Court gardener

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The court gardeners were a separate professional group at the princely courts and with the imperial nobility . Ideally, their skills combined those of the gardener and today's landscape architect .

Job description and history

The term, which originated in the 18th century, denotes the head of a garden area that was owned by the emperor or a nobleman who was immediately part of the empire (from the imperial count upwards). The court gardeners set themselves apart from other gardeners like a guild . Often the son was able to take over the position of the father, so court gardener dynasties such as those of the Sello and Lenné families were formed .

The English King Charles II receives a pineapple as a gift from the royal gardener John Rose . The painting is attributed to Hendrick Danckerts , 1675.

The training of court gardeners included, among other things, educational trips to the gardens at home and abroad that were regarded as particularly topical or important at the time. Until the horticultural schools were established in the 19th century, such educational trips were essential for a good training of court gardeners. Her tasks included laying out and maintaining the gardens, especially the production of fruit and vegetables for the farm. Often they also took on the design of new systems or redesigns.

Court gardening has been particularly well researched in Prussia . Prussia's rulers liked to bring the best gardeners and creative minds of garden and landscape designers from everywhere, and a multi-level administration developed. Friedrich Wilhelm II. Founded a garden inspection in Potsdam in 1787 - corresponding to the Oberhofbauamt in Berlin. An Oberhofbaurat created plans for the respective garden areas and the associated budget , which had to be approved by the king. In 1798 Friedrich Wilhelm III. the garden inspection to a garden management and subordinated it to the court marshal in Berlin. The respective court marshal was now responsible for the management of the gardens as gardening manager. The garden director was subordinate to him as the superior of the court gardeners and their territories (e.g. in Potsdam, Berlin, Rheinsberg , Kassel - Wilhelmshöhe and Königsberg ).

Monument to Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe in the Hofgarten Düsseldorf

As a rule, the leading court gardeners also lived directly in the supervised gardens in their own court gardener's house, built by the court architect and furnished to a high standard. Some contained guest apartments, others developed into a social meeting place. Court gardeners usually had service personnel available, and sometimes a carriage for their travels. In some cases they also had direct access to the king or prince for special concerns. This shows the prominent position of these leading gardeners (and not least the position of garden art as a whole). However, the court gardeners also had to be on hand at all times in order to fulfill the employer's wishes immediately.

Court gardeners are not to be confused with garden directors, head gardeners, horticulturists, horticulturists and gardeners who did the practical work under their supervision.

With the end of the monarchy, the castles passed into state ownership, and the successor authority to the Court Marshal's Office became the Crown Estate Administration in 1920, which in 1927 became the administration of the State Palaces and Gardens. The heads of the garden districts were now called garden inspectors or garden chief inspectors.

Important court gardener dynasties

Prussia

Saxony

Others

Commemorative plaque for the Wendland families, attached to the library pavilion in front of the Berggarten in 1948

Individual important court gardeners

Court gardeners' houses

The Hofgärtnerhaus in Potsdam- Sanssouci , built for Hermann Sello by Ludwig Persius . The house had its own guest apartment, in which many prominent visitors to Sanssouci stayed. B. Alexander von Humboldt . Other court gardeners' houses, like the one in Düsseldorf , developed into a social meeting place.
Hofgärtnerhaus in Oldenburg , palace garden (1867)

In the 19th century, Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Ludwig Persius in particular designed court gardeners' houses based on the model of northern Italian tenants as groups of buildings with towers and extensions, the balanced arrangement of which offered a picturesque sight.

At the eastern end of the gardens on the famous Brühl Terrace in Dresden, a court gardener's house with an orangery wing was built before 1761 . It burned out in 1945, after the war it was rebuilt as an evangelical-reformed parish hall according to a design by Heinrich Rettig , reconstructed in 1999 and a café set up there.

The oldest gardener's house in Thuringia is located in the Arnstadt Castle Garden.

The Hofgärtnerhaus Düsseldorf was built according to plans by Nicolas de Pigage .

