The Garden History Society

The German Legacy: Richmond in Braunschweig

Author(s): Marcus Khler
Source: Garden History, Vol. 29, No. 1, Lancelot Brown (1716-83) and the Landscape Park
(Summer, 2001), pp. 29-35
Published by: The Garden History Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1587352 .
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MARCUS KOHLER
THE GERMAN LEGACY: RICHMOND IN BRAUNSCHWEIG
The
only design by
Lancelot Brown for a German
garden
is
reported
in a short notice
by
Dorothy Stroud,
who states that on
27
October
1767
Brown was asked
by Major
Emanuel
Lutterloh for a
design
for the Court of
Braunschweig, possibly
for Duchess
Augusta
(I737-I813),
sister of
George III,
who married Duke Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand of
Braunschweig (1735-1806)
in
I764. Stroud, however,
did not mention whether the
plan
was
accepted
or remained unexecuted.1 A letter dated z8 October
1767
noted:
Sir
I have received
by
the last mail a letter from our
hereditary
Prinz in which his Sere"
Highness
has send [sic]
me a Plan of His
Gardens,
and wishes to have the Park laid out in the
English
Tast
[sic]
and
way,
and tells
me,
to desire the Favour of
you
to look over the Plan and to
give
me
your opinion
of it: If this will be Convenient to
you,
and
you
will be
pleased
to
appoint
me
a
day
when I can see
you
I will call on
you,
and
bring
the said
plans
with me.2
One has to look closer to the
Braunschweig
court to understand the situation the
daughter
of Frederick
Louis,
Prince of
Wales,
came into.
Braunschweig
was one of the
small and
provincial
German residences
that, nevertheless, played
a
leading
role in
making
European policy.
Her husband's relatives were
major players:
Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand's
uncle was Frederick the
Great,
his
aunt,
Anna Amalia of
Weimar,
a
patron
to
Goethe,
and
great-aunts
of his
reigned
as
empresses
of Russia and Austria. His brother was
Leopold,
the hero who
gave
his life in a flood of the River Oder to save some
peasants;
his son the
Black Duke
William,
with whom he died
defeating Napoleon;
and their
daughter
was
poor Queen
Caroline of
England.
Although
the State could be considered
reasonably prosperous,
the
baroque lifestyle
was still a burden on the court. Court life took
place
in
Salzdahlum,
a vast half-timbered
country
residence that was finished
c.I700,
and the Grauer
Hof,
which was a work-in-
progress
for five decades until it was
finally
finished in the
I780s. Gardening-
on the
same site
-
was
popular,
but followed the ideas of the
high baroque, apart
from some
more informal areas in the Lechlumer Holz.3
After their
marriage,
the ducal
couple
remained in
London, apart
from some
journeys
to France and
Italy.
It is
likely
that
Augusta,
after
being
confronted with her new
home,
looked for ideas to furnish it
properly. Shortly
after
moving
to
Braunschweig
in
1767,
she
started to
buy sandy grounds
on the
Zuckerberg just
outside
Braunschweig
on the road to
the second residence
Wolfenbiittel,
where she wanted to erect a modern summer house
Dr Marcus Kdhler is an art historian and
Professor
at the Fachhochschule
Neubrandenburg,
FB
Agrarwvirtschaft
und
Landschaftspflege,
PO Box II 01
21, 17041 Neubrandenburg, Germany.
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GARDEN HISTORY
29:I
for her own
purposes
and financed
by
her own
dowry.
The
inquiry
after a
garden
has to
be seen in this context.
During
the next few
years
the architect Karl
Christoph
Fleischer and the
gardener
Gotze laid out a summer residence at this
location,
named Richmond
(Plates
V and
VI).4
The situation
overlooking
the River Oker and the memories of her
English
home
certainly
played
a decisive role in her choice.
