Max Bertram

Max Richard Eduard Bertram (born July 1, 1849 in Potsdam , † June 9, 1914 in Dresden ) was the royal Saxon horticultural director and horticultural teacher.

As a freelance horticultural artist and commissioned by the Saxon royal family, Max Bertram realized numerous horticultural facilities, the majority (far more than 200) of them in Saxony . In doing so, he always followed the design principles of the Lenné-Meyer school and tried to convey these to future generations. Bertram recognized the special value of urban open spaces as the “green lungs” of expanding industrial cities at an early stage. He called for parks to be made accessible to all sections of the population as far as possible. In his view, gardens were not a luxury, but an important requirement for the fast-growing cities in the industrial age . In order to enforce this claim at the official level, he committed himself to the employment and better pay of gardening officials and gardeners in the city administrations of Germany and demanded their participation in urban planning.

Live and act

At the age of 17, Bertram began a two-year gardening apprenticeship in the royal Prussian court gardening center Charlottenhof in Sanssouci with the court gardener Johann Friedrich Morsch. In 1868 he switched to the Royal Gardening School at the Wildlife Park near Potsdam . Here, under the influence of Gustav Meyer, he acquired the design style characteristic of his work. Bertram took up his first position in 1870 as assistant to Hermann Sigismund Neumann , the court gardener at Albrechtsberg Castle in Dresden. Here Bertram got the opportunity to test his skills in designing private gardens. Neumann then found him a job as a technical officer in the Blasewitz forest park he had designed , where he worked until 1873.

During this time Bertram married his fiancée Johanna, geb. Schlössing (1851-1923). The son and later horticultural engineer Eduard HM Bertram (1879–1942) emerged from this relationship.

In 1880, after Neumann's death, Bertram took overall responsibility for the Blasewitz forest park. 3 years later he founded the Bureau for Garden Art at today's Schillerplatz in Dresden-Blasewitz , where he created designs for more than 200 projects in Saxony until his son Eduard took over the business in 1912. His range of services included planning for private gardens in Dresden (such as the Villa Rothermundt in Blasewitz or that of Gottlieb Traugott Bienert in Dresden-Plauen ), public contracts (such as the promenade facilities in Bad Schandau ; gardens and squares between the extensive military buildings in Dresden's Albertstadt ; Burial sites such as the New Annenfriedhof in Dresden- Löbtau or the Nikolaifriedhof in Pirna ) and, last but not least, as director of the First , Second and Third International Horticultural Exhibition in Dresden, Bertram was responsible for both the design planning and the plant management.

The Neue Annenfriedhof, designed as a regular park according to plans by Bertram, was the largest uniformly designed cemetery in Germany and the largest cemetery in Dresden at its inauguration on June 23, 1875 with 14.3 hectares . Here, too, Bertram attached great importance to the health-promoting effect of the park cemetery by planting numerous air-purifying trees and shrubs.

In 1892 Bertram was appointed to the artistic advisory council of the Saxon King Albert and as such had to manage the private royal court gardens of Sibyllenort (Polish: Szczodre) and Dresden-Strehlen . Also as a horticultural adviser to other nobles, e.g. He was asked for, for example, by the Count of Hochberg, the Duke of Pless, the Landgrave of Hesse or the Prince of Hohenlohe-Rothenburg. In 1887 Bertram co-founded the Association of German Garden Artists .

One of Bertram's major projects at this time was the creation of the large palace gardens of Schönfeld Palace and Manor in the style of an English landscape garden . Maximilian Dathe von Burgk received the castle as a wedding present from his father in 1882 . The new owner had the castle expanded from 1882 to 1884 and rebuilt in the neo-renaissance style under the direction of the architect Gotthilf Ludwig Möckel . From 1889 to 1893, the 6.4 hectare park was laid out by Bertram. He succeeded in designing the unfavorably cut area in a varied way, entirely in keeping with the spirit and ideal of the middle-class romantic understanding of nature at the time. A large pond in the east was divided into three separate ones (castle pond, middle pond and small pond). These were connected to one another by a watercourse and fed from the sheep's pond to the north. Through the change, Bertam created a varied miniature landscape and was able to make the narrow eastern part of the park usable. The entire area was covered with a close-knit network of curved, intersecting paths that circled the ponds and individual groups of plants. The watercourses could be crossed in some places by small bridges. The planting density was consciously increased at the crossroads and the paths were laid out on possible lines of sight and optical effects. The planting was determined by a variety of deciduous and coniferous trees, which were often planted in groups of several species. Even today, the north area of ​​the park is determined by the rhododendron plantings of Bertram's planning. Furthermore, foreign plants from all over the world were increasingly imported and acclimatized. In the castle courtyard, the horticultural architect laid out a roundabout , which was planted with a spruce tree in the middle and with changing flowers on the edges. In 1910 the complex was rejuvenated by garden designer Willy Lange (1864–1941), which means that Bertram's handwriting is no longer evident today.

