Marly Gardens

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Marlygarten with a view of the Friedenskirche

The Marlygarten is a garden area in the Sanssouci Park in Potsdam . It was laid out in 1715 as a kitchen garden for Friedrich Wilhelm I and named "Marly" by the king. When the royal family stayed, Crown Prince Friedrich, who later became Frederick the Great , is said to have chosen the Bornstedter ridge north of the garden, which was cleared at the time, as the location for his summer palace, Sanssouci .

After Friedrich Wilhelm I's death, the Marlygarten continued to be used as a kitchen garden. It was only given a different function with the construction of the Friedenskirche under Friedrich Wilhelm IV. In the 1840s it was transformed into a landscape garden by Peter Joseph Lenné and Gustav Meyer .

Since the Marly garden was included in the park, the former kitchen garden can be seen, "albeit indirectly, [as] the cornerstone of the gardens of Sanssouci". The Marly Garden stands as a single monument within the monument area Berlin-Potsdam cultural landscape conservation and heard as part of Sanssouci Park since 1990 to the world heritage of UNESCO .

location

Location of the Marly Gardens on the plan of the Frederician Park Sanssouci by FZ Saltzmann (1772)

The Marlygarten is located on the east side of the Sanssouci Park, southeast of the Frederician pleasure garden. A wall runs along the northern and southern borders. In the east it is bounded by the building ensemble of the Friedenskirche with the parish and school house as well as the Friedensteich. The Kavaliershaus on the east side of the ensemble is also jokingly referred to as Marly Castle .

In the west, the Villa Illaire and the garden administration building with their gardens are adjacent. Parallel to the southern boundary wall runs the avenue "Am Grünen lattice", which leads from the entrance of the park Sanssouci at the green lattice after a bend to the north between the garden treasury and the house of the garden administration to the big fountain in front of Sanssouci Palace.

Naming

Friedrich Wilhelm I's father, Friedrich I , had a dairy built near Oranienburg. The dairy farm in the French castle Marly-le-Roi of Louis XIV , which had magnificent gardens and parks, served as a model. With the ironic term "my Marly" for the Potsdam kitchen garden, which also served as a simple pleasure garden, Friedrich Wilhelm I wanted to express his modesty and distance himself from his grandiose father.

After the Friedenskirche was built and the garden was redesigned in the 1840s, the name of Friedensgarten became a common name for the Marlygarten to the west of the church . When King Friedrich Wilhelm IV heard of this , he officially ordered the garden to continue to be called Marlygarten , in order to remember the modesty of his ancestor Friedrich Wilhelm I, who preferred the simple kitchen garden to a magnificent show garden.

history

Installation by Friedrich Wilhelm I.

Remains of the shooting wall (bullet trap) of the shooting range in the Marlygarten in the cloister of the Friedenskirche

Shortly after taking office in 1713, Friedrich Wilhelm I had the previous pleasure garden at the Potsdam City Palace converted into a parade ground. In 1715, he had the Marlygarten laid out outside the city, northwest of the Brandenburg Gate , on an area that had previously been used as a garden by the citizens of Potsdam. This should serve him as a simple pleasure garden, not too expensive in terms of maintenance, but above all as a kitchen garden to supply the farm's kitchen with fruits and vegetables. Surplus harvests were sold in nearby Berlin to “distinguished military and civil earners”, for whom there was an obligation to purchase, at prices set by the king. Friedrich Wilhelm I appointed the court gardener Franz Wilhelm Baumann to take care of the kitchen garden in 1720 and, after his death in 1731, the court gardener Johann Heinrich Müller.

