Richter's garden
Richter's garden (then Reichenbach's garden and finally Gerhard's garden ) was a 150-year-old garden with a park-like character in the western suburb of old Leipzig .
A Leipzig city guide from 1860 comments:
"Gerhard's garden is remarkable because of its beauty as well as historical memories."
location
The garden adjoined the Naundörfchen to the southeast . Its east-west extension reached from the Pleißemühlgraben to the White Elster . To the south it was bordered by the thief's ditch, behind which the Kleinbosische Garten lay. To the north it ended, becoming narrower, in an associated small estate that was located on Ranstädter Steinweg , later called Kleine Funkenburg , and was sold separately from the garden in 1820. From the city, a bridge led from Fleischerplatz over the Pleißemühlgraben into the garden.
In relation to today's street situation, the garden took up the area around Lessingstrasse and Thomasiusstrasse.
history
In 1740, the Leipzig merchant Johann Zacharias Richter combined two properties acquired by the previous owners, Weisse and Jäger, and redesigned them into a park-like garden that was “partly in the Dutch, partly in the English style”. The main avenue led from the Pleißemühlgrabenbrücke over the entire length of the garden to the Elster and was crossed by cross aisles. At the level of the second entrance from the Naundörfchen there was a stone garden house, which later became the manor house, in whose room Adam Friedrich Oeser painted a ceiling painting in 1767. Further inside the garden was an octagonal pavilion. In the rear part of the complex there were several ponds that were fed by the thief's ditch. A pavilion (later the water house) was built over the supply channel. The highlight of the garden, however, was a Japanese pavilion in the rear part, about which it says in a description of the city of Leipzig from 1784:
Game in Richter's garden
Escape of the French in 1813 through Richter's garden
The Poniatowski monument (sarcophagus) around 1830
“It is oval round, two storeys high, and completely covered with Meissen porcelain. The lower vault is beautifully lined with ore, shell limestone and glass spheres, and the ceiling is painted in a Chinese style. An outside staircase leads us to the upper stock, around which an arbor goes around, from which one has the most splendid view over the most beautiful meadows and forests. Bells and hammers are attached around the roof, which play soft music with the wind. "
In the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig , the garden fell to the devastation when the retreat of the majority of the French troops was attempted on October 19, 1813 via the Richter garden, because the Elsterbrücke on Ranstädter Steinweg was blown up too early. The Polish prince Józef Antoni Poniatowski (1763-1813) , who was in Napoleon's service, was killed when attempting to cross the flood-bearing Elster from Richter's garden . A memorial stone was then placed in the garden at the site of the accident and a symbolic stone coffin was set up elsewhere as a memorial. While the latter has not been preserved, the place with the memorial stone is now called Poniatowskiplan .
In 1814, the banker Christian Wilhelm Reichenbach (1778–1858) bought the garden and restored it to an attractive condition. Greenhouses with rare plants and aviaries with exotic birds delighted the visitors. The garden was not yet open to the public, but it was easy to get permission from the owner.
Gerhard's mansion
around 1870
The bathhouse
The summer theater
The water house
The Japanese pavilion shortly before its demolition in 1870
The pavilion from Gerhard's garden in Clara-Zetkin-Park
In 1827 the garden came into the possession of the merchant, scholar and poet Wilhelm Gerhard (1780–1858). He had the entire garden area developed in the English style and equipped with additional buildings. This included an oriental bath house, a pavilion and salons. The garden has now been made accessible to the public for a fee. In his manor house in the garden and in the pavilion, Gerhard received important personalities from the intellectual life of the 19th century, such as Ludwig Tieck , Friedrich Rückert , Heinrich Marschner , Albert Lortzing and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy . In 1853 the Tivoli Summer Theater was built in the garden , which was connected with a restoration and existed until 1859. In 1866 the garden was parceled out and neglected. The Leipzig real estate company acquired a large part of the site in 1880. In 1881 a development plan was approved and in 1883 the city was able to take over the new streets.
In 1908 a pavilion from the former Gerhard'schen garden was rebuilt in the König-Albert-Park (today Clara-Zetkin-Park ), which was previously called the Sun Temple.
literature
- Nadja Horsch, Simone Tübbecke (Ed.): Citizens. Gardens. Promenades - Leipzig garden culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. Passage Verlag, Leipzig 2018, ISBN 978-3-95415-072-4 , pp. 126-137.
- Inner Westvorstadt - A historical and urban study . Published by PRO LEIPZIG 1998
- Johann Gottlob Schulz: Description of the City of Leipzig , Verl. AF Böhm Leipzig, 1784, pp. 450–453 ( digitized version )
- Gottfried Wilhelm Becker: Painting of Leipzig and its surroundings: for foreigners and locals, with special consideration for the battles in this city, etc. , Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlg., 1823, pp. 149–152
- Gertraude Lichtenberger (Ed.): Promenaden bey Leipzig. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1990, ISBN 3-325-00273-0 , p. 147 ( digitized )
- Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z . PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , pp. 177/178 (Gerhards Garten)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Gottfried Wilhelm Becker: Painting from Leipzig ... , p. 150
Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 32 " N , 12 ° 21 ′ 58" E