Schneckenberg (Leipzig)
The Schneckenberg in Leipzig was part of one of the first English-style landscape gardens in Germany. This park was located from the city center in an easterly direction in front of the Grimmaschen Tor on the area of today's Augustusplatz and north of it. Immediately where the Leipzig Opera stands today was the 20 to 30 meter high Schneckenberg.
history
Around the fortified medieval cities, the areas in front of the city wall and moat were undeveloped and visible to ensure the glacis (free field of fire). This is also the case in Leipzig. As early as 1700, the fortifications proved to be obsolete by the development of war technology, and they began to be razed . The first parts of the city moat in the west of the city were already filled under Mayor Romanus , who held the office between 1701 and 1704. The first parks were built north of the city opposite today's main train station (Unterer Park).
After the Peace of Hubertusburg in 1763, the Saxon elector made the defenses available to the city on the condition that, after they were gradually demolished, the space would be used for charitable purposes.
Carl Wilhelm Müller , who was elected mayor for the first time in 1778, commissioned the city's building director, Johann Carl Friedrich Dauthe , to design a park around the northeastern part of the city. Dauthe built an English-style park with curved paths, groups of trees and benches to rest, which was completed in 1785. He left part of the city moat open as a body of water that became a swan pond .
The southern end of the park was formed by a viewing hill, the Schneckenberg. Snail mountains were a popular element of English landscape gardens and got their name from the spiral-shaped ascent path. Mainly the material of the entrenchments that the Swedes had built during the siege of Leipzig east of the city during the Thirty Years' War was used to fill the Leipziger Schneckenberg .
The Schneckenberg was made of poplars and was very popular with the people of Leipzig. In the flat Leipzig area it was a welcome toboggan hill. On April 24, 1813, Theodor Körner drafted his poem “ Lützow's wild hunt ” on the Schneckenberg .
During the Battle of Nations in 1813, the facility was severely damaged, but it was immediately repaired.
The end of the Schneckenberg came with the construction of the New Theater from 1864 to 1867. For the construction, the Schneckenberg had to be removed, along with the Gellert monument that had stood on its peak since 1842 (created in 1774 by Adam Friedrich Oeser ). The swan pond now reached as far as the theater, from which a small artificial waterfall poured out.
literature
- Carl Weidinger: Leipzig. A guide through the city. Leipzig 1860, p. 113. ( as reprint : VEB Tourist Verlag, Berlin / Leipzig 1989, ISBN 3-350-00310-9 .)
- Wolfgang Hocquél : Leipzig. Architecture from the Romanesque to the present. Passage-Verlag, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-932900-54-5 , p. 21. (further editions 2004 and 2010)
- Horst Riedel: Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z . PRO LEIPZIG, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936508-03-8 , p. 530 (and more often).
Web links
- 225 years of idyllic parkland at the Schwanenteich. In: Leipziger Internet Zeitung from July 28, 2009 ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z , p. 480
- ↑ Leipzig. Architecture from the Romanesque to the present day , p. 297.
- ↑ Stadtlexikon Leipzig from A to Z , p. 173
Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 24.9 ″ N , 12 ° 22 ′ 52.9 ″ E