Hofgarten (Coburg)
The Coburg Hofgarten is an extensive landscape park that extends in Coburg between the Schlossplatz and the Veste .
History and Buildings
Duke Albrecht had the first large garden at the foot of the fortress hill laid out as a mansion garden in the Dutch style between 1680 and 1682 as part of the expansion of Coburg as a residential city. Justinus Bieler from Saalfeld planned the pleasure garden , which stretched in a north-south direction between the two garden pavilions and the small rose garden. The garden consisted of the ducal provostacker and private gardens that were bought for it. The terraced hillside garden was strictly geometrically structured and surrounded by a two meter high wall.
As the oldest building in the Hofgarten today, two single-storey baroque garden pavilions were erected in the middle third on Festungsstrasse in 1754. The buildings are arranged in a north-south direction and have slate-covered hip roofs. The sandstone facade is structured by pilaster strips . Three plaster models are set up in the western garden pavilion. These show a Prometheus group by Eduard Müller , the Phidias by Ferdinand Lepcke and a Centaur fountain by August Sommer. In addition, a public toilet was later installed there, but it can no longer be used. It has been used as the gallery of the painter Benno Noll since 2013. The eastern garden pavilion was a sculptor's studio for a long time.
With the construction of the ducal mausoleum in 1816 and 1817, the first expansion and transformation into a landscape park took place. Duke Ernst I had the mausoleum built for his parents Franz and Auguste . The classicist rectangular structure was built with sandstone masonry in the style of a Greek tomb. Two sphinxes guard the entrance to the interior with the crypt , which is spanned by a barrel vault decorated with stars and rosettes.
Between 1832 and 1837 the garden was expanded to the west and in 1843, the architectural completion of the arcades on Schlossplatz. Further redesigns of the arcades were carried out by 1853 with new stairs to the courtyard garden in accordance with the suggestions of Carl Gustav Zeißig, court gardener since August 1, 1844. Including the land below the fortress, which Duke Ernst II had acquired by the end of September 1856, the courtyard garden was finally completely redesigned into an English landscape park by 1858 with a new orientation from the palace square to the fortress and the opening of the park to the public on April 27, 1857.
In 1899, the equestrian monument to Duke Ernst II, based on a model by Gustav Eberlein, was erected on the western edge of the court garden above Schlossplatz . The bronze equestrian figure with the uniform of the 7th Prussian Cuirassier Regiment stands on a six meter high base.
The Duke Alfred Fountain, located between the two pavilions, dates from 1903 and is intended to commemorate Duke Alfred , who had died three years earlier . The two dolphin sculptures are by Carl Oehrlein, the female bronze figure "Idylle" is a work by August Sommer and the male figure "Schreck" is by Christoph Franz Peter.
In 1914 the Natural History Museum was opened on the northern edge of the Hofgarten , and in 1927 the southern edge was expanded to include the small rose garden. The rose garden was previously an orangery and from 1922 an ornamental garden. It was separated from the courtyard garden by a wall with neo-Gothic crenellated towers added in 1869. Various figures are set up in the garden, including the life-size statue of Phryne by Ferdinand Lepcke from 1908. The rose garden is closed off in the east by the pavilion of the Coburg Art Association . There have been temporary exhibitions of contemporary art since 1986.
Near the mausoleum the war memorial was 1926 German Homeland Association to commemorate the the First World War fallen Corps brothers of Coburg Convent built. The design came from the Hamburg sculptor Richard Kuöhl and the architects Zauleck and Hofmann. Attacks with damage were often carried out on the monument, which is why it is protected by a private security service around the clock before and during the Whitsun meeting of the Coburg Convent. A memorial stone has stood next to the war memorial since 1990 for those displaced from the former German eastern territories as a result of World War II .
In the summer of 2007, the sculpture "Noon Column" by David Nash, which the artist had created for the International Sculpture Trail for the anniversary "1000 Years of the Diocese of Bamberg ", was set up in the middle of the courtyard garden at the level of the eastern garden pavilion . Due to a slit, the tree stump lets a light shine in its shadow every day at noon local time - in summer at 1:20 p.m. and in winter at 12:20 p.m. On the sculpture pages, signs of the zodiac refer to the course of the year.
botany
The landscape garden is based on a design plan by court gardener Zeißig. It is characterized by the alternation of light, open meadow areas with dense wooded areas. The park has a species-rich tree population, which also includes some impressive specimens of exotic tree species. In this respect, the Hofgarten is a small arboretum . Numerous trees are marked by the Coburg City Green Spaces Office with signs about tree species and homeland or by numbers (from 1 to 37) attached to the trunk. recorded and described. Among trees there are the following species and cultivated varieties: Blue Atlas cedar , honey locust , Japanese pagoda tree , Ginkgo , giant sequoia , redwood , Aesculus flava , tulip tree , trumpet tree , red oak , weeping beech , laciniate beech , Willowleaf oak , London plane , black walnut , Dyer's mulberry tree and a locust copse. In 1994 a park maintenance scheme was decided for the complex in order to preserve its character as a landscape garden in the long term .
Today's meaning
Today the approximately one kilometer long and approximately 30 hectare park has an important recreational function for the population due to its central location and is also a fresh air corridor for the city of Coburg. It includes two larger children's playgrounds and in the Veilchental you can toboggan when there is enough snow .
literature
- Peter Morsbach, Otto Titz: City of Coburg. Ensembles-Architectural Monuments-Archaeological Monuments . Monuments in Bavaria. Volume IV.48. Karl M. Lipp Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-87490-590-X
- Green space office of the city of Coburg (ed.): Striking trees in the courtyard garden . Coburg, 2nd edition 2007 (The folding map is available free of charge from the Tourist Information in Herrngasse, the City of Coburg's Green Space Office, Glockenberg 27, the Citizens' Office in the City Hall and the Natural History Museum in the Hofgarten.)
- Steffen Roth: On the development history of the court garden of the Ehrenburg in Coburg . In: Die Gartenkunst 13 (2/2001), pp. 254–274.
Web links
- Striking trees in the courtyard garden (PDF; 7.3 MB)
- Development history of the Coburg Hofgarten
- Map of the court garden from 1860
Coordinates: 50 ° 15 ′ 35 ″ N , 10 ° 58 ′ 25 ″ E