literature

  • Gerd Alpermann u. a .: The Fintelmann family of court gardeners in Potsdam and Berlin . In: Central German family studies . Volume X, Volume 33, 1992, Issue 2, p. 250
  • Sonja Dümpelmann (Red.), Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): Prussian Green: Court Gardeners in Brandenburg-Prussia. Accompanying volume for the exhibition “Prussian Green. From the royal court gardener to the garden monument conservator “Schloß Glienicke, Berlin, from July 18 to October 17, 2004 . Henschel, Leipzig 2004, ISBN 3-89487-489-9
included contributions:
P. 32–40: Rainer Herzog: Court gardener in Bavaria. A contribution to the professional history of gardeners in Germany
P. 41–105: Clemens Alexander Wimmer : On the history of the administration of the royal gardens in Prussia
P. 106–119: Jörg Wacker: The difficult way to the museum gardens . The organization of the former royal court garden administration and the state garden administration from 1918 to 1945
P. 120–134: Clemens Alexander Wimmer: Between court crafts and guilds. On the social position of court gardeners
P. 135–163: Clemens Alexander Wimmer: The training of court gardeners
Pp. 164–173: Clemens Alexander Wimmer and Michael Seiler: How court gardeners traveled
P. 174–186: Clemens Alexander Wimmer: The activities of court gardeners
P. 302–339: Clemens Alexander Wimmer: Directory of court gardeners and senior officials of the Prussian garden administration until 1945
  • E. Fintelmann: The Prussian court gardener family Fintelmann . In: Genealogy . Volume XXIV, 47./48. Volume, 1998/99, p. 628
  • Jutta Fulsche (edit.), Thuringian Main State Archives Weimar (Ed.): Sckell Family Estate , (Repertories of the Thuringian Main State Archives Weimar, Volume 3), Thuringian Main State Archives, Weimar 1996, ISBN 3-930969-02-5
  • Harri Günther: On the history of the gardener family Schoch . Dessau Culture Mirror, No. 5, Dessau, 1958
  • Mustafa Haikal : The camellia forest. The story of a German nursery . Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3-378-01043-6 [about the Saxon court gardener and commercial gardener family Seidel]
  • Rainer Herzog: The gardener in the historic garden. Comments on practice-related specialist training, in: Historical Gardens. A location assessment, reports on research and practice in the preservation of historical monuments in Germany, issue 11, Berlin (Landesdenkmalamt Berlin and Schelzky & Jeep) 2003, (pp. 22–32).
  • Rainer Herzog: "... make wise and skilled people". For the qualification of gardeners and gardening masters in the maintenance of garden monuments, in: garden art and garden monuments. On the current situation of garden monument preservation in the state of Brandenburg, monument preservation in Berlin and Brandenburg, workbooks 2/2004, Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation (ed.), Petersberg (Michael Imhof Verlag) 2004, (pp. 66–73).
  • Peter Lack: The gardener and artist family Sckell . In: The garden art . Volume 14, 2002, issue 2, p. 195
  • Iris Lauterbach (ed.): Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell (1750–1823). Garden artist and city planner . Wernersche Verlagsanstalt, Worms 2002, ISBN 3-88462-190-4 (based on the lectures at a symposium on September 13, 2000 at the Central Institute for Art History in Munich; also contains the articles by Lack and Woudstra contained in "Die Gartenkunst")
  • Karl Lohmeyer: Southwest German gardens of the baroque and romanticism with their domestic and foreign models based on the working material of the Saarland and Palatinate court gardener family of Koellner , (Saarbrücker Abhandlungen zur Südwestdeutschen Kunst und Kultur, Volume 1), Saarbrücken, 1937 [contains family trees of the court gardeners Families Koellner, Petri and Sckell]
  • Gisela Langfeldt: Plantör on Ihro Majestaet the Queen Lust Schönhausen Castle. The court gardener family Nietner . In: Herold, quarterly . Volume 16, Issue 4, IV quarter, 2001, pp. 77-89
  • Heike Palm and Hubert Rettich: The orangery gardener Georg Ernst Tatter and his sons. The working and living environment of a Hanoverian court gardener family of the 18th century . In: Arbeitskreis Orangerie in Deutschland (Ed.): "From the orangery ..." and other garden stories. Festschrift for Heinrich Hamann . Potsdam 2002, pp. 140-175
  • Wolf Dietrich Penning: The Cologne court gardener dynasties Lenné and Weyhe. Documents and materials on their history (1665–1866) . In: Bonner Geschichtsblätter . Volume 53/54, 2004, pp. 153-202
  • Clemens Alexander Wimmer (texts), General Directorate of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg (ed.): The Prussian Court Gardeners . General Directorate of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg, Berlin 1996, pp. 44–52
  • Jan Woudstra: The Sckell Family in England (1770-1830) . In: The garden art . Volume 14, 2002, issue 2, p. 211
  • Inge Zacher: Your most devoted servant: The Benrath court gardeners in the 18th and 19th centuries. A contribution to the start of construction on the new Benrath Palace 250 years ago . In: Düsseldorfer Jahrbuch . Volume 75, 2005, pp. 187-220
  • Court gardeners and scholars. A contribution to the history of the Coburg hemp . In: Archives for kin research . Volume 41/42, 1975/76, pp. 377–384

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