Royal vineyard on the Klausberg
The royal vineyard on Klausberg was laid out in Potsdam in 1769 on behalf of Frederick the Great . Fruit and vines were grown on it to supply the royal court at the nearby Sanssouci Palace with fresh fruit.
location
The Klausberg vineyard is located northwest of Potsdam's Sanssouci Palace at the western end of the Bornstedt ridge. The Belvedere , built between 1770 and 1772, stands above the vineyard on the Klausberg . To the east of the complex is the Drachenhaus , which was built as a home for the first gardener of the vineyard on Klausberg.
South of the vineyard is the Maulbeerallee to Sanssouci Palace, which runs from west to east.
The vineyard is also known as the Neue Weinberg am Hopfengarten or the Weinberg am Drachenberg , as the Klausberg was often also called the Drachenberg after the dragon house at its foot from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Planting the vineyard
After the completion of the New Palace in 1769, Frederick II wanted the western end of the Bornstedt ridge to be provided with horticultural facilities. For this purpose, an area of 56 × 14 rods (approximately 211 × 53 meters) was enclosed by walls. In the upper eastern part of this area, three talut walls were built based on the model of the terraces of Sanssouci and planted with peaches, apricots and Neapolitan medlars ( Crataegus azarolus ). On the western part of the slope, three earth terraces were created, which were planted with fruit trees. In the lower part of the walled area there was a level area on which viticulture was to be carried out.
The vineyard was to be laid out by a former guard named Werley and then tended and supervised. Werley came from the Rhineland and wanted to transfer the viticulture culture that was widespread there to Potsdam. A winegrower's house in the Chinese style was built for him as a residence so that he could live near the complex. The builder of the so-called dragon house was Carl von Gontard . However, the Drachenhaus had been vacant since its construction because Werley's plans to create a vineyard were not implemented. In 1787, the building, which was meanwhile in need of repair, was repaired to make it habitable.
Since Werley did not succeed in establishing viticulture, he fell out of favor, and the area was added to the territory of court gardener Heinrich Christian Eckstein (* 1719 - † 1796), who was already overseeing the gardens at the New Palace, which also included drift walls, the orangery and the fruit plantations in the hedge quarters belonged. Above all, the plants on the cold drift walls thrived under Eckstein and produced a rich harvest, so that in 1785 the western earth terraces were removed and three more drift walls were built instead. In total, the system comprised 433 running meters of older walls with 344 large and 344 small windows in the eastern part and 292 running meters of new walls with 219 large windows as well as an earth wall in the eastern part of the vineyard.
According to Eckstein, first Johann Wilhelm Busch (* 1746; † 1812) and then Carl Friedrich Nietner (* 1766; † 1824) were responsible for the Klausberg complex as court gardeners. Later the vineyard was the responsibility of the court gardener Carl Julius Fintelmann (* 1794; † 1866), who in 1827, with the assistance of Emil Sello (* 1816; † 1893), laid further peach espaliers in the southern area of the vineyard area up to the south wall.
Between 1770 and 1772 the Belvedere was built on the Klausberg according to plans by Georg Christian Unger .
Beautification plans
After his accession to the throne in 1840, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV planned a Via Triumphalis , which was to run as a two-kilometer high road or triumphal road north of the Sanssouci Park from the triumphal gate , which was built by Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse in 1850/1851 , to the Belvedere. A redesign of the Klausberg was also planned as part of this project. According to the sketches of Friedrich Wilhelm, a garden in the style of the Italian Renaissance was to be created, the center of which was to be the Belvedere with an underlying symmetrical terrace with water cascades instead of the simple eccentric ramp.
Only individual elements of the plans for Triumphstrasse were ultimately implemented, including the orangery palace, which was built from 1851 to 1864 and located southeast of the vineyard . On the Klausberg, instead of the planned cascade in 1844, only a balustrade decorated by two colossal vases was realized on the top vineyard wall.
In the 1880s, the project of a representative design of the vineyard terraces was taken up again. A design by Reinhold Persius shows the lateral edging of the upper vineyard level by domed buildings with loggias. A cascade with flanking flights of stairs was planned to connect the two lower terraces axially to the Belvedere, while the height difference between the upper terrace and the mountain plateau with the Belvedere was to be overcome by curved open stairs with an arched floor plan. The large glazed drift walls would have been crowned with balustrades. The attics of the symmetrical loggias and the walls accompanying the flights of stairs and the cascade were to be decorated with statues, as were the four pedestals of the top balustrade directly in front of the Belvedere.