A main path lined with fruit trees ran along the central axis of the garden area, which comprised around 20 acres, from which side paths branched off. Vegetables were planted on the beds in between. The intersections of the paths were decorated with sandstone statues depicting children and the seasons. At the garden entrance on the west side stood a simple, grottled pleasure house. The house had a half-timbered back building with two square towers. The room on the ground floor served as a shooting range and the main path leading from west to east as a shooting range. On the east side of the garden, at the point of the well source in the cloister of the Church of Peace, which was built later, there was therefore a so-called catch wall to which the shooting targets were attached. Parts of this wall are still preserved today. In the garden there was also a bowling alley, a greenhouse for growing melons and an orangery house in place of the bitter orange house at the city palace that had been converted into a stables . The orange trees wintering here later formed the basis of the orange trees of Frederick the Great.

From the memoirs of the daughter of Friedrich Wilhelm I, Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709–1758), who later became Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, it is known that the king and his entire family take a walk every day in the summer months at around 3 p.m. Marly undertook and stayed there until evening. The princess described these afternoons in her notes as boring and found the summer heat to be very uncomfortable, as there were no shady trees in the garden that could have hindered the growth of the vegetables grown there. Contrary to the royal family's custom not to dine in the evening, the king often had dinner served on visits to Marly and often even prepared the salad himself.

A picture of the pleasure house does not exist. On days when military parades took place, however, King Friedrich Wilhelm I used to have lunch in the pleasure house with his family and the officers of his regiment. From the large number of people who could apparently be entertained here, it can be concluded that the house must have been relatively large. The king also held official celebrations here on special occasions. In 1728, in honor of a visit by August the Strong, a shooting competition took place in the Marlygarten, at which a live bear disguised as a buffoon was awarded as a prize. The marriage of Princess Friederike Luise of Prussia to the Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach in May 1729 was also celebrated in the Marlygarten with a banquet and a shooting competition.

The Marlygarten after the death of Friedrich Wilhelm I.

Marlygarten, detail from the plan of the Frederician Park Sanssouci (1772)

After the death of Friedrich Wilhelm I in 1740, the Marlygarten was no longer used as a pleasure garden, but the court gardener Müller continued to cultivate it as a kitchen garden. As early as 1744, Frederick the Great had the pleasure house torn down in order to provide a wide view of the vineyard terraces and Sanssouci Palace from the south. The demolition material was used in the deer garden in 1746 for the construction of the pheasant master's house. The shooting range stopped and served as living space for gardener's boys. In place of the pleasure house, Friedrich II had Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff build two identical houses flanking the axis of the road to the castle in 1752/53, preferably for court gardeners.

In 1748 the kitchen garden was subordinated to the court gardener Johann Samuel Sello . The fruit trees that had grown up in the meantime gave so much shade that the harvest of vegetables increasingly waned. For the Frühtreiberei of fruits and vegetables in Marly Garden, a 690 foot long were Talutmauer with 83 windows for the culture of apricots, peaches and grapes, two beans houses, a large greenhouse of 235 feet in length for Apfikosen, peaches and plums as well as several Mistbeetkästen to grow Vegetables and culinary herbs laid out.

When Johann Samuel Sello died in April 1787, his son Carl Sello took over the position of court gardener. In the harsh winter of 1788/89, most of the fruit trees in the Marlygarten, which were replaced by new plantings, probably showed high losses due to the depleted soil. The garden and its equipment were showing their age, which made extensive renovation necessary from 1791. In 1795 another peach greenhouse was built and the old, now damaged, greenhouse was repaired, all trellis trees were renewed and a wall was built on the south side of the garden and vines and trellis fruit were planted in front of it. After the death of the court gardener Sello in 1796, Joachim Heinrich Voss took over his office in the Marlygarten.

When Oberhofbaurat Johann Gottlob Schulze moved into the eastern Hofgärtnerhaus in 1791, a garden and a small greenhouse were also set up there for private use, as one expected practical horticultural knowledge from an Oberhofbaurat, who, as garden director, was in charge of the court gardeners, in order to make his decisions were respected by the court gardeners. Since that time, the building, which his successors also used as an official residence, has been called the garden management building. After Schulze's retirement in 1828, Peter Joseph Lenné moved into the rooms, who had lived in the building on the west side, the garden ticket office, since 1817.

