the building renovation in 2008/09, the vases, of which only fourteen originals have survived, were replaced by copies.
Inside, twelve fluted terracotta columns are set up around the impluvium to support the sloping roof. The pillars were made by the Berlin pottery manufacturer Ernst March in 1846 . The walls were painted by Karl Lompeck , who adorned them with landscape paintings in 1848, and the bronze group "Adler, ein deer striking", which was placed on a base in the Impluvium, was created by Friedrich Leopold Bürde in 1846. He made a plaster model in the same year participated in the Berlin Academy exhibition.
Further water points were built on the slope in 1846, from the atrium axially to the east, a water cascade designed by Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse and an elongated water basin to the north. Hesse designed a 13-step cascade, which he bordered on both sides with a stepped wall. As in the metope fields of the atrium, the stair stringers were originally decorated with colored glass vases, which were replaced by simple flower bowls at the end of the 19th century. The top of the stairs is accentuated by a marble vase and a basin resting on balusters , which is fed with water through a lion's head mask on the vase base. Three children head masks the water's edge, the water flows to the stairs and collects in a semi-circular, from white broader Hermen with bowls of flowers flanked pool at the foot of the cascade.
Fountain figure in the atrium by Friedrich Leopold Bürde, 1846
Drawing by Ludwig Persius, published in the Architectural Album , 1854
Water cascade in the paradise garden. In the background the western corner pavilion of the Orangery Castle
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literature
- Botanical Garden of the University of Potsdam (Ed.): Guide through the greenhouses and open-air facilities of the Botanical Garden of the University of Potsdam . Potsdam 1994
- Brandenburg State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and the State Archaeological Museum and Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): Peter Joseph Lenné. Parks and gardens in the state of Brandenburg . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Worms 2005, ISBN 3-88462-217-X , p. 233 f.
- General Directorate of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg (ed.): Nothing thrives without care. The Potsdam park landscape and its gardeners . Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft Rudolf Otto mbH, Potsdam 2001, p. 291 f.
- Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): Ludwig Persius - Architect of the King - Architecture under Friedrich Wilhelm IV . 1st edition, Verlag Schnell & Steiner, Potsdam 2003, ISBN 3-7954-1586-1 , p. 154, p. 189
- Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg: Prussian Green. Court gardener in Brandenburg-Prussia . Henschel Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89487-489-9
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Signpost through the greenhouses, p. 5.
- ↑ Nothing thrives without care, p. 292.
- ↑ Peter Joseph Lenné. Parks and Gardens in the State of Brandenburg, p. 233.
- ^ Prussian Green, p. 106.
- ^ Prussian Green, p. 109.
- ^ Prussian Green, p. 112.
- ↑ Clemens Alexander Wimmer, in: Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): The Prussian Court Gardeners . Berlin 1996, p. 63.
- ^ Prussian Green, p. 118.
- ^ Prussian Green, p. 118.
- ↑ Lt. Information board at the entrance to Maulbeerallee.
- ↑ a b Hermann von Helmholtz Center for Cultural Technology, here: Botanical Garden Potsdam .
- ↑ Signpost through the greenhouses, p. 6.
- ↑ Epiphyte house. Botanical Garden of the University of Potsdam, accessed on September 22, 2017 .
- ↑ Signpost through the greenhouses, p. 40.
- ^ Sabine Bohle-Heintzenberg: Architecture and Beauty. The Schinkel School in Berlin and Brandenburg. Berlin 1997, p. 98.
Coordinates: 52 ° 24 ′ 14.7 " N , 13 ° 1 ′ 30.5" E