The
house,
based on a
rectangular plan,
resembles the
Pavilion
de Hanovre in the
Bois de
Boulogne, Paris,
built in
1761
with restitution
money
from the
occupied
Hanoverians
during
the Seven Years' War
(I756-63).
This modern maison de
plaisance
was enhanced
by
a fashionable
garden design. Although early
visitors such as C. C. L.
Hirschfeld described the
garden only
as
being
laid out in the
English style,
Carl
Ribbentrop
more
precisely
mentioned that Gotze worked
'according
to
plans',
which must have been
those Brown
supplied
for the
Braunschweig
court.5
The
grounds
30
acres in all - are
very
small for an
English garden. Nevertheless,
the
design
shows a
strong English
influence: the turf in front of the
terrace,
the
surrounding
trees that delineate the
neighbouring
fields and the isolated kitchen
garden
were unknown
to German
gardening
in the
i76os.
The addition of a
gothic chapel
and a
monopteros
possibly
were
completed
before
Augusta
fled to London in i806. The
existing plan may
indicate the situation after the
Napoleonic
wars.
Paths,
flowerbeds and the use of
American trees
certainly
derived from or were influenced
by
Gotze's taste.
Before
assigning
the
garden
its
place
in German
garden history,
one has to look more
closely
at two
gardens
that came into
being
in similar situations: Hohenzieritz and Gotha.
Both were laid out
by Englishmen, contemporaries
of
Brown,
for relatives of Duchess
Augusta.
HOHENZIERITZ
In
1761, Sophie-Charlotte,
Princess of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz,
married
George
III of
England.
The
marriage
was to some extent the
opposite
of the
Braunschweig
union: a
princess
of a
tiny
German state came to live in modern and
internationally
oriented
England.
In modern
times,
she has been
judged
rather
critically,6 although
her
deep
interest in
gardening
and skills in
botany
have not been
forgotten.7 Through
her
letters,
which are archived in Schwerin and Windsor
Castle,
it is known that she loved to
entertain her relatives in Richmond. Her brothers
Ernst,
Governor of
Celle,
and Carl
(174I-1816),
Governor of
Hanover,
had to visit the British court
regularly,
and Ernst
reported
after a visit to Richmond: 'Das ist mein Paradies wo nichts
(dar)in fehlt,
und wo
ich recht
glucklich gewesen
bin. Wie
vergniigt
werde ich sein wenn ich den
Augenblick
wieder erlebe!'8 In
fact, Ernst,
who was more
inspired
than
Carl,
laid out his own
garden
outside the walls of Celle. In
1772,
he noted his desire 'to
enlarge my garden
and build a
house',
and two
years
later he wrote that
'every thing
is in the true
English
taste'.9
Hirschfeld
praised
this rural
spot
in his short
description mentioning
the
picturesque
meadows and two
pavilions.10
Carl,
on the other
hand, acquired
a small manor house near
Neustrelitz,
the
paternal
residence in
1768.
Tradition has it that an
English gardener
named Thomson laid out a
garden
at this summer residence. It is
very likely
that Carl asked for a
design
for his new
country
house due to his visit to Richmond in
I771.1
Not
only
the
king,
with whom he
and Ernst
exchanged thoughts
on
gardening,12
but also
Queen
Charlotte
might
have been
helpful
in
finding
an
appropriate gardener.
The
garden
at Hohenzieritz
(Figure i)
shows
30
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THE GERMAN LEGACY
Figure i. Plan of the garden at Hohenzieritz
(c.I880).
....
.
*
i, w _ 4 Z
.................... % s.Evsd.............*Z
*\ . ' '; k :,?1 r . . tS,*
g. r? '
x,.t, r , , t A , @.w ? :fi BF v
sr ?g C? . 21; r ~-:L, , _. 9 A, * v X>@
Figure
z. General view of Hohenzieritz. Photo: author.