Redesign by Peter Joseph Lenné

Plan of the Marly Gardens, executed according to the specifications of PJ Lenné (1846)
Flora statue on the flora hill
Boy with a bird's nest , Eduard Mayer, 1838
Girl with parrot
Naiad with a bowl of water in a niche in the northern enclosure wall

After his accession to the throne in 1840, Friedrich Wilhelm IV chose Sanssouci Palace as his residence. This created the desire to build a house of worship nearby. The king selected the east side of the Marly Gardens as the location and the Friedenskirche was built between 1845 and 1848 . Since the Marlygarten formed the entrance to the church from the direction of Sanssouci, it should no longer be used as a kitchen garden. The garden architect Peter Joseph Lenné was therefore commissioned to transform the area into a landscape garden. To the east of the church, on the site of a former hop garden, another garden area was created with the peace garden and the peace pond dug there. The church with the outbuildings separates these two gardens from each other, even if it seems as if it is the center of an overall complex.

Although the redesigned Marlygarten is not infrequently viewed as the work of Lenné, it is unclear what role the court gardener and garden architect Gustav Meyer, who was in office from 1859 to 1870, had in the planning. What is certain is that Meyer, who was working as technical director for Lenné at the time, drew several garden plans and brought in his own design ideas. The Marlygarten was designed as a landscaped garden in the style of a pleasure ground with groups of trees and trees and flower beds. Under Gustav Meyer's direction, the earthworks began in the summer of 1846 and ended in early 1847.

The central central axis of the garden forms a slight depression laid out as a meadow, with gentle elevations on its sides. The material for the embankments came from the excavation of the peace pond. All paths in the garden are gently curved and face the Friedenskirche. Planting followed in spring 1847. The large trees, about forty percent of them elms , came from the nearby Charlottenhof Park . Despite the enclosure of the facility, it was possible to create distant views in various places.

The main entrance in the west, behind the garden administration building, remained. From the entrance area the view goes over the elongated meadow valley to the Friedenskirche opposite. When going to the church, however, the royal couple used the narrow Christ gate at the eastern end of the north-facing garden wall. The gate is adorned with a gilded lava panel with the head of Christ, created by August von Kloeber in 1852 . In this area, dense vegetation obscures the view of the Marly Gardens. A bronze polyhymnia was only installed here in 1928. It is a replica of a figure by Christian Daniel Rauch created by Emil Alexander Hopfgarten in 1832 . To the west of the Christ Gate, a labyrinth-like section of path leads into an arcade running from north to south, which already begins in the Frederician pleasure garden and is interrupted by the boundary wall.

The central point of the Marlygarten is the so-called flora hill, on which a tea place with a semicircular bench was created. Here on the edge of a fan-shaped flower border stands a marble statue of flora, which the sculptor Emil Wolff created before 1850. The Flora Hill is said to have been Queen Elisabeth's favorite place , because from here you had a beautiful view of an Alpinum to the south of the Flora statue, which reminded the Queen of her home country Bavaria. Other works of art in the Marly Gardens mainly show scenes with children's figures. In the south-eastern corner of the garden, in a narrow "Alpine valley", a marble boy with a bird's nest sits on a pedestal that Eduard Mayer made in 1838. In the southwest corner of the garden, the bronze cast of the girl fetching water from the Lauchhammer art foundry decorates the goldfish pond there. The original from the 1840s by Ludwig Wilhelm Wichmann was lost, as was the fishing boy attributed to the sculptor Wichmann , for which a replica is also planned. A galvanoplastic replica of a boy with a bowl from 1845, which Christian Daniel Rauch designed, is also missing .

