Orangery Gotha
The Gotha Orangery is a late-baroque garden belonging to the Schloss Friedenstein park in Gotha , Thuringia . It was created in the 18th century by order of Duke Friedrich III. from Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg with the aim of collecting, growing and presenting exotic plants. It is not only the largest orangery in Thuringia, but also one of the largest such facilities in German-speaking countries.
history
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18th century
As early as 1700, Duke Friedrich II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1676–1732) had the so-called Ordonnanzgarten u. To the east below the fortifications of Schloss Friedenstein. a. with a greenhouse that housed the ducal collection of orangery plants.
On behalf of his successor, Duke Friedrich III. von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg (1699–1772), and his wife Luise Dorothée (1710–1767), the ordinance garden was expanded into a more extensive orangery by the master builder Johann Erhard Straßburger (1675–1754) . In order to accommodate the growing ducal collection of exotic plants, in 1747 the Weimar regional supervisor Gottfried Heinrich Krohne (1703–1756) was commissioned to completely redesign the garden into an orangery based on the French model.
Krohne designed a uniform, symmetrical overall complex in tea-shape with two large cold houses and adjacent greenhouses on the north and south sides. He aligned the ensemble with the Friedrichsthal Palace, which was built between 1708 and 1711, in such a way that the orangery buildings look like an extension of the side wings of the palace and form an architecturally appealing connection to the Friedenstein Palace above.
On the south side of the new orangery garden, the laurel house called the cold house and the adjoining greenhouse were built by 1751 . The laurel house shows stylistic elements of the beginning Rococo on the outside , the roof shape (as with the greenhouse) is based on the Chinese pagoda style. In the middle hall of the Laurel House, Pietro Augustini and Johann Michael Güldner stuccoed the ceiling according to Krohne's designs.
After Krohne fell out of favor in 1751 due to intrigues with the duke and had to leave the court, the following year his former pupil, the building inspector Johann David Weidner (1721–1784), was given the supervision of Gothic building. Two years later, he was appointed Duke of Gotha country master builder, in 1756 Duke Friedrich III. the order to begin “after the Krohne crack and attack, the second orange house”. However, the outbreak of the Seven Years' War initially prevented the execution of the work, which was only continued in 1758/59 with the construction of the northern greenhouse. But only in 1767 - twenty years after the start of construction of the entire plant - Weidner was based on the plans of his predecessor Krohne last building, the Orange House to finish said second cold house on the north side.
Under Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (1745–1804) the last work on the orangery was completed in 1774. Since the taste of the garden had meanwhile changed in the direction of the natural-looking landscape garden based on the English model, Krohne's original designs for the gardens were not implemented, only simple lawn parterres were created around which the potted plants were set up. As early as 1784, the Gotha Orangery Garden with its extensive collection of exotic plants had a reputation for being one of the most outstanding of its kind in Germany. This is also proven by an "Inventarium" created in September 1781 - it records 608 orange trees and 282 lemon trees for the complex , including grapefruit , bitter oranges , oranges and lemon trees . Furthermore, 300 laurel trees were recorded - most of which were found trimmed in the form of spheres, pyramids and other art forms.
19th and 20th centuries
From the 1880s, the focus of the orangery's presentation shifted from classic orangery plants to exotic plants. As a result, the once significant population of orangery plants, which had grown over 150 years, continuously declined until it had shrunk to an insignificant remainder at the turn of the 20th century. Even before the First World War, the use of the facility as an orangery was finally given up and the buildings were available for other purposes.
Large exhibitions such as the “German War Exhibition for Thuringia” in 1916 and the “German Rose Show” in 1930 attracted over 100,000 visitors to the Gotha Orangery, which was opened on April 1, 1938 as part of a donation from the private collection of Carl Edward von Sachsen-Coburg and Gotha (1884–1954), the last Duke of Gotha, passed to the city.
During the bombing raid on Gotha on February 24, 1944, the southern orangery buildings and the greenhouses behind them were damaged and partially destroyed. The greenhouse roof in particular suffered severe damage.
In 1950 the city library (from 1953 Heinrich Heine Library) moved into the northern orangery building, the orange house . In 1955 the southern greenhouse (the oldest building in the entire complex), which was badly damaged in the war, was demolished. The already planned complete rebuilding did not take place. By 1960 the neighboring Lorbeerhaus was converted into the HO “Orangery Café” with a night bar. In 1963, a coffee garden with a terrace was created behind the building in place of the glass greenhouses destroyed in the war.
