Three pillars of the thundering Jupiter

The Three Pillars of Thundering Jupiter are a ruin architecture built between 1778 and 1785 in the Exotic Garden of the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart. They are one of three objects that have been preserved from the original 60 small architecture of the English village . The pillars represent the replica of the remains of the Temple of Vespasian and Titus in the Roman Forum in Rome, which was previously mistaken for the Temple of the Thundering Jupiter .

Of the three pillars of the temple ruins, only one stands upright in the middle of a field of rubble. During a walk in 1814 Ludwig Uhland was inspired to write his ballad “ Des Singer's Curse ” in view of the ruined ruins .

location

The column ruins are located in the Exotic Garden to the west of the Hohenheim Gardens , near the Zur Stadt Rom inn . You can reach the ruin via the main entrance at the Garbe tavern via the footpath parallel to Paracelsusstraße. Viktor Heideloff's historical "basic plan of the English layout of Hohenheim" shows as number 31: "The 3 pillars of the thundering Jupiter".

Exotic garden with the Three Pillars of Thundering Jupiter, 2009.
Viktor Heideloff: "Basic crack of the English layout of Hohenheim", 1795.

description

Debris field with column drums and parts of beams.

At the time of Duke Karl Eugen and his wife Franziska von Hohenheim , the creators of Hohenheim Palace and the Hohenheim Gardens , the "rural colony in the middle of the ruins of a Roman city" was referred to as an "English village" based on English models of gardening art.

Below the tavern to the city of Rome (as seen from the main entrance) there is a stretch of meadow around 10 meters in diameter with two benches and the "Three Pillars of Thundering Jupiter" under tall trees. Of the three pillars, only the shaft of the eastern pillar stands on the roadside. Behind it lies a field of rubble with the remains of the two remaining columns, the capitals and the entablature. The ruin architecture was created from parlor sandstone, which was quarried in 1778 in the Plattenhardter Hut, part of the Waldenbucher Forest.

The shaft of the upright column stands on a 35 centimeter high masonry base and consists of fifteen 28 centimeter high drums. The capital of one of the fallen columns measures 53 centimeters. The total height of the columns was therefore 4.20 meters without capital and 4.73 meters with capital. The circumference of the slightly tapering columns with 24 fluting is 3.96 meters in the lower third. The triglyphic framework was about 1.05 meters high. The pillars were about the same size above the ground as the Roman models, two-thirds of which were buried by the beginning of the 19th century.

history

The ruins of the Temple of Vespasian and Titus in the Roman Forum in Rome served as a model for the Hohenheim ruins replica . The temple was built in the 1st century AD and fell into ruin in the 18th century, of which only a part of the former temple porch was left. The ruin consisted of three columns with Corinthian capitals and the entablature on top and two thirds of it had sunk into the ground by the beginning of the 19th century. It was not until 1812 that the pillars on the Roman Forum were exposed down to their foundations. Until then, the ruins had been mistaken for the remains of the Temple of Thundering Jupiter (Latin: Jupiter Tonans, Italian: Giove Tonante).

The ruins of the "Three Pillars of the Temple of Thundering Jupiter", in short: "Three Pillars of Thundering Jupiter", were completed around 1785 and are "modeled on" the model without imitating it. Gottlob Heinrich Rapp wrote in his "Description of the Garden in Hohenheim" in 1797:

"They are very likely to have been placed here as an imitation of the remains of the temple of the thundering Jupiter at the foot of the Capitoline Mountain in Rome, without actually introducing any, but only intended to produce a somewhat similar effect."

Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Tempio di Giove Tonante, 1756.

Viktor Heideloff: Three Pillars of Thundering Jupiter, behind: Tavern for the City of Rome, 1795.

Viktor Heideloff: The ruins of an old temple, 1795.

Temple of Vespasian and Titus, 2014.

Copper engravings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi served as a model for the replica . He first published a picture of the temple ruins in his four-volume work “Antiquitá romane” in 1756 (“Tempio di Giove Tonante”). Around 1785 the sculptor Gottfried Hornung completed the Hohenheim ruin replica, which roughly corresponded to the model.

