Roman garden

Amphitheater in the Roman Garden (July 2008)

The Roman Garden is a public park in the Hamburg district of Blankenese ( Altona district ) on the southern slope of the Polterberg.

The park is 30 meters above the Elbe in the west of Blankenese. The park is special because it was not laid out as an English landscape garden like most gardens and parks on the banks of the Elbe , but in Art Nouveau style . It is a garden monument according to the Hamburg Monument Protection Act. The name of the Roman garden goes back to the use of southern designs and plants.

history

The mountain on which the Roman Garden is located today was acquired in 1794 by the Hamburg auctioneer Hinrich Jürgen Köster (1748–1805) and later named after him. Two years later he built a wooden summer house on the hill. He was one of those wealthy citizens of Hamburg who bought land outside of the city to spend the summer there. The two-storey gable wall of the house turned towards the Elbe.

The property changed hands as early as 1805. The heirs of Kösters sold it to the industrialist Jan Koopmann . After his death, the summer house was taken over by Marie Völkers and converted into a well-known inn. Other owners of the site were Wolfgang Fr. Hansen (from 1846) and Julius Schröder (from 1852). In 1856 the Altona merchant Johann Carl Semper first took steps to create a park landscape on top of the hill with its mixed oak and beech forest. He planted parts with exotic trees and ornamental shrubs and had boulders put together in groups.

On the lower steeply sloping slope, where the Roman Garden is located today, a park landscape was created for the first time between 1880 and 1890, which characterizes the current appearance. The basic structure in the form of a terrace was created by Emilio Richter on behalf of his brother Julius Richter . Richter created the cut hedges from the trees of life and planted false cypresses and cedars .

The banker Moritz M. Warburg acquired the property in 1897, his son Max and his wife Alice had the gardens extended by Else Hoffa from 1913 to 1924. The slope below was supported with a wall. This made it possible to create a larger terrace. In the western part a rose garden was built, reminiscent of Renaissance gardens. During the time of the Third Reich, the Warburg family had to emigrate and so the garden was slowly decaying; valuable sculptures disappeared, at times even anti-aircraft guns were placed there. After the end of the war, the family got their property back, but in 1951 they handed them over to the city of Hamburg on condition that the garden be preserved and looked after.

In 1924, a " hedge theater " was created, which is connected to the rose garden above by a curved staircase (so-called "Würzburg staircase"). The viewer's view is on the Elbe. Since 2005, the open-air stage has been used by the NN Theater in the summer months.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Richter, Julius . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 287 - Oliver Breitfeld .
2. ^ Römischer Garten website of the city of Hamburg. Retrieved February 26, 2016
3. ↑ Karin von Behr: Hoffa, Else . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 157 .
4. ^ Molière - open-air theater directly on the Elbe , in the Hamburger Abendblatt from July 14, 2005.

literature

• Oliver Breitfeld: Campagna on the Elbe slope. The Roman Garden in Hamburg-Blankenese. Christians Verlag, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-7672-1427-X .
• Oliver Breitfeld: Germany's first head gardener: Else Hoffa and Warburg's Roman Garden over the Elbe . In: Die Gartenkunst  20 (1/2008), pp. 213–218.
• Axel Iwohn, Martina Nath-Esser, Claudia Wollkopf (eds.): Hamburg Green. The city's gardens and parks. L & H-Verlag, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-928119-39-7 , pp. 44-46.

Coordinates: 53 ° 33 ′ 40.4 "  N , 9 ° 47 ′ 13.8"  E