On December 31, 1986, the “Orangery Café” was closed for structural reasons and became increasingly dilapidated. Hope for a renovation and new use arose when the Gotha Orangery was discussed as a possible location for the planned first Thuringian casino between 1994 and 2001. In 1995, as part of a comprehensive renovation of the gardens, the lawns and borders were returned to the design status that existed between 1900 and 1931. Since then, the number of potted plants has been gradually rebuilt.
21st century
In 2002 the orangery served as the backdrop for some scenes from the historic film Vive la joie! (Long live joy!) - Baroque festival at Gothaer Hof by Gotha-based hobby film producers Kai Kretzschmar and Andreas M. Cramer. The film describes a day at the court of Duke Friedrich III. and his wife Luise Dorothée von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg , the duke couple who once commissioned the construction of the orangery. The film music comes from the composer Georg Anton Benda (1722–1795), under Duke Friedrich III. Kapellmeister at the Gothaer Hof.
In addition to Friedenstein Castle , the orangery has also been the venue for the Gotha Baroque Festival, which takes place every year on the last weekend in August, since 2002 .
In 2004 the orangery became the property of the Thuringian Palaces and Gardens Foundation . Since then, it has endeavored to comprehensively renovate the baroque garden ensemble and to raise it again to the rank of one of the great orangeries in Germany. In the winter of 2005/06, for the first time in over 50 years, the northern greenhouse was used again to overwinter the potted plants in the orangery.
In May 2006, Gothaer won 500,000 euros from the German Foundation for Monument Protection in the MDR television program Ein Schloss will win through a telephone vote for the urgently needed renovation of the southern orangery building, the Lorbeerhaus, which had been vacant since 1985 and was estimated at around 2 million euros . In June 2006, the non-profit association Orangerie-Freunde Gotha e. V. founded. In April 2007, under the motto "Lust for Orange!", The fundraising association's fundraising campaign for the renovation of the laurel house , which continues to this day , is centered around the mascot Sina the orange .
The preparatory work on the interior of the laurel house began in summer 2007 , and the former coffee garden behind the building was cleared in autumn. In November 2008 the first phase of the renovation was completed and the building was returned to its original purpose as a cold house for wintering the orangery plants. For around 1.9 million euros, u. a. the roof and the facade renovated and the west wing and the west pavilion renewed and redesigned. In January 2011, the renovation work began in the central pavilion of the building, which was largely completed by mid-2014 and the building should be usable for events.
Since 2008, on the third weekend in Advent, the two-day orangery Christmas market has been taking place behind the laurel house , on the site of the former coffee garden, run by the Orangerie-Freunde Gotha e. V. is aligned.
In March 2014, the Gotha City Library moved from the northern orangery building, the Orange House , to the new building of the neighboring Winter Palace and the adjoining Hofgärtnerhaus.
future
The orangery and its buildings are to increasingly serve their original purpose - the collection, cultivation and presentation of plants. To this end, the orangery plants that were lost decades ago have been gradually rebuilt and continuously expanded over the past few years. The entire garden is to be gradually designed as a "living orangery show museum" (Dr. Paulus, Director of the Thuringian Palaces and Gardens Foundation) in the coming years. The aim is to set up the German Orangery Museum here. In addition to the exhibition of historical orangery equipment and techniques, the typical everyday life in an orangery with its diverse tasks should be vividly experienced for the visitors.
The complete renovation of the east wing of the Laurel House is planned, but not yet scheduled. A concept for the subsequent use of the orange house is currently (as of 2014) not yet available.
In order to complete the building ensemble, it would be necessary to rebuild the southern greenhouse, which was demolished in 1955, in its original cubature.
literature
- Jens Scheffler, Helmut-Eberhard Paulus, Andreas M. Cramer: Ducal Orangery Gotha: Garden of Golden Fruits , Deutscher Kunstverlag, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-422-03129-6
- Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha (ed.): In the kingdom of the goddess freedom. Gotha's princely gardens in five centuries , Hain Verlag, Weimar 2007
Web links
- Page of the Gotha Orangery - Homepage
- Page about Friedenstein Castle with orangery on the Thuringian Palaces and Gardens Foundation's homepage
- Search for Orangery Gotha in the German Digital Library
- Search for Orangery Gotha in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ Katja Vogel, Thomas Huck: History of the Gothaer Land. Exhibition guide . Ed .: Gothaer Museum for Regional History. 1997, ISSN 0863-2421 , p. 52 .
- ↑ a b Peter Riecke: Renovation of the laurel house is going ahead , Thüringer Allgemeine from June 4, 2014
- ^ Refurbishment of the Winter Palace completed , press release from the City of Gotha, accessed on April 14, 2015
- ↑ Orangery Gotha ( Memento of the original from July 16, 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. , accessed April 14, 2015
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 48.8 ″ N , 10 ° 42 ′ 33.1 ″ E