3I
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GARDEN HISTORY 29:I
similarities to the
garden
scheme that was
quite popular
in
England
at that time. Brown's
early garden
for Lord Holderness at Sion Hill near
Kew,
whose
housekeeper
was the
German
Sengusch,
was
especially
famous
among
German travellers: its main features
comprised
a belt of woodland with a
path
that enclosed a wide area of
turf, interspersed
with water.13 The situation and size of the
garden
in Hohenzieritz were similar
(Figure z).
In
I773,
Ernst visited his brother and wrote from Adolfslust in
3 August 1773:
'son
jardinier Anglois,
il est bon
jardinier
et il aurait
quelque
chose du
superbe
s'il avoit
pu
converter ou
changer
nos
Pfennige
en
Guinie;
la situation de la terre de mon frere est
unique,
la nature a ete
prodigue
au vues et
coup d'oeiulles,
tout autour de la maison .. ..14
Little is known about
Thomson,
but he
may
have been the Scottish botanist
gardener
Archibald Thomson who was born in
Edinburgh
in
1752
and died in London in
1832.
There is no information on his
apprenticeship,
which must have taken him to
England.
In
1781,
he was a
partner
of
James
Gordon's
nursery
in Mile
End,
which he took over in
80oz-o5.
He was also
appointed
botanic
gardener
to
James Stuart, 3rd
Earl of
Bute,
at
Luton
Hoo, Bedfordshire,ls
where Brown had
produced
a
design
in
1764,
which was
executed over the next decade.16
If Thomson came to
Hohenzieritz,
he must have been zo
years
old when he reached
Germany.
There are further
grounds
for well-founded
speculation:
a recommendation
may
have come from Princess
Augusta,
who received Bute as a friend until her death in
1772.
Thomson
may
also have been
apprenticed
in Richmond under the
gardeners
of
William Aiton and
John
I Haverfield
(1705-84). Finally,
he
may
well have been sent to
Hohenzieritz, provided
with a
garden plan,
under the
supervision
of
John
II Haverfield
(I744-I820),
who was
gardener
in Gotha at the same time.17
GOTHA
In
1736,
the Prince of
Wales,
Frederick Louis
(1707-5I),
married Princess
Augusta
of
Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg,
who - like other
royals
-
never lost contact with her home
in Gotha. In
1769,
when her
nephew
Ernst II of Gotha
(I745-I804)
laid out his new home
near the Schloss
Friedenstein,
he
certainly
asked his
knowledgeable aunt,
who came for a
visit to Gotha in
1770,
for some advice in
gardening
matters
(Figure 3).18 Apart
from the
fact that she
always supplied plants
for the
gardens
at Gotha
-
as Hirschfeld
reported
she must have sent a
gardener
named Haverfield to him.19
The first well-known Haverfield who turned
up
was
John,
who came to Richmond
Lodge
as head
gardener
in
1762.
When Brown made a new
design
for the
grounds
in
1765,
he worked as Haverfield's foreman. He worked in Kew and Richmond and
supplied
trees
for Brown's
layout
at Luton Hoo in
I764.
It is
quite
certain that he sent one of his sons to
Germany,
either
John
II
Haverfield,
later
gardener
at
Richmond,
or Thomas Haverfield
(I747-I804), gardener
at
Kew,
and in
1783
successor to Brown at
Hampton
Court. It is
very likely
that the older
brother,
who later was
quite popular among English landscape
gardeners
at the end of the
eighteenth century
and
closely
collaborated with
John Soane,
was
responsible
for Gotha.20 His
design,
which resembles the aforementioned character-
istics,
was executed
by
the Molsdorf
gardener
Christian Heinrich
Wehmeyer (d.I8I3).
Later Hirschfeld mentions the celebrated
garden, praises
the ha-ha and continues: 'Aber
dieses Wasser ist nur ein
groger See,
dessen Ufer sich schon im Garten
befinden;
seine
unabsehbare, spiegelhelle
Flache,
die durch Wiesen und Geholze Stundenweit zu
gleiten
scheint,
dankt ihre
Fernung
einem
glticklichen Betrug,
den der
englische Gartner,
der erste
32
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THE GERMAN LEGACY
Figure 3.