In 1891, Bertram designed the park for the baroque palace Wachau . In 2018, the park was redeveloped in such a way that the original plant and path plans were visible again.

Between 1883 and 1892, Bertram designed and executed the approximately two hectare garden of a factory owner's villa at 10 Sebnitzer Burggäßchen. The design from Bertram's draft plan can still be read in large areas. In 2017 the villa and the garden were renovated. For this, some trees were felled on the slope to restore the original line of sight to the city.

Max Bertram's grave in the Johannisfriedhof in Dresden

In 1892 Bertram was a co-founder of the horticultural school of the Horticultural Association for the Kingdom of Saxony in Dresden, the direction of which he held from 1893 to 1907 as a part-time director. From 1892 to 1914, he taught the subjects of freehand, linear and plan drawing, landscape gardening, field fairs , garden technology and garden art . The school was dedicated to the theoretical training of young horticultural artists.

Another exemplary project for his work in private gardens was the park design that Bertram undertook from 1897 to 1898 for the villa of the art collector Adolf Rothermundt in Dresden- Blasewitz . A park-like villa garden with a pavilion was created here, including groups of trees from the adjacent Blasewitz forest park .

The Augustenau Castle in Herleshausen should also be mentioned . Bertram laid out the palace gardens there around 1906. The park of Rittergut Schilbach near Schöneck / Vogtl. was designed and laid out in 1913 by Bertram on behalf of the textile manufacturer and manor owner Carl Siems from Plaue near Flöha . The entire area was divided into several sections: forest areas, pond area and park area.

Bertram's late work and the culmination of his creativity is the castle park in Thürmsdorf at the foot of the Königstein Fortress . Bertram created this park on behalf of Baron Erich Moritz von Biedermann and completed it in 1912.

On June 9, 1914, Bertram died of a stroke. He is buried in the Tolkewitz Johannisfriedhof , his grave has the number 5 L (W).

Honors

In recognition of his services, Bertram received several awards. So in 1893 the honorary title of Royal Saxon Horticultural Director , in addition, the Order of the Crown, fourth class , from the Prussian King Wilhelm II. In Blasewitz in 1895 .

For the planning carried out as part of the Second International Horticultural Exhibition in Dresden, he was awarded the First Class Knight's Cross of the Saxon Order of Albrecht and the fourth class of the Royal Bavarian Order of Merit from St. Michael in 1896 .

literature

• Max Bertram, Friedrich Bouché : Horticultural planning chamber , Berlin 1892.
• Max Bertram: The technique of garden art: a guide for horticulturalists and for use in teaching in gardening schools in addition to G. Meyer's textbook of beautiful garden art , Berlin 1902.
• Max Bertram: Horticultural Plan Drawing: Guide for teaching at higher gardening schools and horticultural schools and for self-teaching for landscape gardeners , Berlin 1909.

Web links

• Roman Hanisch: Bertram, Max Richard Eduard . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Birgit Grimm: Silence in the tourist storm . In: Saxon newspaper . August 4, 2020 ( online for a fee [accessed on August 9, 2020]).
2. ↑ New Annenfriedhof. In: dresdner-stadtteile.de. Retrieved June 4, 2014 . 
3. ↑ Existing in 10561 manorial estate Schönfeld near Großenhain. Main State Archive Dresden , accessed on December 16, 2015 . 
4. ^ Thomas Jacob: Design elements - cultural landscape, landscape park. In: pictokon.net. Retrieved on June 4, 2014 (with information on Schönfeld Castle). 
5. ↑ Schönfelder Traumschloss: Tour »Castle Park. In: schloss-schoenfeld.de. Retrieved June 4, 2014 . 
6. ↑ Kathrin Krüger: In the footsteps of Max Bertram . In: Saxon newspaper . May 29, 1999 ( PDF; 16 kB ( Memento from December 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive )). In the footsteps of Max Bertram ( Memento of the original dated December 24, 2012 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.  
7. ↑ Thomas Drendel: Wachau Palace Park is being rebuilt . In: Saxon newspaper . January 6, 2018 ( online [accessed January 9, 2018]).
8. ↑ Anja Weber: View of Sebnitz is free again . In: Saxon newspaper . December 19, 2017 ( online [accessed December 20, 2017]).
9. ↑ Andrea Pophanken, Felix Billeter: The Modern Age and Its Collectors: French Art in German Private Ownership from the Empire to the Weimar Republic. Oldenbourg Akademieverlag, Berlin, 2001, ISBN 3-05-003546-3 .
10. ↑ Impressions of the seasons. www.schlossaugustenau.com, accessed on May 18, 2019 . 
11. ↑ Rittergut Schilbach - Landscape Park. In: rittergut-schilbach.de. Retrieved June 4, 2014 . 
12. ^ Johannisfriedhof. In: dresdner-stadtteile.de. Retrieved June 4, 2014 .