Great Garden (Dresden)

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Overview map of the Great Garden
Aerial view of the Great Garden (the palais pond in dark green in the foreground, followed by the summer palace )
Aerial view of the Great Garden from the east

The Great Garden in Dresden is a park of baroque origin. Today's largest park in the city was built from 1676 at the behest of Elector Johann Georg III. laid out and expanded several times in the course of its history, so that it has an almost rectangular floor plan on an area of ​​around 1.8 square kilometers. Its length is about 1900 meters, the maximum width is 950 meters. The most important building in the center of the park is the summer palace built around 1680 based on a design by Johann Georg Starcke . The Great Garden has been reshaped many times over the course of its more than three hundred year history, whereby the basic baroque structure has remained recognizable, but can no longer be referred to as a baroque garden in the narrower sense.

location

The Great Garden as seen from Lennéplatz

The Great Garden is located about 1.2 kilometers east of Dresden city center and is connected to it by the Bürgerwiese . It is located in the district of Altstadt II , belongs to the statistical district Seevorstadt-Ost / Großer Garten and with this to the district of Altstadt . Originally erected in an undeveloped area in front of the city gates, the Great Garden is surrounded, clockwise from the southeast, by the following districts and districts: Seevorstadt , Pirnaische Vorstadt , Johannstadt , Striesen , Gruna and Strehlen . It is crossed both lengthways and crossways by several avenues, most of which continue beyond its borders. The main avenue (renamed Helmut-Schön-Allee in 2010 ) in the direction of the city ends in front of the German Hygiene Museum and is extended in the opposite direction by Winterbergstraße for over two kilometers in a straight line. Querallee (or Fürstenallee, as it is called in the northern part) is continued to the north by Fetscherstraße , the former Fürstenstraße, as does Herkulesallee, which extends over the park to both west and east. The lines of sight directed towards the palace are thus extended outwards and their effect increased.

history

First planning and revision by Karcher

Palace in the Great Garden

The Great Garden was built from 1676 on behalf of the later (from 1680) Elector Johann Georg III. planned and created. First archival mentions relate to the necessary land purchases. The original plan by court gardener Martin Göttler provided for a square floor plan with an edge length of 1.9 kilometers, the palace in the center , and star-shaped avenues. The park was to be divided into an inner and outer zone with different functions by a canal, also in a square. This plan was only partially implemented until 1683, when a commission was set up to review the construction progress and the further design. As a result, Johann Friedrich Karcher was commissioned with the new planning and appointed head gardener of the Great Garden. He held this office until 1722, when increasing blindness made it impossible for him to continue his work.

Also in the plan revised by Karcher, which explicitly referred to contemporary French models, the palace, which was at least partially completed at the time, was at the center of the complex. The ground plan of the garden, however, was no longer square, but cruciform, just as the diagonal avenues were given up in favor of a system of longitudinal and transverse avenues. In addition, the area of ​​the garden was reduced, which meant that in 1692 previously purchased or expropriated land was returned to the previous owner. In 1693/1694 eight pavilions , the so-called cavaliers houses, were built according to a design by Karcher . They were connected by chains and walls and thus enclosed the inner garden area around the palace.

Development of the garden under August the Strong

"Time abducts beauty" ( Pietro Balestra , 1722)

After only three years of reign, the Saxon elector Johann Georg IV died in 1694 , so that his brother Friedrich August I (called August the Strong) unexpectedly came to power. During his reign, the expansion of the garden was resolutely promoted and thus reached "the stage of the highest perfection." Up to 1709, work progressed only slowly because of the Great Northern War and the accompanying Swedish occupation of Saxony in 1706. In the Treaty of Altranstädt , Saxony was obliged to pay high contributions, and August temporarily lost the Polish crown (until 1709). The visit of the Danish King Frederick IV in the summer of 1709 provided the occasion for elaborate festive events lasting more than a month, such as a so-called peasant economy, i.e. a courtly masquerade , fireworks, an elevator from the four continents (Australia had not yet been discovered), a ladies' party . The temporary fixed structures were built according to Karcher's designs. Contemporary representations of the festivities provide information about the development status of the garden at that time: Although the entire garden was fenced, there was a clear separation between the already created pleasure garden between Herkules- and Südallee and the as yet undesigned outer areas.

