Von-Halfern-Park
The off-Halfern Park is a park in the southwest of Aachen at the Liège road ( B 264 ), direction Kelmis / Belgium directly and seamlessly on the northern edge of the Aachen municipal forest area. It was laid out in the style of an English landscape garden and there are trees and plants up to 200 years old, etc. a. from North America, Europe and Asia.
Historical
The beginnings began with the idea of the Aachen cloth manufacturer Gustav von Halfern († July 25, 1875) to build a weekend house for himself and his family with adjoining allotment gardens in the area around what was then Gut Groutenhof , later called Grundhaus . Just a few years later he bought another meadow and smaller forests.
After Gustav's death, his son, the Aachen cloth manufacturer, bank director and city councilor of Burtscheid , Friedrich von Halfern , had a park laid out based on the English model according to plans by city gardening director Heinrich Grube. For this he also acquired added another forest and farmland, leaving the now developing a 10-hectare park with romantic aspects with all kinds of artificial watercourses, caves, temples and turrets equip as well as a forest bowling alley, a bowling green and a small, a bow and arrow shooting Equip the riding arena. Furthermore, Friedrich von Halfern, who was a recognized dendrologist in his leisure time , had rare and for Aachen unusual tree species from different countries and planted. Soon these rarities added up to more than 80 deciduous and 50 conifers, including amber trees , araucarias , Engelmann spruces , trees of gods , pyramidal oaks , primeval redwoods or Lebanon cedar . He also tried to recreate the mythological Yggdrasil ash , which he did not succeed in doing. He sold surplus trees and offshoots to the city of Aachen, which mainly planted them in the nearby Kaiser-Friedrich-Park . In addition, he had winter gardens , palm houses and orangeries , but also coach houses, stables and gardener's apartments built in the vicinity of his residence , which has meanwhile been converted into a magnificent baroque villa by the Cologne architect Hermann Joseph Hürth .
In 1902 the park was affected by a violent storm. Von Halfern did not have the knocked down trees replaced by new ones, but instead turned them into light walking and picnic areas lined with forest meadows.
After Friedrich von Halfern died in 1908, his son Carl von Halfern inherited the entire property and let his mother manage it during his absence. But a few years later he had to endure the Belgian occupation forces occupying the villa and the park during the First World War and a Belgian spy station moving into the estate after the war. This led to a neglect of the park maintenance and a temporary deterioration of the facility. Finally, in 1925, Carl von Halfern sold the lands to the city of Aachen after he had been appointed regional president in Hildesheim . He donated the Villa Hochgrundhaus itself to the city on condition that it be used for a social cause. The mansion was then converted into a day sanatorium for young people with lung disease or those in need of relaxation. The park has been open to the public since 1925.
Nevertheless, the park continued to decline during the Second World War , and it was not until 1950 that the City Garden Authority began to ensure that the extensive area was properly maintained and looked after. After a smallpox ward was set up in the manor house in 1963 and a women's refuge from the end of the 1970s, the Association for the Promotion of Waldorf Education leased the house from 1982 and set up a Waldorf kindergarten that still exists today . In the meantime, most of the trees in the park that survived the wars and storms, some more than 150 years old, were placed under special protection as natural monuments , so that they could develop to enormous size and form. Today the park is a popular destination for the people of Aachen.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Richard Pick : The basic house near Aachen . In: From Aachen's prehistory . 2nd year, no. 1 . Aachen 1888, p. 15-16 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive [accessed August 14, 2015]).
Coordinates: 50 ° 45 ′ 5 ″ N , 6 ° 3 ′ 26 ″ E