Lustgarten (Potsdam)

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View from the Brauhausberg to the Lustgarten and the City Palace, around 1900

The Lustgarten is the oldest garden in Potsdam . It is bounded by the Breite Straße with the Marstall in the north, the Havel in the east, the railway embankment in the south and the Ministry of the Interior in the west. Created as a baroque garden for the city ​​palace under the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm and half converted into a flat parade area under King Friedrich Wilhelm I , the rest was embellished by Friedrich II and redesigned in 1829 by Peter Joseph Lenné . After the Second World War, the demolition of the city palace began with the construction of the Ernst Thälmann Stadium in the Lustgarten. When the Interhotel Potsdam was built in 1969, the pleasure garden disappeared beyond recognition. On the occasion of the Federal Garden Show 2001 , a new pleasure garden was created after the Thälmann Stadium was demolished.

The demolition of the Hotel Mercure has remained a redevelopment goal for the Lustgarten since a resolution in 2016.

history

View over the Neptunbassin to the city ​​palace , behind it the Nikolaikirche , before 1945
The pleasure garden in 2017 in front of the hotel high-rise , behind it conceals the city ​​palace and the Nikolaikirche
View over the city palace to the Lustgarten and the Brauhausberg
View from the Nikolaikirche to the Lustgarten and the Havel
Schlossstrasse
Monument to Friedrich Wilhelm I opposite the Marstall , before 1945

The garden was first mentioned in a document in 1589. The oldest plan shows a renaissance garden on a triangular area on the Havel , which belonged to the palace of Electress Katharina , built in 1598/99 , from which the pleasure garden wing of the city ​​palace later emerged. Under the Great Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg , the pleasure garden was expanded to the south and west from 1660 and brought into a rectangular shape by embankments on the river. It is believed that the governor Johann Moritz von Nassau-Siegen participated in this and advised the elector on building and gardening issues. The most modern gardens in France at that time served as a model, as it was necessary to keep pace with the expansion of the garden of Versailles , which began in the same years .

The pleasure garden was part of an ensemble made up of the city palace, the Pomeranzenhaus , the old market and the banks of the Havel . Its main axis formed the extension of the main axis of the castle to the Havel and the Brauhausberg. In 1685, the elector had the elongated Pomeranzenhaus (later Marstall and Film Museum ) built as the northern boundary to the city . Behind it was fallow marshland as a natural city boundary until the beginning of the 18th century, where fishermen had settled in the Kietz settlement (south of today's Breite Straße, out of town, in the area of ​​southern Dortustraße and Kiezstraße). It was open to the Havel to the south and east. The garden consisted of three parts, the Broderieparterre at the castle, a kitchen garden to the west and the bosket in the southwest with a large basin in the middle.

On the other side of the Havel, a six-way starway was created in the zoo. The model here was the ten-pointed axis star that Johann Moritz had created near Kleve in 1665 . One of the axes was directed towards the city palace. Another line of sight went from the west facade of the castle to today's Ehrenpfortenberg. It was probably planted with oaks in 1668. It is today's Breite Straße.

Under Frederick I , there was another redesign and expansion around 1695. The Broderieparterre was extended out into the Havel, and then a harbor basin for pleasure ships, the later Neptune basin, was created . Between 1698 and 1701 a double-barreled ramp was built for cars to drive on, which established the previously missing connection from the marble hall to the ground floor, which later became the so-called green staircase because of its lawn. During this time, a number of ambitious designs by various, competing artists were created for the pleasure garden and the cascade facility across from the Brauhausberg. These projects remained unfinished following the king's death in 1713.

The soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm I left in 1714, the parterres as a parade ground leveled, and rebuild the bitter oranges for stables for horses. The other parts of the garden were preserved and he laid out a kitchen and pleasure garden in the Marlygarten . His son Friedrich II designed the remaining southern parts of the garden from 1746 to 1751 at great financial expense (a total of 90,458 Reichstaler without the colonnades). The bank of the Havel was provided with massive walls and balustrades on which putti and vases stood. The harbor basin was also given a stone border, gold-plated vases all around and a gold-plated Neptune group in the middle . A replacement building for the orangery, which no longer exists today, was built in 1744. The bosket was adorned with treble layers and numerous sculptures made of marble and gilded lead, and the bitter orange trees stood in the largest bosket room. The former ground floor was still used by the garrison for exercise and parading. Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff gave the pleasure garden a transparent spatial closure to the city and the Havel by building two colonnades on both sides of the castle in 1745/46. Because of the groups of sculptures set up in them, they were called the Ringer and Fencing Colonnades.

The elaborate facilities of Frederick the Great could not be preserved in the long term. Around 1800 the first simplifications and landscaping were carried out by Johann August Eyserbeck , and poplars were planted at the Neptune basin. In 1819, further landscaping was carried out in the bosquet according to plans by Peter Joseph Lenné . The main avenues have been preserved.