In the south-western garden area there is a blue and white striped column made of fluted glass tubes designed by Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse and executed by Count Schaffgotsch's Silesian Josephinen glassworks in 1854. The gilded Corinthian capital crowns the gilded zinc cast sculpture Girl with Parrot, designed by Heinrich Berges and executed by Siméon Pierre Devaranne . The column was a gift from Friedrich Wilhelm IV to his wife Elisabeth. The color of the glass tubes indicates the queen's Bavarian origins. The column and plastic fell from their base shortly after World War II. The broken column was reconstructed “from all available fragments”, the figure was restored and inaugurated in May 2002 together with the southern part of the Marly Gardens, which had been restored according to historical preservation standards. A second version of this column can be found in the Rosarium on Rose Island in Lake Starnberg. It was a gift from Friedrich Wilhelm IV to the Bavarian royal couple Maximilian II and Marie of Prussia (1825–1889), to whom the Prussian royal couple was related. He gave a third structurally identical pillar to his sister Charlotte , Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, who had it set up on an island in Kolonistskiy Park (Колонистский парк) in Peterhof .

A brick, semicircular niche in the northern boundary wall was originally open and only provided with a gilded wire mesh. This enabled a view into the Frederician pleasure garden. The niche was adorned with a marble naiade with a water-donating bowl by the sculptor Franz Woltreck from 1846. The water feature, mainly designed by Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse, was destroyed at the end of the Second World War in 1945 in one of the few bomb hits in Sanssouci Park.

The Marlygarten was initially freely accessible to the population. After a statue was damaged by vandalism, Friedrich Wilhelm IV ordered the park to be closed to the public on September 9, 1850. From this point on, access was only permitted during the service times, or with the permission of the General Garden Directorate and accompanied.

As part of the redesign of the garden, Friedrich Wilhelm IV wanted the buildings adjoining to the west to be beautified. The garden management got a tower extension. The Hofgärtnerhaus, previously inhabited by Joachim Heinrich Voss (1764–1843), was converted into an Italian-style villa by Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse and Ferdinand von Arnim in the years 1843 to 1846 according to plans by Ludwig Persius and was carried out by Cabinet Councilor Ernst Emil Illaire (1797–1866 ) based. The arbor and stibadium led directly to the Marlygarten, which was separated from the house garden of the building, which has since been known as Villa Illaire , only by an artificial mound.

The Marly Gardens from the end of the 19th century until today

Plan drawing of the Marly Gardens by Theodor II. Nietner (1883)

After the construction by Lenné and Meyer, only minor changes were made to the Marlygarten; Rather, efforts were made to maintain the garden through horticultural care according to Lenné's design. The court gardeners responsible were Eduard II. Nietner from 1871 to 1880 , then Hermann Walter (1837–1898) until 1884 , represented by Gustav II. Adolph Fintelmann and until 1909 Albert Rosenberg (1841–1914). Subsequently, the Marly Gardens was assigned to the court gardener of the terrace area Friedrich Kunert (1863-1948).

In the year of the death of Emperor Friedrich III. In 1888 Julius Carl Raschdorff was commissioned to build a mausoleum on the north side of the atrium belonging to the Friedenskirche building ensemble . Because of the construction work carried out from 1888 to 1889, five old plane trees had to give way.

After the First World War and the end of the monarchy, the Prussian palaces as well as the gardens and parks were subordinated to the Prussian Crown Estate, which was subordinate to the Prussian Ministry of Finance in 1919 . On April 1, 1927, it became the administration of the State Palaces and Gardens under the direction of Paul Huebner. The garden inspectors Georg Potente and Friedrich Kunert were appointed garden directors.

In the winter of 1927/1928 Potente had several overaged trees removed, which had become too dense in the meantime, in order to give the garden the spatial effect Lenné had planned, and replaced several elms affected by Dutch elm disease with beeches . The Alpinum was planted with perennials covering the ground, the fan-shaped bed on the Flora hill was restored in 1931 and the west-facing entrance got a new wooden gate in 1932. In 1938 Potente had the garden of Villa Illaire expanded and a strip separated from the Marly garden. The pond in the south-western corner of the garden was also given a simplified shape.