Karcher went on a study trip to France in 1714 to find out about the latest gardening trends. The construction of enclosures and sheds for pheasant breeding also began in 1714, and the Palais pond was completed in the following year. The bosquets bordering the inner garden were also redesigned and clearly assigned to the pleasure garden area. The garden wall, over two meters high, was erected between 1718 and 1722, which also included land that was not part of the garden due to its rectangular shape. The road to Pirna (today's Stübelallee) had to be moved north to the edge of the park. In 1719, on the occasion of the marriage of Crown Prince Friedrich August to the eldest daughter of Emperor Joseph I , Maria Josepha , the Festival of Venus was celebrated in the Great Garden . For this occasion, the ground floor in front of the palace was converted into a tournament track, so that a women's ring race could be held there. In addition, serving as dance hall Venus pavilion was built east of the palace pond, and the hedge theater by building trellises completed. When Karcher retired in 1722, the work on the Great Garden was considered complete.

In the years that followed, both court festivities and pheasant hunts were held in the garden. The ring races that take place regularly during the carnival season have been modified to the "refined form of the sleigh ladies ring race known only from Dresden".

From 1729 to 1747 the palace was used as an exhibition space for the roughly two hundred antique sculptures recently acquired by August the Strong from the Chigi collection , while the previously existing collection of antiquities was housed in four of the eight cavaliers' houses until 1785 (afterwards in the Japanese Palace ). Around 160 contemporary sculptures were set up in the open air in the park, most of them along the main avenue between the palace and the city-side gate. Many of these sculptures were damaged or destroyed during the Seven Years War .

Stagnation after 1733

Large garden around 1785 (Miles sheets from Saxony, Berlin copy, sheet 262)

After the death of Augustus the Strong, the development of the Great Garden stagnated and it was hardly used for court celebrations. In addition, there was the destruction caused by the Seven Years' War. Dresden was occupied by the Prussian army from 1756 to 1760 , and there were several sieges. Although there was no fighting in the garden itself, it was always used as a walk-through area. This led to considerable damage to both the equipment and the plant population. In Gustav Klemms chronicle of the royal Saxon residence city of Dresden from 1835 the situation after the Prussian withdrawal is described as follows:

“In Dresden itself there was indescribable misery that lasted for many decades. 115 of the public buildings were damaged; but the Great Garden was completely devastated, its splendid rows of trees cut down, the statues smashed and only the antiquities that were cleverly buried were saved. "

The subsequent reconstruction was limited to restoring what had been destroyed, there was no further design development. The main purpose of the garden was pheasant breeding and hunting. After more than a hundred years, the landowners expropriated when the garden was laid out were given in 1797 by order of Elector Friedrich August III. the compensation they are entitled to.

Remodeling after 1813

Winter fun around 1825

The garden was also destroyed during the Napoleonic Wars . The battle for Dresden on August 26 and 27, 1813, should be mentioned here, but the subsequent siege of the city up to November 1813 also caused devastation. The palace was badly affected by being used as a hospital for six months. The surrounding wall, which had already been damaged by the fighting, was completely demolished so that the stones could be used as building material. By order of the governor general Nikolai Grigoryevich Repnin-Volkonsky , who was in office from October 1813 to November 1814 , the Great Garden was opened to the public without restrictions. The entrance on the city side, which was blown up by the French, was replaced in 1814 by the gatehouses designed by Gottlob Friedrich Thormeyer . At the same time, a commission for the restoration of the Great Garden was set up under the direction of Chamberlain Georg Heinrich von Carlowitz , which had two goals from the beginning: on the one hand, to optimize the economic benefits and, on the other, to increase its attractiveness. The pheasant breeding was completely abandoned - as it was considered too expensive - so that the corresponding garden areas could be newly laid out in the current English style . In keeping with the romantic taste of the time, these games in particular enjoyed great popularity:

“The formerly closed enclosures, the inhabitants of which the war dispersed, open up to us; Narrow corridors run in various turns through dark bushes, and everywhere what the earlier complex offered has been used sensibly and tastefully to create lovely solitude here under painstakingly designed groups of trees, there a friendly, alluring spot by the water, through bushes and over greenery Mats runs down to form. Where else you wandered between boring rows of trees and stiff hedge passages, you will now find the most charming change. "

To increase a possibility of appeal and profitability in one step was the creation of restaurants, another in the winter use of the Palais pond as a skating rink, and from 1819 with an ice chute at the initiative of the Dresden-based Russian princes Putyatin was built . In addition to leasing fields (for example for haymaking), renting out summer apartments in the restored cavalier houses and adding additional mansard floors, selling wood and other natural products, a fruit nursery was set up as early as 1814. Here, however, a cameralistic interest was more in the foreground, because the most suitable types of fruit for Saxony were to be determined in order to “promote the fruit culture in the country.” The tree nursery was closed in 1871 due to lack of profitability.