Plan of the
Jardin
Anglois
at Gotha
(I774).
Anleger
dieses
Gartens,
durch
einige
unmerkbare
Kriimmungen
und
Vorspruinge
von
Baumgruppen
und
Rasenrainen,
so kunstlos und wahr
hervorzubringen gewugit hat,
dag
sich das
Auge
nicht satt daran sehen kann.'21
The
plain atmosphere
of the
garden
was accentuated
by
the addition of the tomb-
island in
I777,
and the so-called
Temple
of
Mercury
after a
drawing
of 'The
Antiquities
of Athens' in
I778.
The
garden
did not
change very
much over the
years.
It was
always,
and
especially
the
island,
a
spiritual
centre for the
family.
When
Queen
Victoria visited her Grandmother
Duchess
Caroline,
the last
living
member of the
Altenburg family,
she wrote about the
garden:
'Ich fuhr . . . zum
Park,
wo wir
ausstiegen
und zu der Graberinsel im Parkteich
gingen.
Man wird mit einer kleinen Fahre
hiniibergefahren
... Die drei
Herzoge liegen
an drei
getrennten Stellen,
aber alle dicht zusammen und
vollig
bedeckt mit
Blumen,
was
einen schonen friedlichen Eindruck macht. Ein alter
Gartner,
namens
Eiserbeck,
der schon
viele
Jahre
da
ist,
er ist 80
Jahre alt, sagte,
daif hier unsere liebe Grogmutter
beerdigt
sein
will.'22
33
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GARDEN HISTORY 29:I
People
have
always
been attracted
by
the
garden,
and when Ftirst
Piickler
Muskau
visited it in
1845,
he
immediately recognised
the true characteristics of the
site, describing
it as
being
the essence of the
'Styl
des classischen Brown'.23
CONCLUSION
These three
gardens
were laid out within two or three
years
of each other. All have a
connection to the British
court,
and all can be related to a circle of
gardeners
who worked
under Brown.24
The
style
of all these
gardens
is
rather
contemporaneous
without being
typical
for Brown. It
may
be
possible
that
gardens
like David Garrick's at Twickenham
on the Thames or
Bushy
House at
Hampton
Court could also have been influential for
German
garden-makers.
A
general
difference has to be seen in the
relatively
small size of
the German
gardens,
which cannot be
easily compared
with the vast
landscapes
Brown
produced
for the British
gentry.
The three German
gardens
under discussion were created in the
I770s,
but
they
never
became
really popular, although they
were the most modern
gardens
in
Germany
at the
time. Most of the other German
gardens
followed a scheme with
strong
similarities to the
Kensington gardens
or the earlier
stage
of Richmond until the
I76os:
small, rectangular
bosquets
with
serpentine paths through them, interrupted by alleys. Furthermore,
the
rococo influence created a
strong predilection
for
statues,
small
buildings
and
inscriptions
among Germans,
who loved to read the
iconographic meaning
of
gardens.
This makes it
understandable
why antiquated gardens
such as Stowe or Stourhead were so
popular
among
continental
travellers. All of the derivative
sentimental
gardens
such as Sei-
fersdorfer Tal near
Dresden,
Worlitz,
Machern,
Hohenheim and
Schwetzingen,
to name
but a
few, give
evidence in their
composition
that indicates that nature was less
important
to their
patrons
than architectural
showpieces,
which
distinguishes
them from British
gardens.
In contrast to these overloaded
gardens,
the modern
English conceptions
in
Braunschweig,
Gotha and Hohenzieritz must have seemed like a Modern Movement
house: nature in its most embellished
forms,
native trees
(Hohenzieritz)
and no or
very
few
buildings, grand shapes
without unmotivated
serpentine paths. Contemporary
German taste must have found these
gardens supremely boring.