Harri Günther (* 1928), who was in office from 1959 to 1992, reworked the trees in 1973 and replaced the declining stock of elms with linden trees . In 1983, as it was under Potente 1931, the fan bed on the Flora Hill was renewed. His successor in office, gardening director Michael Seiler , had the route and the seat on the flora hill restored in 1994 after excavation findings, in 1995 the narrow, overgrown footpaths at the edge of the garden were exposed and ornamental trees were planted according to historical plans.

reception

The Marlygarten is often rated as Lenné's most successful garden planning work due to the harmony of the layout and the impressive vantage points despite its limitations.

The Hessian court garden director Wilhelm Hentze visited the Marlygarten in 1858 on a trip about which he published a report:

“Back at home, Mr. L [enné] in his favorite spot, the so-called Marly or Friedensgarten near the Friedenskirche (newly built). One of Lenné's latest creations, a true masterpiece of landscape gardening, the most perfect thing I have seen in this way on my trip. The terrain in this garden, which is said to have been quite level earlier, is so gracefully moved and the plantings are so tastefully done that one feels extremely drawn to admiration. In this garden there is a gentle harmony, an idillic calm and a quiet peace, so that the name »Peace Garden« seems quite appropriate. "

- Wilhelm Hentze, Hessian court garden director, 1858

Hermann Jäger saw in it the ideal of a small landscape garden or park garden, which can be implemented with limited resources and effort.

The writer Theodor Fontane , who was in Potsdam in 1881, took several walks through the Marlygarten and was so impressed by it that he later mentioned it in the first line of a poem:

Coming from Marly and the Friedenskirche,
Hin am Bassin (there was no
splashing jet ) I went up the stairs; the stars blinked, flashed,
And on the steps of the terrace
trees and shrubs cast their thin shadows,
transparent ones, like shadows only from shadows.
[...]
- Theodor Fontane: On the stairs of Sanssouci, 1885

literature

  • Karl Ludwig Haeberlin: Sanssouci, Potsdam and the surrounding area: with special regard to the reign of His Majesty, Friedrich Wilhelm IV., King of Prussia. With the utmost approval with the official participation of Messrs Lenné, General Director of the Royal Gardens and Hesse, Royal Court-Baurath. Published by Ferdinand Riegel, Berlin and Potsdam 1855.
  • Louis Schneider: XVIII. The territories of Sanssouci. The hop garden - the dairy - the kitchen garden. - III. The Marly kitchen garden. In: Communications from the Association for the History of Potsdam. Volume 1, Gropius'sche Buch- und Kunsthandlung, Potsdam 1864.
  • Peter Mottner, Martin Mach (ed.): Zinc casting. Conservation of monuments made of zinc. Joint project of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation and the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg. Workbooks of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation, Volume 98, 1999.