By 1830, the redesign of the garden was largely complete, although the basic baroque structure was not changed. In front of the palace, a large bowling green was created in place of the ring racing area , around which two narrow paths led so that the main avenue no longer ran directly to the palace. However, the Querallee remained - although von Carlowitz repeatedly advocated its abolition. The annual exhibitions of the Saxon horticultural society Flora , founded in 1826, were held in the palace itself from 1828 until the Saxon Antiquities Association presented its collections there from 1844 .

On May 9, 1861, the zoological garden was opened, the eastern part of which is located in the area of ​​the Great Garden, while the western part consists of land specially acquired for the construction of the zoo. The zoo was laid out according to a plan by Peter Joseph Lenné, as was the extension of the Bürgerwiese to the southeast between 1865 and 1869 . This created a direct connection between the large garden or zoo and the city center. The Kaitzbach forms the boundary between the individual systems .

The Great Garden under the direction of Bouchés

On April 1, 1873, Friedrich Bouché , who was only twenty-two years old and came from a renowned gardener family in Berlin, took up his post as director of the Great Garden after being recommended by Gustav Meyer , the city gardener there . Bouché had passed the exam to become head gardener in Potsdam and worked for three years under Meyer. He held the office of gardening director for almost fifty years until he was forced to retire on August 1, 1922. As can be seen in a report by the court gardener of Albrechtsberg Castle , Hermann Sigismund Neumann , from June 1872, the complex was considered neglected and outdated at the time Bouché took up his duties. Neumann therefore spoke out in favor of redesigning entire areas: “This obsolescence shows itself both in its forms and in its state of culture. […] A thorough redesign of this entire middle section appears to be very desirable. ”In the meantime, the situation of the garden itself had also changed: from a park far outside the city, it was increasingly becoming one surrounded by urban development. In 1871 the construction ban south of the garden, which had existed since 1826, was lifted, and Johannstadt was built in 1873 . In order to prevent the garden from being completely enclosed , the Saxon state parliament approved the sum of 100,200 thalers for the purchase of land so that the garden could be expanded into the still existing rectangular shape. The focus of Bouché's work was on the one hand the redesign of the palace area while maintaining the basic baroque structures and on the other hand the integration of the newly added areas into the existing complex.

Blooming rhododendrons in the large garden

A separate budget was approved for the Great Garden in 1874, which enabled the pending work to be commenced quickly. The redesign of the palace area - among other things, trees and hedges were removed, and new flower plantings were planted - was followed by the acquisition and new construction of the Kaitzbachwiesen . Both works were completed in 1874. In the following year, the Strehlener fields in the southeast corner of the garden were designed, and in 1877 the former fruit nursery was replanted. From 1881, today's Carolasee - a former gravel pit - was created and expanded in several steps to its final shape until 1886. In 1890 the Gruna fields - today's Drachenwiese - could be acquired as a north-eastern extension area of ​​the garden, so that by 1894 the flood ditch belonging to the baroque canal system could be redesigned to the Neuteich . Adjacent to the palace area, two special gardens were laid out around 1895, such as the rhododendron garden (today's perennial garden ), whose plants were donated by Bouché's father-in-law, the Dresden commercial gardener Hermann Seidel , and the so-called White Garden with magnolias, azaleas and conifers.

In 1876 Bouché received support from Otto Werner , who was also a very young friend of Bouché's, who was hired as a senior assistant and who worked successfully on the extensive construction projects of the 1870s. In 1882 Werner moved to Chemnitz, where he accepted the position of council gardener.

With regard to the infrastructure, Bouché was able to achieve a lot for the Great Garden, for example by building his own waterworks east of Querallee; the funds required for this were approved in 1890. Until then, the garden suffered from a lack of water, especially in the summer, as the supply came exclusively from the Kaitzbach. In addition to the expansion of the footpath network to a total length of 31 kilometers, “probably the earliest construction of cycle paths in Germany with a total length of 4500 meters” was carried out in 1898. Also at this time, electrical lighting was installed on Haupt- and Querallee. By the turn of the century, 600 park benches were set up along the footpaths and six playgrounds were set up, which means that half of Dresden's urban playgrounds were in the area of ​​the Great Garden. In 1907, car traffic in the park was banned. Bouché himself summarized what he had achieved in and for the Great Garden in a retrospective 1926 as follows:

“One can say that the Great Garden was at the height of modern development in the years before the World War and could compete with any other large facility in Germany in terms of its care and beauty. The garden, about which little was known even in specialist circles, had become a world-famous sight. "

