Joseph Clemens Weyhe

Joseph Clemens Weyhe (* 1807 in Düsseldorf ; † July 26, 1871 in Engers / Neuwied ) was a gardener and landscape architect.

Life

Düsseldorf Hofgärtnerhaus, Weyhe's birthplace

The son of the well-known Düsseldorf garden architect Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe , grandson of Joseph Clemens Weyhe (* 1749; † 1813) was born in the Düsseldorf court gardener and learned the profession of his father and grandfather. In addition to practical training, he attended the Düsseldorf Academy from 1822 to 1827 to learn landscape drawing. One of his teachers there was the architect Karl Friedrich Schäffer . Already during his training he drew the occupancy plan of the Golzheim cemetery in 1825 . Between 1829 and 1832 he was able to expand his training with a stay abroad.

After his return he supported his father. He looked after the court garden in Düsseldorf full-time , but also had orders for gardens in Kleve and Benrath . For this work he gladly took the help of his sons Joseph Clemens and Wilhelm August. The family continued working together in the years that followed.

After working in Kleve, Joseph Clemens went to Engers near Neuwied in 1833, where he was employed as a garden inspector and head of the state tree nursery in the service of the royal government. After he stayed in Kleve again from 1839 on, he took over his father's position as royal court garden director in Düsseldorf in 1847 after the death of his father.

Garden plan Haus Meer (1865)

In 1852 he designed a reconstruction of the botanical garden around the orangery and in 1858 designed the front part of Lantz'schen Park . In 1864 he planned the redesign of the Krefeld Ostwall and in 1865 the park of Haus Meer for Friedrich Johann von der Leyen , which had served the family as a palace since 1804 and was involved in the expansion of the Müschpark in Aachen in 1866 .

Joseph Clemens' first plans were still very much based on his father's style. The individual trees in the watercolors were designed so accurately that each tree species could be clearly identified. In later drawings, the painterly forms predominate. Trees and groups of trees are shown in a more abstract way, they are given a graduated gray shadow, which clarifies the shape and effect of the plants in the late afternoon light. The hedge-like trees that formed the border of the gardens are characteristic of his plans . Within the facility, he used groups of trees from different types of trees to create different lines of sight.

The close cooperation with his father meant that some designs and plans were attributed to Maximilian Friedrich, although they were created by Joseph Clemens. For a long time, the park design for what was then Schloss Meer was considered his father's plan. However, the original plan is signed by Joseph Clemens and was not drawn until years after his father's death.

The main source in the search for Weyhe's works is the manual on sales from the Königliche Baumschule zu Düsseldorf , which listed the clientele of the nursery from 1848 to 1870 and the exact delivery dates, names of the orderers and the destinations of the plant deliveries with exact prices and quantities.

Weyhe's successor as director of the Düsseldorf Gardens was the Benrath court gardener Oscar Hering in 1871 .

literature

• Rosemarie Vogelsang: Joseph Clemens Weyhe - creator of the plan and park of Haus Meer . In: Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Architecture, Institute for Building History and Monument Preservation in cooperation with the Geschichtsverein Meerbusch e. V. (Ed.): Sea House in Meerbusch. Documentation and analysis . History Association Meerbusch. 2003, ISBN 3-9804756-2-X , pp. 38-73.
• Rosemarie Vogelsang and Reinhard Lutum: Joseph Clemens Weyhe (1807–1871). A Rhenish garden artist , Grupello Verlag, Düsseldorf 2011, ISBN 978-3-89978-159-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wieland Koenig (Ed.): Düsseldorfer Gartenlust . Catalog of the exhibition of the Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf from May 2 to October 11, 1987, Düsseldorf 1987, p. 112, No. 6.45: Testimony of Academy Professor Carl Schaeffer for Joseph Clemens Weyhe, 1826