Christina von Brühl

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Christina von Brühl, oil painting by Anton Graff

Johanne Margarethe Christina Countess von Brühl , also Jeanne Marguerite Christine Countess von Brühl , b. von Schleyerweber and Friedenau , called Tina (born January 1, 1756 in Maubeuge ; † July 3, 1816 in Berlin ), was one of the few landscape architects of the 18th century. She designed the Seifersdorfer Tal landscape park north of Dresden near Seifersdorf , one of the first German landscape gardens based on the model of English landscape parks. At the same time, she laid out a park on her manor in Seifersdorf with a monument to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , the Prussian king and Frau von der Recke. She maintained close contacts with the Weimar court and well-known classical writers. She also worked as a writer.

Life

Amor in the Seifersdorfer Valley, 1962

Christina von Brühl was born in Maubeuge in northern France in 1756 . Her father was Paul Ernst Schleyerweber (or Schleierweber; † 1775), who served as a prime lieutenant in the Alsatian army. Christina received a very good education, including at the court of Princess Eleonore Christiane zu Stolberg-Gedern , née Countess Reuss zu Lobenstein (1736–1782). Her knowledge of the literature of sensitivity went far beyond what was customary at the time, and she also dealt with religious questions. Paul Weber Schleyer was 1775 as of Schleyer Weber and Friedenau ennobled .

She met her husband Hanns Moritz von Brühl (1746-1811) after he had joined the French army in 1766. Before that he was a lieutenant colonel in the Saxon army . Her father-in-law was Heinrich von Brühl , Minister of Finance and Prime Minister under August the Strong , after whom the Brühl Terrace in Dresden is named. Christina married the 25-year-old Count von Brühl in 1771 at the age of 15. From 1775 the couple lived in the manor house of their manor belonging to Seifersdorf Castle . In 1772 Christina von Brühl gave birth to their only child, Carl von Brühl . He became Royal Prussian Real Privy Councilor and General Director of the theater and later of the museums in Berlin. Since the income from the manor was not enough for the family to live in line with their status, Hanns Moritz von Brühl worked from 1791 until his death in 1811 as inspector general of the highways in Prussia and Pomerania.

Christina von Brühl ran the manor while her husband was away. At the same time, she designed the Seifersdorfer Tal landscape park . She sang, played the lute and theater, organized theater and music events and was active as a writer. Christina von Brühl cultivated friendships and acquaintances with numerous artists and thinkers of her time through extensive correspondence. The family home, the caretaker's house of the Seifersdorfer Rittergut, was frequented between 1771 and 1790 by the bourgeois elite as well as by artists from Dresden, Weimar and Berlin, including Christoph Martin Wieland , Theodor Körner , Jean Paul , Caspar David Friedrich , Elisa von der Recke , Friedrich Schiller , Johann Gottfried Herder and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock . The painters Josef Friedrich August Darbes , Janus Genelli and Bonaventura Genelli and Friedrich Adams were also guests, as well as Gottfried Schadow. In the 1790s, Anton Graff portrayed Christina, Hanns Moritz and their son Carl. All three paintings are now in the Dresden State Art Collections, as are portraits by Josef Friedrich August Darbes.

The Weimar and Karlsbader circles around Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were particularly close to the von Brühls . A return visit by the von Brühl family to the Weimar court took place in 1785, for example.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe taught her son Carl von Brühl, who was interested in music, painting and natural sciences, in mineralogy. Johann Gottfried Herder and Christoph Martin Wieland were also among his teachers.

Christina von Brühl spent the last years of her life in Berlin, where she died at the age of 60 in 1816.

Christina von Brühl was buried in the crypt of the Seifersdorfer church next to her husband Hanns Moritz von Brühl.