Horticultural exhibitions

From May 7th to 16th, 1887, the 1st International Horticultural Exhibition took place in Dresden in a section of the Great Garden. The organizer of the exhibition was the Flora - Saxon Society for Botany and Horticulture , with the patronage of the Saxon King Albert . With over five hundred exhibitors and a lively audience, the event was a great success. The design of the exhibition area was in the hands of Max Bertram , who had studied together with Bouché at the Royal Gardening College in Potsdam. At the same time as the II. International Horticultural Exhibition from May 2 to 12, 1896, the City Exhibition Palace , located on an urban site in the northwest corner of the Great Garden, was inaugurated. A III. International horticultural exhibition followed from May 4 to 12, 1907. As part of the 5th Annual Exhibition of German Labor , the anniversary horticultural exhibition for the centenary of flora took place in 1926 at the same time as the international art exhibition . With 1,400 exhibitors and over three million visitors, it was the largest exhibition of the 1920s. The main attraction was the Green Cathedral , a forty-meter-high sloped wooden tower with a star-shaped floor plan. The mosaic fountain designed by Hans Poelzig for the occasion is still in its original location south of the main avenue. In 1936 the equally successful Reichsgartenschau followed . Other exhibitions also included the Great Garden in the exhibition grounds, such as the II. International Hygiene Exhibition in 1930/1931 . At both events a miniature railway similar to today's park railway was used to connect the separate exhibition areas. The first exhibition tram existed as early as 1900 for the German Building Exhibition , but it was a meter-gauge, electric tram that connected the actual exhibition grounds with the so-called "pleasure corner" east of the Botanical Garden.

In the northwest corner of the park, in which the Transparent Factory is located, stood the City Exhibition Palace from 1896 until its destruction in the Second World War and the demolition in 1949, and from 1969 the exhibition center Fučík Square .

Since 2006, the flower and floristry exhibition Dresdner Frühling in the Palais im Palais in the Great Garden has been building on the tradition of the International Horticultural Exhibition in Dresden. With around 40,000 flowers and plants, it is considered the most important spring flower show in Germany. Due to the high preparation effort, it only takes place every two years and is open for ten days. The organizer is the Fördergesellschaft Gartenbau Sachsen.

The Great Garden in National Socialism

The policies of the National Socialist regime, which were repressive in every respect, did not stop at the Great Garden. As early as April 1935, Jews were forbidden to use park benches other than those marked in yellow. The Kugelhaus , which was built by Peter Birkenholz in 1928 on the occasion of the exhibition The Technical City, right on the border to the Great Garden and very popular with the Dresdeners , was demolished in 1938 because the architecture was considered "un-German". In a diary entry dated June 2, 1942, Victor Klemperer listed thirty-one anti-Jewish prohibitions and ordinances, including “a ban on leaving Dresden's ban mile, […], 20) entering the Ministry embankment , the parks, 21) the Bürgerwiese and the side streets of the Great Garden (Parkstrasse and Lennéstrasse, Karcherallee). This last tightening since yesterday. ”Klemperer made it clear in his entry on June 17th what a violation of this ban could mean:

“Circular from the community: In the course of the last three weeks, two older Jewish women with stars were seen sitting on a bench in the Herkules-Allee in the Great Garden on one day. The two are supposed to report immediately ... in the interest of the general public and to avoid further measures. [...] How will it go this time? What reprisals are waiting? It is completely out of the question that two women dared to do this. They know that they are threatened with at least severe beatings and weeks in prison, but probably the concentration camp. It is possible that two careless people would have passed the side streets - but sitting in the middle of the Great Garden? It's not worth the effort of life. Either the story was made up outright, or someone mistook a yellow handkerchief or a yellow pre-flower for the Jewish star (as has already happened to us), talked about it maliciously or harmlessly after weeks, happened to be heard from a Gestapo man - and this is how this new affair got going. "

At the beginning of 1945, nineteen fragmentation trenches were dug in the garden to protect against bombing, and the roots of numerous trees were damaged by the earthworks. During the air raids on 13/14 In February 1945 the Great Garden was badly hit. All the buildings burned down, the palace lost its roof and all of the interior fittings. A total of 170 bomb craters were counted in the park.

The large garden from 1945 to the present

The Dresden Park Railway at the Palais.