Web links

Commons : Marlygarten (Sanssouci)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Michael Seiler: The Marly Gardens […]. In: Nothing thrives without care. The Potsdam park landscape and its gardeners . Potsdam 2001, p. 140.
  2. ^ Statute for the protection of the cultural landscape of Berlin and Potsdam, according to the entry in the UNESCO World Heritage List of January 1, 1991, Potsdam administrative area, by October 30, 1996, Annex 3.
  3. L. Schneider: XVIII. The territories of Sanssouci. [...] - III. The kitchen garden Marly, p. 10.
  4. L. Schneider: XVIII. The territories of Sanssouci. [...] - III. The kitchen garden Marly, p. 22 f.
  5. a b L. Schneider: XVIII. The territories of Sanssouci. [...] - III. The Marly Kitchen Garden, p. 17.
  6. Adelheid Schendel, Jerzy Prrzytański: The New Chambers in Sanssouci Park. Potsdam-Sanssouci 1987, p. 7
  7. ^ Karl Ludwig Haeberlin: Sanssouci, Potsdam and the surrounding area: [...], 1855, p. 17.
  8. D. Fassmann: life and deeds of the most noble and powerful king of Prussia Friederici Wilhelmi: bite on the present time sincerely described. Volume 1, Hamburg and Breslau 1735, p. 864 f.
  9. L. Schneider: XVIII. The territories of Sanssouci. [...] - III. The Marly Kitchen Garden, p. 12.
  10. L. Schneider: XVIII. The territories of Sanssouci. [...] - III. The Marly Kitchen Garden, p. 16.
  11. After a renovation in 1804, the court gardener Johann Zacharias Saltzmann used the Fasanenmeisterhaus as an official residence. After another renovation in 1841/42 by Ludwig Persius , court gardener Hermann Sello moved into it . In 1910 the house was demolished for the construction of the anniversary terrace on Maulbeerallee, south of the Orangery Palace. See SPSG: Prussian Green. Court gardener in Brandenburg-Prussia . Potsdam 2004, p. 217f.
  12. a b L. Schneider: XVIII. The territories of Sanssouci. [...] - III. The Marly Kitchen Garden, p. 18.
  13. L. Schneider: XVIII. The territories of Sanssouci. [...] - III. The Marly Kitchen Garden, p. 19.
  14. JA Weiß: A contribution to clarify the relationship between Lenné and Meyer. In: Journal of Horticulture and Garden Art. Organ of the Association of German Garden Artists. 13th year, Neudamm 1895, p. 109 f.
  15. a b Michael Seiler. In: SPSG: Nothing thrives without care , p. 141.
  16. L. Schneider: XVIII. The territories of Sanssouci. [...] - III. The kitchen garden Marly, p. 21.
  17. D. Donecker: The Marlygarten as the location of the zinc cast sculpture "Girl with a Parrot". In: P. Mottner, M. Mach (Ed.): Zinkguß. [...], 1999.
  18. ^ SPSG: Buildings and sculptures in Park Sanssouci . Potsdam 2002, p. 63.
  19. Saskia Hüneke: White-blue glass column . In: Andreas Kitschke: Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse (1795–1876). Court architect under three Prussian kings . Munich / Berlin 2007, p. 327.
  20. D. Donecker: Restoration of the zinc cast sculpture "Girl with a Parrot". In: P. Mottner, M. Mach (Ed.): Zinkguß. [...], 1999.
  21. Yearbook of the SPSG, 4, 2001/2002, p. 252.
  22. Otto Krätz: On the shine of bygone days - The story of a statue on Starnberg's Rose Island. In: Culture & Technology. Magazine of the Deutsches Museum, 4/2010, pp. 36–41.
  23. ^ Andreas Kitschke: Ludwig Ferdinand Hesse (1795–1876). Court architect under three Prussian kings . Munich / Berlin 2007, p. 326f.
  24. L. Schneider: XVIII. The territories of Sanssouci. [...] - III. The Marly Kitchen Garden, p. 22.
  25. L. Schneider: XVIII. The territories of Sanssouci. [...] - III. The kitchen garden Marly, p. 24.
  26. a b Michael Seiler. In: Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation and State Archaeological Museum and Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): Peter Joseph Lenné. Parks and gardens in the state of Brandenburg . Worms 2005, p. 222.
  27. a b Jörg Wacker: Georg Potente (1875–1945) - The development from garden designer to garden monument keeper between 1902 and 1938 in Potsdam-Sanssouci. Dissertation at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Potsdam, 2003, p. 93 ff.
  28. Quoted from Michael Seiler: The gardens of Potsdam and Berlin in 1858 - based on a travel report by the Hessian court garden director Wilhelm Hentze. In: Yearbook 6 of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2004, p. 46.
  29. Herrmann Jäger: The German Gardens of the Modern Age. In: Garden art and gardens otherwise and now: Handbook for gardeners, architects and enthusiasts. P. Parey, 1888, p. 371.
  30. ^ Regina Dieterle (Eds.): Theodor Fontane and Martha Fontane. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2002, p. 671.

Coordinates: 52 ° 24 ′ 3 ″  N , 13 ° 2 ′ 27.8 ″  E