Gail'scher Park
The Gail'sche Park in the Biebertal district of Rodheim is a 2.8 hectare landscape park with a villa , which was created between 1880 and 1900 on behalf of the Giessen tobacco, cigar and ceramics manufacturer Gail .
history
The tobacco manufacturer Georg Philipp Gail (1785–1865) from Giessen acquired an area of 4,700 m² between the roads to Giessen and Krofdorf in 1839 , initially as a garden for personal use. In 1857 a branch of the Gail'sche tobacco factory was built on part of this area. Hugo von Ritgen is believed to be the architect of the late classicist building, which was demolished in 2000 .
In 1880 his son Georg Carl Gail (1819–1882) had the so-called Schweizerhaus built as a wedding present for his second wife Marie Wirth. The architect was Hugo von Ritgen. In 1883, the garden with water arts and swan pond, located between the factory and the Schweizerhaus, underwent its first park-like redesign as a morning gift from Wilhelm Gail for Wilhelmine (Mimi) Mahla from Chicago.
In the 1890s, Wilhelm Gail had the park significantly enlarged in the style of an English landscape garden . The Frankfurt horticultural director Andreas Weber (1832–1901) was responsible for the implementation. For many years it was assumed that the Gail'sche Park was the work of the Frankfurt garden designer Heinrich Siesmayer (1817–1900). This has now been refuted; Siesmayer's involvement was not about more than general advice on questions of terrain design (“modeling”).
For the purpose of expanding the park, an additional 6,060 m² of land was acquired in 1896, so that a closed area of 2 hectares was created between Gießener and Krofdorfer Straße - a difficult and costly undertaking, as the area envisaged was agriculturally used, small-scale building land .
In the same year the foundation stone was laid for a representative villa as a summer country residence; it was ready for occupancy in 1897. At that time the costs for the park and villa together amounted to about the annual earnings of around 906 skilled workers.
The park and villa have been listed as a historical monument since 1999 .
Until 2002 the villa and park were privately owned and inaccessible to the public. The former factory buildings were demolished in 2000 and this property and other parts of the area were given a new use, including a. for a care home of the workers welfare . Since the end of 2002, the park and villa have been owned by the municipality of Biebertal. The site was initially rented to the Schunk Group until the end of 2012 , and since January 2012 the entrepreneur Wolfgang Lust ( LTi Group ) has rented the site with the option of deciding on a purchase as soon as possible.
In 2000 a Gail'scher Park Friends Association was founded . He succeeded in restoring the park as an important garden monument and making it accessible to the public.
The park
The alternation of open and closed park spaces and groups of trees, sculptures, watercourses and ponds as well as the routing with visual axes correspond to the contemporary characteristics of the park in the English style outlined by the so-called Lenné Meyer School . The park with numerous so-called follies Rounding: In addition to the 1880 designed by Hugo von Ritgen Swiss house with its ornamented with rich Durchbruchschnitzerei porch can be found on a small hill, a clock tower (built in 1896) with beavertail -Dacheindeckung in Gail'scher glaze clinker. The color glaze in the ring oven was a patent pending invention of the Gail company in 1902; the repeatedly rumored statement that this little tower of the Gail'schen ceramics factory served as an exhibit at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 is, however, a village legend.
There is also an apiary and the pond house with a birch walkway, the facade of which is decorated with mosaics . The interior of Marianne's playhouse, built in Art Nouveau style in 1910 , is adorned with numerous fairytale friezes.
The park has around 135 different types of wood , including botanical rarities such as Carolina horse chestnut , umbrella fir , cork spindle and split-leaved hazelnut .
The park has been constantly maintained since its creation without any significant stylistic changes. In the last few years, the paths that have been concreted over time have been restored to their original sand-water-bound state and the water feature and the vineyard terraces have been reconstructed; The renovation of the pond turned out to be very costly. All in all, around half a million euros were invested in these measures. The small island in the pond can also be reached again, as the decaying arch bridge leading to it was repaired thanks to a grant from the Historical Gardens Foundation.
The Villa
The villa in the style of a historic country house was planned by the Frankfurt architect Franz von Hoven (1842–1924) from 1895. The foundation stone was laid in 1896 and completed in 1897. The compartments in the half-timbered gable are designed with animal and flower motifs in the folk scratch ornamentation of the Marburger Land .
Initially used by the Gail family only as a summer residence, the villa was confiscated by the US occupation forces in 1945 and used until 1948. In the following years the building, which is now used as a permanent residence, underwent a number of renovations.
literature
- Freundeskreis Gail'scher Park (ed.), Jochen Kehm (arrangement): Tour through the park of the Villa Gail in Rodheim. Biebertal 2012.
- Freundeskreis Gail'scher Park (ed.), Norbert Kerl (arrangement): Woods in the Gail'schen Park in Rodheim. 2nd edition, Biebertal 2008.
- Hans-Joachim Weimann : Hugo von Ritgen. Architect of the Schweizerhaus in Gail'schen Park. In: Mitteilungen des Oberhessischer Geschichtsverein (MOHG) , New Series 92 (2007), p. 432f.
- Hans-Joachim Weimann: The "kindergarten" in Gail'schen Park. In: Mitteilungen des Oberhessischer Geschichtsverein (MOHG) , New Series 93 (2008), pp. 436–439.
- Hans-Joachim Weimann: The Gail'sche Park in Rodheim ad Bieber. In: Contributions to Gehölzkunde , 18 (2009), pp. 201–208.
Individual evidence
- ^ State Office for Monument Preservation Hesse: Gail'scher Park in Biebertal
- ↑ so: Yes to the rental and sale of Gail's villa and park. In: Gießener Allgemeine Zeitung. November 11, 2011, accessed February 13, 2012 .
Web links
- Literature on Gail'scher Park in the Hessian Bibliography
- Freundeskreis Gail'sche Villa und Park eV: gailscherpark.de
- Michael Krause: Picture gallery of Gail'schen Park
Coordinates: 50 ° 37 ′ 1.8 ″ N , 8 ° 36 ′ 19.5 ″ E