Ruins mountain
The ruin mountain is a hill between Potsdam-Bornstedt in the west and the Potsdam Jägervorstadt in the east. To irrigate the fountains in the adjacent Sanssouci Park to the south , Frederick the Great had a water reservoir built on the hilltop in 1748 and decorated with artificial ruins as an antique design element. In the course of the landscape beautification around Potsdam, Friedrich Wilhelm IV commissioned the garden architect Peter Joseph Lenné with the horticultural design of the ruin mountain area.
The ruin mountain at the time of Frederick the Great
The area of the 74.1 meter high ruin mountain, formerly known as Hünenberg , Heineberg or Höneberg , was part of his extensive hunting ground at the time of Friedrich Wilhelm I. His son and successor Friedrich the Great planned the creation of a partridge garden on the area and on February 10, 1745 gave an order [...] to put a few hundred partridges in the bushes behind the New Vineyards . With the new vineyards the one year previously created by the south Höneberg vineyard terraces meant Sanssouci, the palace ordered the Prussian king in January 1745th To decorate the park below the terraces, which was expanded to the east and west over the years, water features, such as the large fountain on the ground floor, the Neptune grotto and a marble colonnade that no longer exists , were indispensable design elements for Frederick the Great placed special value. However, the water pressure required to jump the fountains became a problem, as the Havel was far away and the terrain was above the water level of the river.
In order to provide the necessary water supply, a round high basin was created on the summit of the Höneberg in 1748, which meant that partridge breeding had to be relocated to the Bornstedter Feld to the north. The plan was for water from the Havel to be transported up the mountain into the basin using windmills, which in turn drove pumps. The water then flowing down from the pool into the park was supposed to make the fountains bubble through its own pressure through a system of pipes. However, a prerequisite for success would have been an even wind drive of all mill blades and thus the pumps, since irregular revolutions would have supplied too much or too little water to just one mill station of the next. A steady drive could not be guaranteed on the entire route. Only the water reservoir, some inlet and outlet channels and the construction of a mill were realized. The work carried out at great expense in the years from 1748 to 1763 to set up efficient pump and distribution systems failed. After further unsuccessful efforts and enormous material consumption, Frederick the Great finally gave up the costly project in 1780, which had cost 168,490 thalers by then . Friedrich Mielke attributes the failure of water features, which were widespread in other European baroque palace gardens, to the owner of the building in Sanssouci. Friedrich made the wrong choice when it came to recruiting, mistaking himself for a specialist in knowledge of the relevant literature, for example on Marly's machine , and always insisting on savings. Only once, on Good Friday 1754, was Friedrich allowed to see a bubbling fountain below the picture gallery , because the high basin was sufficiently filled as a result of the rainy winter of 1753/54.
The high basin with a depth of 12 feet (3.77 m), a diameter of 120 feet (37.66 m) and a capacity of around 4,199 cubic meters, which lies in a line of sight to the main courtyard of the Sanssouci Palace, was converted with artificial ancient ruins. The design of the gardens with antique architecture not only corresponded to the taste of the time, but also presumably Frederick the Great was inspired by the construction of the Bayreuth Hermitage , in which his favorite sister, Margravine Wilhelmine von Bayreuth , had seven artificial ruins built before 1744. Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff was commissioned to design it, and he used sketches of ruin projects that had already been made in Rheinsberg during the time of Frederick's Crown Prince . The theater painter Innocente Bellavite , who was employed at the Italian Opera in Berlin, was brought in to rework the decorative accessories . Around the water basin they grouped a monopteros with 16 Doric columns and a vaulted dome roof artificially damaged on one side. Next to it are three tall Ionic columns supporting an entablature and a broken column leaning against the group of three, which should give the impression that it had found a hold when it fell over, as if by chance. A small pyramid made of quarry stone follows a wall of ruins on the side of the basin in the north, which was modeled on the surrounding wall of a Roman amphitheater . On its west side a wooden staircase led to a wooden viewing platform. However, the extensions did not withstand the weather conditions and were already dilapidated in Friedrich's time.
The ruin mountain at the time of Friedrich Wilhelm IV.
Neglect as a result of the Napoleonic occupation of Prussia and wood theft devastated the tree population of the ruin mountain at the beginning of the 19th century. Only after Friedrich Wilhelm IV ascended to the throne in 1840, who took up residence in the summer palace of Frederick the Great, did a redesign of the hill begin. In the course of the beautification of the landscape around Potsdam, Peter Joseph Lenné was commissioned to design the area of the ruin mountain in a garden style in order to offer Sanssouci Palace a worthy "counterpart". As early as November 1842, 50,000 trees and groups of shrubs had been planted, the stock of which was consolidated through additional planting in the following year. In a line of sight to the castle, Lenné designed a narrow watercourse that flowed into a semicircular basin up to about the middle of the slope. With a 5.5 kilometer network of trails around and over the ruin mountain, the hill was given promenade paths between 10 and 13 feet wide (3 to 4 m), which were later supplemented by narrower hiking trails. Lenné included the natural soil modeling of the site in his planning and paid attention to attractive points of view in the landscape or on buildings, such as the Crown Estate Bornstedt in a south-westerly direction .