Because of the poor supply situation in the post-war years, parts of the Great Garden - such as the ground floor in front of the palace - were parceled out and given as grave land for growing vegetables and potatoes. However, it was possible to prevent trees from being cut down for firewood. One of the cavalier houses (House B) was repaired in 1946, another (House G) in 1950, while House H was demolished at the request of the city administration, as it was feared that it would collapse. On June 1, 1950 with a fixed for Children's Day , the opening of the park railway, the first Pioniereisenbahn committed the GDR. In 1953 work began on securing the palace facade, and the following year the cavalier houses C, D and F were rebuilt. The first horticultural redesigns were the dahlia garden north of the palace area, opened in 1951, and the summer flower garden created in 1953 near Lake Carola.

In October 1951, the City Council of Dresden and the Ministry of Economics and Labor, Central Administration of the Construction of the GDR , announced an “ideas competition to obtain designs for the redesign of the Great Garden into a cultural park”. This initiative, which was also taken up by other cities in the GDR, was based on the Soviet model of the Park for Culture and Recreation ( Russian Парк Культуры и Отдыха ), such as Moscow's Gorky Park . Specified uses included sports facilities, play areas for children, various clubhouses, show and school gardens and several open-air theaters; both the zoo and the botanical garden should be relocated. The winner of the competition was the design by the landscape architect and lecturer at the Technical University , Werner Bauch and his colleagues. Since the design provided for all special uses to be in the outer garden areas, both the baroque park structures and the palace area would have remained untouched. Ultimately, however, hardly anything of this plan was implemented, so that its influence on further development remained very small - even if the Great Garden was officially designated as a culture park from 1956 on the 750th anniversary of the city.

As a result of the administrative reform of 1952 and the resulting dissolution of the federal states, responsibility for the Great Garden was transferred from the management of the State Museums, Palaces and Gardens , which had also been dissolved , to the City of Dresden, which in turn delegated the various responsibilities to various bodies. The VEB Grünflächen was responsible for the maintenance of the green and water areas as well as the network of paths (except for the asphalt paths), the VEB Stadtreinigung for the public toilets, the municipal housing management for the cavalier houses and the public education department for the pioneer railway, while the Carolaschlösschen and the café at the Palaisteich was operated by HO Gaststätten Mitte .

From 1954 to 1957, as part of the national reconstruction project, the Junge Garde open-air stage was built in a former gravel pit in the southeastern part of the garden. It is a neo-baroque-style complex with over 5000 seats, whose curved roofs are reminiscent of Pillnitz Castle . The design came from Herbert Schneider , the city's chief architect at the time and one of the leading architects of the Altmarkt rebuilding. In the north-western part of the garden, not far from Herkulesallee, is the open-air puppet theater Sonnenhäusel, which opened on June 1, 1955 . The small building has 350 seats and was designed by the architect and graphic artist Krista Grunicke .

While the restoration of the palace continued until the fall of the Wall , the city administration had the ruins of the Thormeyer's gatehouses torn down in 1969. From 1965 the tree planting of the Herkulesallee, and in 1976/1977 that of the main avenue between the palace and the exit on the city side, was completely renewed. In 1979 the Great Garden was entered in the Central Monument List of the GDR. In 1982, on the occasion of the VII. Pioneers' Meeting in Dresden, the Dresden office of the Institute for Monument Preservation was able to enforce the renovation of the immediate vicinity of the palace (removal of the plants surrounding the palace, renovation of the palace pond and the balustrade with the two "Centaur groups"). In the same way, the ICOMOS general conference held in Rostock and Dresden in 1984 could be used as an occasion for further restoration work on the palace.

On January 1, 1993, the Great Garden was transferred back into the possession of the Free State of Saxony, and on August 1 of the same year the state enterprise "State Palaces and Gardens Dresden" was founded (since 2003 part of the state enterprise " State Palaces, under the Ministry of Finance" Castles and Gardens of Saxony ”), who has managed the Great Garden ever since.

present

Grove-like forest in the large garden

More than 17,000 trees of different species and genera grow in the Great Garden. There are also numerous cultural monuments there, for which the list of cultural monuments in the Great Garden (Dresden) provides an overview. The following systems and facilities are located on or in the park:

Palace

The palace , built from 1678 to 1683 based on a design by Johann Georg Starcke, is considered one of the main works of the Saxon Baroque . It is also one of the earliest buildings of this style in Saxony. The three-storey building, based on an H-shaped floor plan, incorporates French and Northern Italian architectural influences. Its original purpose was that of a venue for court celebrations, later it was also used as a museum. The palace burned down completely as a result of the air raids in February 1945; its interior has not yet been completely restored. On the ground floor there is now an exhibition of baroque sculptures that have been removed from their original locations or replaced by copies for conservation reasons. The palace is also used for concerts and other events.