Around 1795 Viktor Heideloff created 38 auqatint sheets with motifs from the English village, including a sheet with the three pillars. The sheets were published in black and white in Rapp's “Description of the Garden in Hohenheim” and colored in Heideloff's collective work “Views of the ducal-Wuerttemberg Landsize Hohenheim”. Rapp referred to the replica as "The ruins of an old temple", while in Heideloff's "Views" they were referred to as "The three sunken columns". In Heideloff's "Basic Rift of the English Complex in Hohenheim" the columns were referred to as "The 3 columns of the thundering Jupiter".

Heideloff's prints do not show the actual view of the temple ruins in the Roman Forum, but are free copies of Piranesi's originals. For example, the capitals of the Hohenheim replica were Doric and not Corinthian as in the model.

After the death of Duke Karl Eugen in 1793, his successors let the English village fall into disrepair. In an earthquake, two of the pillars toppled over, and the entablature and capitals also fell to the ground. Today only the shaft of the eastern column remains of the pillars, the drums of the other pillars and the entablature are scattered on the floor as rubble.

The singers curse

Information board on the upright column of the Thundering Jupiter.

Since 1810 Ludwig Uhland has been concerned with the subject of the Scottish romance "The Jealous King", which Johann Gottfried Herder had published in his compilation "Volkslieder". Uhland's project of turning it into a drama only grew to a fragment. On June 10, 1814, he accompanied his friend, the lawyer Albert Schott, to Plieningen , who had an appointment there at the town hall. In his diary, Uhland noted that he then went for a walk with Schott in the Hohenheim facilities, which at that time were already in a half-decayed state. Three days later he noted: "New understanding of the romance of the destroyed royal palace". On December 3rd, he reported: “Work in progress on the ballad that had been drafted earlier: Des Singer's Curse. The ballad ended except for a few things. "

From the diary notes, posterity concluded that Uhland received the brilliant idea for his ballad while walking in the Hohenheim grounds. The line of verse "Another high column testifies to vanishing splendor" in the penultimate stanza of the poem could indicate that as early as 1814 only one column of the temple ruins was standing upright.

literature

Hermann Frölich: The castle and the Hohenheim Academy with the K. private studs Kleinhohenheim, Scharnhausen and Weil. Leonberg: Lindenberger, 1870.
Viktor Heideloff : Views of the ducal-Württemberg country size Hohenheim / drawn from nature by V. Heideloff and explained with brief descriptions. Reproduction of the edition Nuremberg: Frauenholz, 1795. Stuttgart: Württembergische Landesbibliothek, 1986.
The jealous king. In: Johann Gottfried Herder : Folk songs: together with other pieces mixed in. Second part. Leipzig: Weygand, 1779, pages 68-70, pdf .
Elisabeth Nau: Hohenheim: Castle and Gardens. With a contribution by Claudius Coulin. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1978, pages 30-33.
Elisabeth Nau: Rome in Hohenheim. In: Yearbook of the State Art Collections in Baden-Württemberg , Volume 30, 1993, Pages 45–76, especially: 63, 62.
Patricia Peschel (editor); Nadine Kröhn (editor): Evidence of a garden dream: the Hohenheim gouaches from the possession of Duke Carl Eugen von Württemberg. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2016, pages 59–60, 212–213.
Johannes Proelß: The singer's curse: to illuminate Schiller's part in Uhland's ballad. In: Statutory report / Schwäbischer Schillerverein Marbach / Stuttgart, Volume 10, 1905, pages 46–57.
Gottlob Heinrich Rapp : The remains of a temple near the large Schweitzerhaus. In: Description of the garden in Hohenheim. In: Pocket calendar for the year 1798 for nature and garden lovers. With images of Hohenheim and other coppers. Tübingen: Cotta, 1797, reprint Stuttgart: Lithos-Verlag, 1995, pages 97-124, here: Frontispiece, pages 102-103.
Adolf Martin Steiner; Ulrich Fellmeth; Matthias Frisch: Hohenheim Gardens: History and Art. Stuttgart: University of Hohenheim, Archive, 2008, pages 31–38.
Oskar Widmann: Reinhard Ferdinand Heinrich Fischer: 1746 - 1812; a contribution to the history of Louis XVI. in Württemberg. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1928, 82-92.