He emphasized the visual axis with a semicircular exedra at the foot of the ruin mountain. This “Roman bench”, designed by Ludwig Persius in 1842, had curved bench cheeks in the form of griffin feet and a closed back wall. The ancient model he used was the grave bench of the Roman priestess Mammia on Via dei Sepolcri in Pompeii , which has become known through excavations . In 1982 the exedra was temporarily moved to the hippodrome near Charlottenhof Palace and only returned to its old location in 1998 after restoration.
The water basin from the Frederician era was damaged by decades of neglect and had to be renewed, because almost a hundred years after the construction of the Sanssouci Palace, the new technology made it possible to realize a continuously functional fountain system. An 81.4 HP strong steam engine from August Borsig transported Havel water into the basin on the ruins mountain via a 1.8 km long pressure pipe. For what was then the largest steam engine in Germany at the time, the “King's architect”, Ludwig Persius, designed a pump house in the Moorish style on Neustädter Havel Bay . On October 23, 1842 the large fountain on the ground floor below the vineyard terraces was inaugurated. The jet of fountains generated by the pressure of the flowing water reached a height of 38 meters and rose over the roof of the castle. The water basin on the ruin mountain was previously expanded to 149 feet (46.76 m) during the restoration and now had a capacity of around 6,474 cubic meters. The upper edge of the basin, which had been at ground level until then, was given a low surrounding wall in 1843, which was raised again in the middle of the 20th century for safety reasons.
In addition to the restoration of the dilapidated ruin architecture, Ludwig Persius was commissioned to add an observation tower to the formerly wooden platform of the theater wall facing west. Persius designed a tower in the "Norman" style as a contrast to the ancient wall of ruins. A simple, 23-meter-high watchtower with a crenellated , accessible roof area was built on a square floor plan . Friedrich Wilhelm IV had a tea room set up on the top of the four floors. To the west, the Norman Tower is adjoined by a small guard's house. During Persius' trip to Italy and after his untimely death in July 1845, Ferdinand von Arnim took over the construction management in 1845/46. The tower could be used as a belvedere until 1945 .
Use after the end of the monarchy
After the First World War and the end of the monarchy, the ruin mountain with the ensemble of ruins as part of the Sanssouci park became the property of the Prussian state in 1926 and then into the care of the Prussian "Administration of State Palaces and Gardens", founded in 1927, today the " Prussian Palaces Foundation and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg “(SPSG). In 1928 the administration on the east side of the ruin mountain gave up 13.3 acres for the construction of the "Siedlung Vaterland".
In the spring of 1929, a resident of Potsdam managed to uncover a complete prehistoric, Celtic burial site just 30 cm below the surface during his own excavations . The finds were handed over to the Potsdam Museum of Local History.
At the end of the Second World War, the Norman Tower was severely damaged by artillery fire in April 1945 and initially remained in ruins. The area was used by soldiers of the Soviet army as a military training area between 1957 and 1971 and was therefore badly affected. A garden monument restoration of the 40.7 hectare area in line with Lenné's landscape design took place between 1999 and 2001 as part of the Federal Garden Show , which took place in Potsdam in 2001. The Norman tower has reopened and when, after the restoration since 2002. lookout tower mountable.
literature
- Brandenburg State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and the State Archaeological Museum and Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg (Ed.): Peter Joseph Lenné. Parks and gardens in the state of Brandenburg . Wernersche, Worms 2005, ISBN 3-88462-217-X .
- General management of the Foundation Palaces and Gardens Potsdam-Sanssouci (Ed.): Potsdam Palaces and Gardens. Construction and garden art from the 17th to the 20th century . Castles and Gardens Foundation and Potsdamer Verlagbuchhandlung , Potsdam 1993, ISBN 3-910196-14-4 .
- General Directorate of the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg (ed.): Nothing thrives without care . Otto, Berlin 2001.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg (ed.): Nothing flourishes without care , p. 133 ff
- ↑ a b c d Brandenburg State Office for Monument Preservation and State Archaeological Museum and SPSG: Peter Joseph Lenné. Parks and gardens in the state of Brandenburg . P. 236 f
- ↑ General Directorate of the Foundation Palaces and Gardens Potsdam-Sanssouci (Ed.): Potsdam Palaces and Gardens. Building and garden art from the 17th to the 20th century , p. 109
- ^ In Potsdam architecture. Classic Potsdam . Propylaeen, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-549-06648-1 , p. 67 f.
- ^ Celtic grave finds near Potsdam . In: Vossische Zeitung , April 4, 1929, p. 11.
Coordinates: 52 ° 25 ' N , 13 ° 2' E