Cavalier's cottage
Cavalier houses

Five of the original eight cavalier houses are still preserved, a sixth is in ruinous condition. The cavalier houses were built in 1693/1694 based on a design by Johann Friedrich Karcher as single-storey pavilion buildings with a mansard roof. They originally contained only one room each, which was decorated with frescoes. As with the palace, this is also a question of only temporarily used fixed architecture, which also served the purpose of closing off the immediate palace area from the outside. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the cavalier houses were rebuilt and then used as rental apartments. During his stay in Dresden from 1917 to 1923, Oskar Kokoschka lived in the extension of House A (counting is done counterclockwise, starting with the house closest to the city on the south side). House D, the former residence of Friedrich Bouché, is now used as a youth eco house, house G is the park administration.

Park theater

The park or hedge theater, completed in 1719, is located between the Palais pond and Südallee, surrounded by dense vegetation. Of the original baroque furnishings, however, only the bases of the fourteen putti arranged around the stage have been preserved; the entire set architecture, consisting of hedges or treelings, was destroyed as early as the Seven Years War.

Balestra's group of sculptures Die Zeit abducts the beauty in front of the palace
Sculptures

Little remains of the original sculptural decoration in the garden, as most of the pieces were destroyed during the Seven Years' War and the subsequent Prussian siege. The gate pillars on the east side of the main avenue, the so-called orthostats, and the four Hercules statues at both ends of the Hercules avenue, date from the early days of the Great Garden. The latter are attributed to Balthasar Permoser or his workshop. Two groups of Centaurs by Antonio Corradini are still in their original location at the end of the balustrade west of the palace. The “opulence vase” east of the Palais Pond also comes from Corradini, like two smaller vases at the main entrance to the city. The group “Time abducts beauty” created by the Italian sculptor Pietro Balestra stands on the lawn ground floor directly in front of the palace, while the thematically related group “Time reveals the truth”, again by Corradini, is located north of Lake Carola. The "Brühl's vases" are set up at the four corners of the Palais pond. They were created around 1740 for Heinrich Graf von Brühl by Italian artists who were involved in the construction of the Hofkirche and were originally located in the garden of the Brühl Palace , today's Friedrichstadt Hospital . After Brühl's death in 1763, they were moved to the garden of the Secondogenitur, today's Blüherpark , from where they moved to their new location in 1982. Two other Baroque decorative vases from the garden of the Palais Brühl-Marcolini are located at the southern end of Querallee. At its northern end (here referred to as Fürstenallee), the pair of lions created by court sculptor Christian Gottlieb Kühn in 1814 for the stairs of the Brühl Terrace has stood since 1863 . Finally, there are three sculptures by the Dresden sculptor Gustav Eduard Wolf von Hoyer in the White Garden . They were donated to the Great Garden in 1898.

The north of the two gatehouses
Gatehouses

In 1814 the two classicist gatehouses at the western main entrance were built on behalf of the Russian Governor General, Nikolai Repnin-Wolkonski, based on a design by Gottlob Friedrich Thormeyer. The buildings damaged during the air raids in February 1945 were demolished in 1969 and rebuilt as copies in 1997/1998. They are used gastronomically.

Zoological Garden

The zoological garden was opened on May 9, 1861 and is the fourth oldest zoo in Germany. Its eastern part is located on the site that originally belonged to the Great Garden - the border being formed by the Kaitzbach - while the western part was acquired specifically for the zoo. The landscaping was based on a plan by Peter Joseph Lenné. There are more than two thousand animals of over 300 species on an area of ​​13 hectares.

Carolasee and Neuteich

Both ponds are located in the Wilhelminian expansion areas of the Great Garden and were created under the direction of Friedrich Bouché. The Carolasee is a former gravel pit in the southeastern part of the garden, the Strehlener fields, which was newly acquired in 1873. The lake, laid out in natural forms in 1881/1882, was expanded in the direction of Querallee in 1886 and received a fountain in 1895. The Carolaschlösschen , built in the neo-renaissance style in 1895, is located on a peninsula and is still used for gastronomic purposes. On the opposite north-eastern side of the garden, on the edge of the Gruna facility, which was bought in 1890, is the Neuteich, which was completed in 1894 . It is an extension and redesign of the baroque canal system that originally served to delimit the inner garden area.

Picardy

The Pikardie is a former restaurant located between the south and main avenues at the eastern end of the Great Garden. The building used by the Technical University as an institute for groundwater management was erected in 1900 and has been named Nabeshima-Bau since 1982 in honor of the Japanese porcelain researcher and honorary doctor of the Technical University, Nabeshima Naotsugu (1912–1981).

