Otto Kindermann

Otto Ferdinand Kindermann (born January 31, 1843 in Nowawes ; † November 24, 1918 in Potsdam ) was a court gardener working in the Babelsberg Park at the time of Wilhelm I.

Live and act

Otto Kindermann was the son of the court gardener in the Babelsberg Park, Ferdinand Kindermann, and the Potsdam merchant's daughter Juliane Luise Adolfine, née Zill. Kindermann learned the profession of gardener from 1859 to 1860 from Friedrich Adolph Haage in his Erfurt commercial and seed gardening and from 1860 to 1863 in the royal gardening school at the Wildpark near Potsdam , which the garden architect Peter Joseph Lenné led as director. Kindermann then began his journeyman migration , which led him to France and Belgium in 1863/64. This was followed by a stay at the country estate of the horticultural artist Hermann von Pückler-Muskau in Branitz .

After the death of his father, he returned to Babelsberg in 1865, took over the latter's duties and was appointed court gardener in 1868. As for his father, the design of the park in the style of an English landscape garden became a life's work for him , which both carried out in the spirit of Pückler-Muskau, who was probably there for the last time in 1868. In 1865, Wilhelm I acquired mostly flat terrain in the southwest of Babelsberg, on which Kindermann created a lake and large parking spaces. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, in which he took part and was dismissed from military service as a cavalry officer , the Kaiser bought further land in the south-east in 1875, which Kindermann also landscaped. In addition, he had the nursery expanded in 1879 and 1881 with laurel houses for the wintering of the container plants. In 1879 Otto Kindermann went on a study trip to Italy and in 1883 became head of the estate and community of Klein Glienicke .

After the death of Wilhelm I in 1888 and increasingly after the death of Empress Augusta in 1890, her descendants lost interest in Babelsberg Palace and Park. When the number of gardeners was reduced considerably and most of the orangery plants were brought to the New Palais in Sanssouci , Otto Kindermann, who had remained single, asked for his retirement in 1898. The vacant court gardener position was taken over by Kurt Nietner , who held the office until 1924.

literature

• Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): Prussian Green. Court gardener in Brandenburg-Prussia . Henschel Verlag, Potsdam 2004, ISBN 3-89487-489-9

Individual evidence

1. ↑ SPSG: Nothing thrives without care , p. 120