Christina von Brühl's son Carl von Brühl ; Painting by Anton Graff , 1796.

plant

Christina von Brühl designed her main work, the Seifersdorfer Tal landscape park , from 1781 and was inspired by the romantic, sentimental late phase of the English Garden . Christina von Brühl's exchange with Goethe, who played a leading role in the Park an der Ilm , probably promoted her work on the conception for the Seifersdorfer Tal as an “educational landscape”. The model was the literature of sensitivity . The concepts of “nature” and “feeling” as the force that should lead to moral action played a fundamental role in this conception. Behind the staffage and park architecture is a network of quotations from contemporary literary works as well as allegorical references to attitudes and values. The latter were, for example, virtue, calm, transience, forgiveness, truth, “Gothic friendship” and forgetting of worries. There are also references to bestsellers of the time such as Yorick's sensitive journey through France and Italy (1768) by Laurence Sterne , the verse epic Oberon (1780) by Christoph Martin Wieland, the three Bardites (religious-patriotic consecration songs) Hermanns Schlacht (1769), Hermann and die Fürsten (1784) and finally Hermanns Tod (1787) by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and the cycle of poems Canzoniere by Francesco Petrarca .

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's work Julie or Die neue Heloise (1761) also indirectly shaped the style of the landscape gardens of this time ; but it is not directly quoted here. Some of the staffages honor contemporaries such as Duchess Anna Amalia , Johann Gottfried Herder, the composer and Dresden court music director Johann Gottlieb Naumann and Leopold von Braunschweig. The majority, however, is dedicated to family members of the Brühls. They convey the family's self-image, mediate their relationships with one another and serve the rehabilitation of the father and father-in-law, former Prime Minister Heinrich von Brühl .

These ideas were materially implemented through small temples, altars, huts, resting places, pavilions, grottos and houses. In their entirety - integrated into the Seifersdorfer Tal natural area - not only offered a landscape to wander through, but also a stage or an action space for musical and theatrical performances. The family's financial situation, which is relatively precarious for aristocrats, is certainly due to the fact that many of the accessories were made from perishable materials such as wood, bark or straw. Therefore only part of the park architecture has been preserved.

The reactions of contemporaries to this work of landscape architecture ranged from overwhelming approval to rejection. The contemporary evaluation was determined by two discourses. In the male-dominated discourse on garden art, Christina von Brühl had to put up with criticism for her inconsistency in the application of style principles that were valid at the time. As a formerly bourgeois newly elite and as a woman, she tried to gain recognition in the male-dominated educated elite as well as in aristocratic society. This position polarized the reception of her work and her person among her contemporaries.

Christina von Brühl published the work Philosophy of Catholicism by Prince Charles Joseph de Ligne in 1816 .

Seifersdorfer Schloss, back to the garden

Quote

On August 12, 1785, Goethe wrote a poem to Christina "Tina" von Brühl in Carlsbad:

Farewell and goodbye.
Carlsbad, August 12th, 1785.
We walk on the meadows
And remain happy without thoughts,
On the hill the sound of farewell hovers
, The west brings down the river
A quiet farewell.
And the pain takes hold of the chest,
And the mind sways to and fro,
And goes down and goes up and goes down.
The return beckons from afar
And promises joy to the soul.
Is it like this? Yes! Do not doubt.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Christine Schatz: Brühl, Johanne Margarethe Christina (Jeanne Marguerite Christine, called Tina) Countess of . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
  2. ^ A b Christine Schatz: Brühl, Hans (Hanns) Moritz Christian Maximilian Clemens Graf von . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .
  3. ^ Hans von Krosigk: Karl Graf von Brühl , 1910.
  4. ↑ a b August Förster:  Brühl, Karl Friedrich Moritz Paul Graf von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, pp. 417-419.
  5. ^ Wilhelm Gottlieb Becker: The Seifersdorfer Thal . Leipzig, Voss and Leo, 1792. (digitized)
  6. ↑ In a booklet titled Miscellanea with notes on being with Goethe in Karlsbad in 1785
personal data
SURNAME Brühl, Christina von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brühl, Johanne Margarethe Christina Countess von (full name); Schleyerweber and Friedenau, Christina von (maiden name); Brühl, Jeanne Marguerite Christine von; Brühl, Tina from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Landscape architect, writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1756
PLACE OF BIRTH Eye of the mouth
DATE OF DEATH July 3, 1816
Place of death Berlin