Mosaic fountain
Mosaic fountain

The mosaic fountain was built on the occasion of the International Horticultural Exhibition of 1926 according to a design by Hans Poelzig in the Art Deco style. It is still in its original location near the main avenue in the south-western part of the garden.

Park railway

The Dresden Park Railway ran in its current form for the first time in the summer of 1950 on a much shorter route. The operation, originally planned for only one season, was resumed the following year due to its great success, the line was extended to its length of 5.6 kilometers. Since then, the train has been running every season from April to October and carries around 250,000 passengers a year.

Outdoor stage

The open-air stage "Junge Garde" was built from 1954 to 1957 in neo-baroque style with clear echoes of the Pillnitz Castle. It is located in the south-eastern part of the garden in an abandoned gravel pit. The auditorium, reminiscent of an amphitheater, offers space for 5,000 visitors.

Puppet theater Sonnenhäusel
Puppet theater

The small puppet theater Sonnenhäusel was built in 1954/1955 to a design by the Dresden architect Krista Grunicke (1923–2012) north of Herkulesallee and has 350 seats.

Botanical Garden

The botanical garden , which has existed since 1820, has been located on a former urban site in the northwest corner of the Great Garden since 1893. At that time, it comprised 5,750 plant species on an area of ​​3.25 hectares and was the first botanical garden in Central Europe to be structured primarily according to plant-geographical criteria. While this classification still exists, the number of species has nearly doubled. A special feature of the garden is the division of the systematic collection into perennial and annual plants, whereby the annuals form a veritable sea of ​​flowers, especially in summer.

Transparent manufactory

The Transparent Factory is a Volkswagen AG presentation facility on the former site of the municipal exhibition grounds on the north-western edge of the Great Garden. In the factory, which was officially opened on March 19, 2002, the final assembly of the luxury VW Phaeton was done by hand. In order to avoid increased traffic in this downtown location, the transport to and from the factory was carried out with the help of the CarGoTram , a freight tram financed by VW that ran between the Transparent Factory and the logistics center at Dresden-Friedrichstadt station . Since the production switch from VW to electric drives, it has been using this connection again since 2017.

Others

In his memories of his hometown Dresden, “ When I was a little boy ”, published in 1957, Erich Kästner also writes about the Great Garden and the gentlemen's houses, with which he had a special wish:

“'In one of them,' I thought as a young man, 'you would like to live for life! You may become famous one day and then the mayor will come with his gold chain around his neck and give it to you in the name of the city. ' So I would have moved in with my library. In the morning I would have had breakfast in the Palaiscafé and fed the swans. Then I would have strolled through the old avenues, the blooming rhododendron grove and around the Carolasee. […] Later, I would have gone to the zoo just around the corner. [...] And at night, with the window open again, I would have slept wonderfully. As the only person in the big old park. I would have dreamed of August the Strong, of Aurora von Königsmarck and the equally beautiful and unhappy Countess Cosel . "

literature

  • Harald Blanke: The Great Garden in Dresden. History and design in the age of August the Strong 1676–1733. Technical University of Dresden, Dresden 2000 (dissertation).
  • Christian Gottlob Ernst AmEnde: History and Development of the Royal Great Garden near Dresden . Teubner, Dresden 1874 ( digitized version )
  • Christian Gottlob Ernst AmEnde: The Kgl. Large garden near Dresden in the past and present . Zahn & Jaensch, Dresden 1887 ( digitized version )
  • Gertraud Enderlein : Dresden's gardens and parks. Verlag des Landesverein Sächsischer Heimatschutz, Dresden 1932.
  • Volker Helas : Large garden in Dresden. Edition Leipzig, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-361-00544-2 .
  • Stefanie Krihning: The Great Garden of Dresden 1873-1945. The history of its administration. Michel Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2013, ISBN 978-3-95498-016-1 .
  • Saxon palace administration (ed.): The great garden of Dresden. Garden art in four centuries. Michel Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2001, ISBN 3-930382-51-2 .
  • State palaces, castles and gardens of Saxony (Ed.): The Great Garden of Dresden 1873–1945. The history of its administration. Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2013, ISBN 978-3-95498-016-1 .