The Lepère walls
The court gardener Gustav Adolf Fintelmann (* 1803; † 1871), nephew of Carl Julius Fintelmann , visited the orchards of Montreuil near Paris on a study trip to France in the 1820s and got to know Alexis Lepère the elder , who called peaches Espalier trees cultivated on walls. Thanks to the cutting techniques he developed, Lepère was able to harvest fruits of special quality even from very warm fruit types.
In 1854 Lepère's son, Alexis Lepère the Younger , traveled to Germany on behalf of Count Friedrich von Hahn to plant fruit trees on walls based on the French model at his Castle Basedow . In the following year he came to Germany again to establish fruit culture on walls for the landowner Albert Graf von Schlippenbach at Arendsee Castle near Prenzlau . After the completion of the plant, he visited Basedow and Arendsee several times a year in order to continue to supervise the cultures.
From 1859 onwards, Alexis Lepère had minister Moritz August von Bethmann-Hollweg submit peaches, apples and pears from the plants he had built in northern Germany to Queen Augusta in order to recommend himself as a gardener. In the summer of 1862, Wilhelm I finally gave him the order to build a wall system for fruit growing on the Klausberg. In the autumn of that year, under Lepère's guidance, a 128-foot-long wall system was built on the royal vineyard, stretching from east to west, from which four walls each 56-foot long ran southwards. Protective roofs protruding from the top of the wall were installed to protect against the effects of the weather, and wooden shutters were attached to these in the spring to protect the blossoming trees from frost.
For the planting of the complex, Lepère obtained pre-grown trees from France that had already been cut in a trellis shape. He cultivated fruit types that are particularly in need of warmth, such as peach, pear and cherry trees, right next to the walls. The areas in the spaces created by the transverse walls were planted with lower, free-standing trellises with apple and pear trees.
In 1863, the royal couple commissioned Lepère to build walls for fruit growing in the Babelsberg Park as well . In 1870, Ferdinand Jühlke built a third facility based on the Lepère principle in Potsdam for the Royal Gardening School at the Wildlife Park near Potsdam , where the students of the institute were shown fruit cultivation on Talut walls and trellis fruit pruning.
The Lepère plants did not bring the hoped-for success, which was probably due to the planting of the espalier trees pre-cultivated in the Paris area, as neither the selected warmth-requiring varieties nor the rootstocks were adapted to the harsher climate of Potsdam.
Greenhouses
Despite the failure of the Lepère walls, the royal court did not want to do without fine fruit. Between 1895 and 1905 Wilhelm II had extensive renovation and modernization work carried out on the Klausberg facilities. The now weathered talut walls were repaired, and an arcade with a neo-baroque front arch was built over the central ramp.
In addition, two large-scale greenhouses were built, which were planned and executed by the Potsdam court building officer Edmund Bohne and later looked after by the court gardener Johann Josef Glatt (* 1843; † 1911). The system consisted of two separate complexes and was equipped with the most modern technology for the time. Each of the two greenhouse complexes had devices for shading the glass fronts, ventilation mechanisms and a boiler house to operate a hot water heater, with which both the ground and the air could be heated. The houses were divided into a total of 21 sections, 15 of which were used for growing vines and five for growing peaches.
In order to be able to harvest fruit over the longest possible period, the plants were driven in staggered sections . The individual departments were each planted with plants of roughly the same cultivation time, so that early, medium and late ripening fruit varieties were separated. The driving of the first section started at the beginning of January, so the first fruits could already be harvested from mid-May. Until the beginning of September, fruits could be harvested from the greenhouses. At this time of year the harvest period for the trees began on the Talut walls on Klausberg and on the terraces of Sanssouci Palace, which lasted about six weeks. From November onwards, the harvest of cold-forged, late-ripening grape varieties from the cold houses could finally begin. This made it possible to supply the farm with fresh fruit all year round.
As early as 1903, 21 quintals of fruit, five quintals of peaches in the greenhouses on Klausberg, and five quintals of grapes from the Talut walls were harvested. The greenhouses were also used to grow secondary crops such as beans, tomatoes and strawberries.
From 1911 the master gardener Georg Potente (* 1876, † 1945) took over the management of the gardening business. Even after the emperor's abdication and the end of the monarchy, fruit cultivation on Klausberg continued until the Second World War . However, the focus was no longer on the horticultural benefit, but on preserving the complex as a cultural monument. Flowers and ornamental plants for the parks and gardens of Sanssouci were increasingly grown in the greenhouses and outdoor areas on the Klausberg.
After the Second World War
The horticultural facilities on the Klausberg were severely damaged in the Second World War. The Belvedere was ruined by artillery fire and burned down completely. At the end of the war, the panes of the Talut walls were mostly broken. The western greenhouse was completely dismantled by the Russian army in 1945. The remaining greenhouses were gradually demolished and served as building material and as a supplier for replacement windows in the Potsdam gardening and scrap production. The complex was subordinate to the garden department of the palace administration. The gardener, Artur Geißler, who was responsible for the orangery, also looked after the plantations on Klausberg and saw to it that the fruit trees and vines were cut regularly; the resulting fruit harvest was distributed to the employees of the garden administration.