The construction of the Potsdam-Magdeburg Railway in 1846 threatened to affect the pleasure garden. However, Friedrich Wilhelm IV finally gave up his resistance, and the railway was led along a low embankment on the southern edge of the garden, as a route across the Tornow was not affordable. In the Lustgarten opposite the Marstall, a statue of Karl Hilgers reminded of Friedrich Wilhelm I from 1885 onwards . It was a bronze copy of the original in the Berlin Hall of Fame , which is now in the garden of Hohenzollern Castle. The undamaged monument was dismantled after the Second World War and melted down as non-ferrous metal scrap together with other Potsdam bronze statues in 1950 by order of the Brandenburg state government . Presumably in 1886 the columnar poplars on the Neptune Basin were replaced by columnar oaks. After the construction of a new railway bridge over the Havel in 1903, the embankment was raised. Since then, the embankment has spatially sealed off the Lustgarten from the river. The connecting canal between the Havel and the Neptune Basin existed until it was filled, but there were problems with the water exchange. In this form, the pleasure garden remained almost unchanged until 1945.

Immediately after the Second World War, in addition to the removal of the monument, a sports stadium was built in the bosket, which destroyed a large area. In the years of the GDR , on the initiative of the SED, the establishment of a “new socialist city center” led to further radical changes. The city palace, which burned out in 1945, was blown up in 1960, the classicistic wrought-iron grating that closed off the pleasure garden to the west was removed and later melted down and the still-preserved Neptune basin and the little damaged Neptune group were filled in in favor of a planned memorial for Karl Liebknecht . The Interhotel (today Mercure Potsdam ), which was completed in 1969 in the former Broderieparterre, took on the role of dominant height in the cityscape in place of the previously blown up garrison church . A slightly damaged part of the wrestler's colonnades with the gable relief , capitals and putti of the palace was erected in 1970 in the rest of the pleasure garden at the newly built harbor directly adjacent. In the area of ​​the Neptune Basin, the "Karl-Liebknecht-Forum" garden was built from 1976 to 1983 with the sculpture Heart and Flame of the Revolution by Theo Balden and mosaics by Kurt-Hermann Kühn . According to the city of Potsdam, since then “the once stately pleasure garden has become a place for the people” and “visual art has advanced to become a means of communication for a new social idea”.

On the occasion of the Federal Horticultural Show 2001 , the Thälmann Stadium was removed and the pleasure garden redesigned based on the historical design. The wrestling colonnade and the Neptune basin were restored, whereby only a small part of the figures originally used for it could be found again. In addition, the monument ensemble of the Karl Liebknecht Forum found a new place. A town square and gardens were created for sporting events and recreation. On the banks of the Havel, there is also a completely renovated shipping pier with port building and quay, catering and service areas, which offer a starting point for numerous excursions to Havelland and Berlin.

The Weisse Flotte intends to build an angular building for a restaurant in the Lustgarten. This caused significant resentment among the Potsdam population and launched the citizens' initiative “Save the Lustgarten”, which is committed to the preservation of the Lustgarten.

A large part of the pleasure garden was specially paved for folk festivals, fairs and fairs and was therefore given light-colored concrete slabs as a base. Since then, the Lustgarten has established itself as the central event location between the banks of the Havel, the Potsdam Film Museum and the Nikolaikirche in the city of Potsdam.

gallery

  • Plan of the pleasure garden around 1700

  • Potsdam, view from Brauhausberg , painting by Johann Friedrich Meyer , 1772

  • View from the Lustgarten to the Garrison Church, before 1945

  • Monument to Friedrich Wilhelm I (melted down in 1950)

  • Wrestling colonnade between the city palace and the royal stables, before 1945

  • Fencing colonnade between the City Palace and the Havel, before 1945

  • Neptune basin in the pleasure garden

literature

Web links

Commons : Lustgarten Potsdam  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marco Zschieck: "Meadow of the People" remains the goal. Potsdam Latest News , August 23, 2019, accessed July 9, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Demolition of the “Mercure” remains the goal in the center of Potsdam. Märkische Allgemeine , November 12, 2019, accessed on July 9, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Clemens Alexander Wimmer: The Potsdamer Lustgarten. Berlin 2004, pp. 9-18.
  4. ↑ Wimmer 2004, pp. 19–29
  5. ↑ Wimmer 2004, pp. 30–49.
  6. ↑ Wimmer 2004, pp. 50–61.
  7. ↑ http://www.helmutcaspar.de/aktuelles19/blnpdm19/denka.htm
  8. ↑ Frank Bauer, Hartmut Knitter, Heinz Ruppert: Destroyed, forgotten, suppressed. Military buildings and military monuments in Potsdam. ES Mittler & Sohn, Berlin, Bonn, Herford 1993, p. 137, documents from official correspondence on the destruction of monuments 1945–1950, pp. 186–196.
  9. ↑ Wimmer 2004, pp. 62–70.
  10. ↑ Hans Berg: The lost center of Potsdam. Self-published, Berlin 1999, pp. 3/4 and 12.
  11. ^ Gerd Dietrich: Cultural history of the GDR . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-647-37087-3 , p. 1283.
  12. ^ Karl-Liebknecht-Forum, Kurt-Hermann Kühn, 1980 . potsdam.de , accessed on May 5, 2020
  13. ↑ Save the Lustgarten website of the citizens' initiative


Coordinates: 52 ° 23 '34 "  N , 13 ° 3' 35"  E