Walter von Engelhardt

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Baron Walter von Engelhardt and Walter Baron von Engelhardt (* June 18 jul. / The thirtieth June  1864 greg. In Dorpat , now Tartu in Estonia , † 7. March 1940 in Dusseldorf ) was a Baltic German landscape architect and first garden Amtsdirektor from Düsseldorf.

life and work

Villa Engelhardt (2019)

Walter von Engelhardt was born in Dorpat, today Tartu (Estonia) in 1864 as a scion of the German-Baltic noble family Engelhardt, who have lived there for centuries . His brother was the - u. a. Collaborating with Alvar Aalto - architect Rudolf von Engelhardt (1857–1913).

He studied botany from 1883 to 1887 at the University of Dorpat , where he was accepted as a member of Corporation Livonia in 1883 . With a "contribution to the anatomy of the cycads " he obtained the academic degree " candidate of botany". During a subsequent activity in the library of the Botanical Museum in Saint Petersburg and the Imperial Academy of Sciences under Karl Ivanovic Maximovic, he conducted private studies. From 1891 to 1892 he attended the Royal Gardening School at the Wildlife Park near Potsdam . In 1892 he traveled to Germany, Switzerland and Italy, founded together with the Livonian dendrologist Max von Sivers on his Römershof estate ( Skrīveri , Latvia) a tree nursery he directed and established an arboretum there. From 1892 to 1905 he worked as a garden architect. At the beginning of 1906 he moved to Germany and on March 14th of that year became the first gardening director (head of the gardening office) of the city of Düsseldorf, which office he held until his retirement on June 30, 1931.

During 25 years as Düsseldorf's gardening director, Engelhardt created many parks and green spaces in Düsseldorf, e.g. B. the "Hansaplatz", the "Klever Platz" (today Kolpingplatz), the " Graf-Adolf-Platz " and the " Ehrenhof ". He attached particular importance to a functional design, not only oriented towards the physical, but also the emotional and spiritual needs of the user. Engelhardt was "exemplary and trend-setting for the design of the town square at the beginning of our century" (Grützner).

Engelhardt preferred the geometric garden style to the landscape garden style early on, but always advocated the use of both design directions, depending on the local conditions. In 1907 he explained: “For regular planting we need: wood material of different shapes and sizes in different sizes obtained by cutting the hedge. As an example, I mention the sphere, the wall, the column, the pyramid, the hanging shape, the roof shape ... For the natural structure we need: unspoiled trees, above all, showing their individual character in similar main shapes ... " .

Alongside Fritz Encke , Engelhardt was one of the first garden architects to be appointed to the German Werkbund founded in 1907 by Hermann Muthesius , of which he was a member until 1928.

After a new and unique class for garden art had been set up on a trial basis at the Düsseldorf School of Applied Arts - at the instigation of the German Society for Garden Art (DGfG) - Muthesius suggested Engelhardt as a lecturer. Engelhardt had already been commissioned by the DGG in 1908 to deal with the improvement of the training of garden architects, because a working committee of the DGG had recommended "instead of the connection to the universities for the artistic training of the Garden architects should first consider the arts and crafts schools ”. Engelhardt saw the close contact with the departments represented at the arts and crafts schools as beneficial for this. Attendance at a state-recognized gardening school was a prerequisite for admission . The curriculum, which went well beyond what was offered, included freehand and ornament drawing, simple building construction for wood and stone buildings in the garden, and architectural garden design. Engelhardt, who then taught here in addition to his position as gardening director from 1909 to the First World War, was responsible for the horticultural part, teaching about architectural garden design and garden equipment was e.g. T. held by the architects Wilhelm Kreis , Becker and Fahrenkamp. In 1919 the architecture department of the School of Applied Arts was merged with the Düsseldorf Art Academy , at which he again taught the existing garden art class until his retirement in 1931. Engelhardt's student at the arts and crafts school a. Wilhelm Tapp (from 1914 in Düsseldorf city garden architect and head of the design office in the garden office, 1915 horticultural inspector, 1919 head of the cemetery office, from 1933 director of the garden and cemetery office).

In 1921, garden inspector Engelhardt was sent by the DGfG to the annual memorial day in Münster , where he appealed to the assembled conservators to finally put historical gardens under protection, which was then - at least for the formerly princely gardens - in a public declaration by the preservationists was decided. In this respect, Engelhardt also became significant for the history of garden monument preservation . In 1931 he was made an honorary member by the DGfG.

Engelhardt had also been a member of the Association of German Garden Architects since 1899 .

Between 1912 and 1913, Engelhardt had a villa built by the architect Thilo Schneider in Golzheim on the site of the former cemetery and in the immediate vicinity of the Kaiser Wilhelm Park (Rheinpark) he designed . Today the listed "Villa Engelhardt" at Fischerstraße 110 on the corner of Homberger Straße houses the administration of the Robert Schumann Music Academy .

Works

City plan of Düsseldorf with Kaiser-Wilhelm-Park (Rheinpark Golzheim) and Golzheimer Friedhof, 1909

(Selection)

Fonts

(Selection)

  • Culture and nature in garden art. (= Art and Culture , Volume 6.) Strecker & Schröder, Stuttgart 1910. ( Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf )
  • (Ed. together with Hermann von Rosen): The Baltic Provinces. Part: 1: City and Country. (= Baltic Sea and Ostland , Volume 1.) F. Lehmann, (Berlin-) Charlottenburg 1916.
  • The public gardens and cemeteries of Düsseldorf. Düsseldorf undated

Engelhardt also published numerous articles in specialist journals.

literature

  • Felix Grützner: Garden art between tradition and progress. Walter Baron von Engelhardt (1864–1940). (= Studies on Art History , Volume 3.) Lemmens, Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-932306-19-8 . (also dissertation, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, 1997.)
  • Felix Grützner: Walter Baron von Engelhardt. "Culture and nature in garden art". In: Stadt + Grün , year 1998, issue 7, pp. 476–484.
  • Felix Grützner: Garden design for citizens and patients. From the work of the garden architect Walter Baron von Engelhardt. In: Denkmalpflege im Rheinland , Volume 16 1999, No. 3, pp. 105–111.
  • Gustav Wörner, Rose Wörner : Park maintenance work Raffelbergpark. Mülheim an der Ruhr 1996.
  • Gert Gröning, Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn : Green biographies. Biographical handbook on landscape architecture of the 20th century in Germany. Patzer, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-87617-089-3 , p. 83 f. (with further sources and literature)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Gartenamt Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf: Rheingärtchen , article in the portal duesseldorf.de, accessed on February 15, 2018