From the 1960s, the Lepère walls and the western lower terrace were leased to allotment gardeners, while the upper terraces were temporarily used as pasture for cattle. The remaining greenhouses continued to fall into disrepair and the open spaces were overgrown by wild growth.
As part of the reconstruction of the dilapidated Belvedere on Klausberg between 1990 and 2002, the top three retaining walls were first restored. As part of the preparations for the 2001 Federal Horticultural Show in Potsdam, other parts of the facilities were restored. With the help of descriptions by Ferdinand Jühlke and Wilhelm Lauche of the Lepère-style orchards in the nearby former gardening school at the wildlife park , the structure of the walls, their trellis equipment and the selection of the cultivated fruit varieties could be reconstructed.
The east-facing walls were planted with peach trellises in the shape of palmettes and the south-facing walls with old vines. The three west-facing walls were planted with candelabra-shaped pear trellises. The complex is maintained by the gardeners of the mosaic workshops for the disabled from Berlin. Wines have been made from the grape harvest since 2011. Together with the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation, the mosaic workshops are planning to have the Royal Vineyard completely reconstructed and renovated by 2019, when it will be 250 years old. One thousand half-liter bottles of a dry Regent and a half -dry Phoenix were filled from the 2014 vintage . The wine is sold in favor of rebuilding the vineyard.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Heinrich Ludwig Manger : New vineyard at the hop garden. In: Building history of Potsdam especially under the government of King Frederick the Second. Second volume (1763 to 1786), Verlag Friedrich Nicolai, Berlin and Stettin 1789, p. 321 f.
- ↑ a b c d e Gerd Schurig: The development of the kitchen gardening on Klausberg. In: Yearbook Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg, Volume 6, Berlin 2004, pp. 61–84
- ↑ 1772 - The corner stone that became the foundation stone. ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. On the Königlicher Weinberg homepage , accessed on February 28, 2015.
- ↑ Johann Gottlob Schulze : Some fragments of the constitution of the royal horticulture to Sans Souci 1801. In: Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): The ornamental and kitchen gardens in Sanssouci from 1744 to 1801. General management of the SPSG, Potsdam 2001, p. 54.
- ↑ 1840 - The triumph over the visions. ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. On the Königlicher Weinberg homepage , accessed on February 28, 2015.
- ^ GA Fintelmann: The peach cultivation in Montreuil near Paris. In: negotiations of the horticultural association , 19, 1849, pp. 16–31.
- ↑ Mr. Alexis Lepère's work in northern German orchards. In: C. von Salviati: Annals of Agriculture in the Royal Prussian States. 22nd year, 43rd volume. Barthol, Berlin 1864, p. 59.
- ↑ a b Arendsee and the finer fruit growing of the Count of Schlippenbach. In: Weekly of the Association for the Promotion of Horticulture in the Royal Prussian States for Horticulture and Herbology. No. 30, Berlin, July 30, 1864, p. 234.
- ^ A b Protocols of the Association for the History of Potsdam - Tenth Assembly. In: Louis Schneider : Mittheilungen the association for the history of Potsdam. Gropius'sche Buch- und Kunsthandlung (A. Krausnick), Potsdam 1864, p. 45 f.
- ↑ 1905 - The emperor's new clothes on the Klausberg. ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the Königlicher Weinberg homepage, accessed on February 28, 2015
- ↑ a b c G. A. Fintelmann: The wine greenhouses on the Drachenberg in Sanssouci. In: Möllers Deutsche Gärtner-Zeitung, No. 15, 1903, pp. 393–397
- ↑ F. Jühlke: The Royal State Tree Nursery and Gardening School in Potsdam. Berlin 1872, p. 77f.
- ↑ W. Lauche: Handbuch des Obstbaues on a scientific and practical basis. Berlin 1882, p. 453.
- ↑ 4th Royal Wine Festival - Fine wines from the former kitchen garden of Frederick the Great on Klausberg. Press release from the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation, accessed on March 1, 2015.
- ↑ O. Egelkraut: Friedrich's dream comes true. In: Sans, souci. Magazine of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg. Edition 4.2011, Potsdam 2011, p. 13.
- ^ Brandenburg wine region . Ministry for Rural Development, Environment and Agriculture of the State of Brandenburg, Press and Public Relations Department, December 2018, 2nd updated edition p. 59
Coordinates: 52 ° 24 '23.4 " N , 13 ° 1' 10" E