Web links

Commons : Great Garden  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Harald Blanke: The history of the development of the Great Garden in Dresden . In: Sächsische Schlösserverwaltung (Hrsg.): The large garden in Dresden. Garden art in four centuries . Michael Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2001, ISBN 3-930382-51-2 , p. 21-33 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Volker Helas: Large garden in Dresden. Edition Leipzig, Leipzig 2002.
  3. ↑ Volker Helas: Large garden in Dresden. Edition Leipzig, Leipzig 2002. p. 37.
  4. ↑ Harald Blanke: The history of the development of the Great Garden in Dresden . In: Sächsische Schlösserverwaltung (Hrsg.): The large garden in Dresden. Garden art in four centuries . Michael Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2001, p. 27 .
  5. ^ Gustav Klemm: Chronicle of the royal Saxon residence city of Dresden and its citizens . Dresden 1835, p. 433 f . quoted from Reiner Groß and Uwe John: History of the City of Dresden. Volume 2. Stuttgart 2006, p. 54.
  6. ^ Wilhelm Adolf Lindau: New painting of Dresden with regard to history, locality, culture, art and trade . Dresden 1820, p. 111 . quoted from: Sächsische Schlösserverwaltung (Ed.). The great garden in Dresden. Garden art in four centuries. Dresden, 2001. p. 180 (note 16)
  7. ↑ a b Saxon Main State Archives: Large Garden, No 45. Quoted from: Sylvia Butenschön. The Great Garden as a city park. Use and change of use of the facility in the 19th century. In: Sächsische Schlösserverwaltung (Ed.). The great garden in Dresden. Garden art in four centuries. Dresden, 2001. p. 129
  8. ↑ Gertraud Enderlein: Dresden's gardens and parks . Dresden 1932, p. 123 .
  9. ↑ Stefanie Krihning: The Great Garden at Dresden 1873-1945. The history of its administration. Michel Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2013, p. 31.
  10. ↑ Saxon Main State Archives: Großer Garten, No. 24 (1873–1876), Process 10: Report by court gardener Neumann, produced June 19, 1872. Quoted from: Simone Balsam. From Karcher to Bouché. Changing approaches to horticultural design in the vicinity of the palace. In: Sächsische Schlösserverwaltung (Hrsg.): The large garden in Dresden. Garden art in four centuries. Dresden, 2001. p. 102
  11. ^ A b Stephanie Jäger: Friedrich Bouché's work in Saxony . In: Sächsische Schlösserverwaltung (Hrsg.): The large garden in Dresden. Garden art in four centuries . Michael Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2001, p. 115-125 .
  12. ↑ Stefanie Krihning: The Great Garden at Dresden 1873-1945. The history of its administration. Michel Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2013, p. 31 f.
  13. ^ Friedrich Bouché. The state gardens in Dresden and its surroundings. In: Walter Dänhardt (Ed.). Festschrift on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Flora, Saxon Society for Botany and Horticulture in Dresden. 1826-1926. Dresden 1926, p. 203
  14. ↑ a b Holger Starke : Dresden in the Weimar Republic. Economy and Transport . In: Holger Starke and Uwe John (eds.): History of the city of Dresden. From the founding of the empire to the present . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-8062-1928-1 , p. 284-297 .
  15. ↑ Norbert Kuschinski: With the tram through the Great Garden. Article from: Sächsisches Tageblatt of March 4, 1984
  16. ↑ Victor Klemperer: I want to give testimony to the last. Diaries 1942–1945 . Ed .: Walter Nowojski with the assistance of Hadwig Klemperer . Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 1995, p. 108 .
  17. ↑ Victor Klemperer: I want to give testimony to the last. Diaries 1942–1945 . Ed .: Walter Nowojski with the assistance of Hadwig Klemperer. Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 1995, p. 134 .
  18. ↑ a b Reinhard Grau: The Great Garden in the Post-War Period. Six decades of cultural monument in the field of tension between social requirements and conservation requirements . In: Sächsische Schlösserverwaltung (Hrsg.): The large garden in Dresden. Garden art in four centuries . Michael Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2001, p. 137-148 .
  19. ↑ Gerald Heres: The installation of the marble sculptures of August the Strong in the Great Garden . In: Sächsische Schlösserverwaltung (Hrsg.): The large garden in Dresden. Garden art in four centuries . Michael Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2001, p. 65-71 .
  20. ↑ General information on Dresden Zoo. In: Zoo-Dresden.de. Retrieved March 13, 2015 .
  21. ↑ Interesting facts about the Dresden Park Railway. State palaces, castles and gardens of Saxony, accessed on March 13, 2015 .
  22. ^ History of the Dresden Botanical Garden. TU Dresden, accessed on March 13, 2015 .
  23. ↑ Erich Kästner: When I was a little boy . 11th edition. dtv, Munich 2009, p. 50 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 2 ′ 15 "  N , 13 ° 45 ′ 47"  E