Emil Richter (art gardener)

Johannes Emil (Emilio) Richter (born April 3, 1823 in Hamburg ; † July 11, 1912 there ) was a German art gardener .

Live and act

Emil Richter was the son of a coffee broker from Hamburg. He completed a professional training as a gardener in his hometown and visited England and France for a short time in 1839 to study gardens there. He then went to Antwerp with his parents , where his father, Eduard Richter, had found work. Emil Richter moved on to Brussels to the seat of Count d'Oultremont, where he worked as an art gardener for three years. From 1843 he designed several gardens in Rome . In order to be able to get a work permit, he previously switched from the Lutheran to the Catholic faith. Richter began with Prince Torlonia's parks. In contrast to Florence and Milan, the English landscape gardens designed by Richter were still unknown in Rome at that time. While Roman gardens had been strictly geometric since the Renaissance and had only a few different plants, Richter used exotic plants, which the nobles regarded as status symbols.

From 1846 Richter worked for the Marchese Campana, the Prince Piombino, the Marchese Patrizi, and, among others, the Malatesta family. From 1855 he introduced a flower and plant exhibition in Rome, which took place annually. The government of Pius IX. awarded him a Medal of Merit for this. Richter himself grew flowers such as Belgian indica azaleas, anemones and dahlias, for which he was awarded numerous gold medals. In 1856 Richter founded the first horticultural society in Rome.

The "case of Germany"

King Victor Emmanuel II made Richter General Director of the Royal Parks and Villas in 1874. In this position he was to have facilities at today's Villa Ada-Savoia and Villa Mirafiori, where his mistress Rosina di Mirafiori lived. Richter financed the work privately and on credit. When numerous requests for changes and the flooding of the Tiber in 1875 led to steadily increasing expenses, Richter asked the king to pay the expenses. The responsible minister Giovanni Visone then stated that the king's private fortune was insufficient for this. This brought Richter into such financial problems that he had to sell his art and commercial gardening business. Judge sued the king for payment. He won first, but lost in second and third instance. As a consequence of the lost trial, Richter wrote a “Compendio” that led to a scandal. Since Richter feared he would be imprisoned on lese majesty, he fled to his hometown. Although the Italian judges acquitted him a little later, Richter tried, with the help of the brothers Julius and August, to regain money and reputation. Luigi Salvini, Italian consul general in Hamburg, contacted Senator Ferdinand Kunhardt , who headed the Hamburg police force, to spy on judges. Salvini wrote corresponding letters to the Italian authorities about his actions. Richter himself wrote a pamphlet, which he published himself. So he wanted to get the German public on his side.

Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and the writer Hermann Grimm , a son of Wilhelm Grimm , campaigned for judges, which caused problems for Italy. The German ambassador to Italy, Robert von Keudell, and Italy's foreign minister Pasquale Stanislao Mancini assumed that the Triple Alliance could be negatively influenced by Richter's actions. In 1885 they made the decision not to allow judges to take any further action against the Italian court. Mayor Carl Friedrich Petersen refused the naturalization of Richter's son Antonio in 1887 “for political reasons”; Richter's memoir, entitled "Forty-five Years of My Life in Rome", was not allowed to be self-published in 1888. In 1890, the Italian ambassador in Berlin, Edoardo de Launay , received a letter from the Hamburg bank director Carl Serius, signed by 54 renowned citizens, who campaigned for the gardener. However, since he was unable to exert any further pressure on the Italian government due to the publication ban, he received no response from the Italian Foreign Ministry. The Italian royal family gave him no compensation throughout his life.

The controversy over Richter's polemic is known as the "Case Germany" in Italian legal history.

Park in Hamburg

Since his brother Julius had supported him financially and publicly, Richter designed part of his park in the second half of the 1880s, which is now part of the Roman Garden . This is the only garden that he created in Germany.

literature

• Oliver Breitfeld: The German-Roman Emilio Richter - art gardener in the Papal States, in the Kingdom of Italy and in Hamburg . In: Die Gartenkunst  22 (2/2010), pp. 247–264.
• Oliver Breitfeld: Judge, Emil . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 285-286 .