It is no wonder that Duke
Carl,
when he was enthroned in
1794,
wanted to erect several
new
edifices in his
garden:
a
mosque,
a
hermitage,
an
orangery,
a waterfall and others.25
Still,
the
precious style
of these sentimental
gardens
remained
popular
until the
Napoleonic
wars. At the same time that
Gotha,
Richmond and Hohenzieritz were laid
out,
Friedrich
Ludwig
von Sckell went to
England.
He was
apprenticed
at Kew and was
the first
gardener
in
Germany
to transfer Brown's ideas to
Germany
at the end of the
eighteenth century.26
He led the German
landscape garden away
from the
literary impulse
to a foundation based on the
gardener's
art.
Although
there
might
have been some closer
influences,
Brown's
style
of
gardening
never became
popular
in
Germany.
It
was,
as the next
generation noted,
not
sufficiently
picturesque. Strangely enough,
all three
gardens
survived the last
230 years essentially
intact. This could mean the belated
triumph
of a
style
that was
highly
esteemed in
Germany during
the nineteenth
century,
and was associated with such
great
names as
Peter
Joseph
Lenne and Hermann Prince
Puckler-Muskau.
These three
gardens
still
survive and remain of
public
interest. Several events
during
the
past
few
years
indicate
that well-considered conservation of these
English landscape gardens
in
Germany
is
long
overdue.
34
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THE GERMAN LEGACY
REFERENCES
1
Dorothy Stroud, Capability
Brown
(London:
Faber &
Faber, 1975),
246.
2
I thank
John
Phibbs who found the note written
by
Lutterloh
among
the Packenham
correspondence
in the British
Library.
3
Marcus
Kohler,
'Friedrich Karl von
Hardenberg's (I696-I763) journeys
to
England
and
his contributions to the
English landscape garden
to
Germany',
Garden
History, 25 (I997),
z22-i8.
4 Gert Adriani, 'Schlogf
Richmond', Grof?e
Baudenkmdler, 204 (1966); Franz-Joseph
Christiani,
Schlof/
Richmond
(Braunschweig, I984);
Heinz-
Joachim Tute,
'Der
Landschaftspark
am Schlo6chen
Richmond',
ed. Stadt
Braunschweig.
Gartendenkmalpflege (Braunschweig, I987).
5 Christian
Cay
Laurentz
Hirschfeld,
Theorie der
Gartenkunst
(Leipzig:
M. G.
Weidmanns, 1782), V,
317-I9;
Carl
Ribbentrop, Vollstandige
Beschreibung
der Stadt
Braunschweig,
znd edn
(Braunschweig:
Meyer, 1796),
BS
1796,
Bd
2, pp. 4-I4:
'Der Garten
... ist von dem Furstlichen
Gartner,
Herrn
G6tze,
nach
vorgelegten
Planen im
englischen
Geschmack
angelegt' (a
visit in
I785).
6
Roy Strong, Royal
Gardens
(London:
Oman/
BBC
Books, 1992),
65.
7
Not to mention the fantastic twelve
examples
of
'Botanical
tables, containing
the different families of
British
plants
. ..' dedicated to
Queen
Charlotte
c.I785.
8 'That is
my paradise
where
nothing
is
missing,
when I had been
really.
How
lucky
I will be
having
such moment
again'; Ernst, 4 April 1770, Royal
Archives,
Windsor
Castle,
RA
GEO/5z56of.
This and
other material from the
Royal
Archives at Wondsor
is used
by permission
of Her
Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II.
9
RA
GEO/5259if.; 52602,
z
June 1774,
Celle.
10
Hirschfeld,
Theorie der
Gartenkunst, III, 251;
Rolf
Kirsch,
Friihe
Landschaftsgdrten
im
niedersdchsischen Raum
(Gottingen: Cuvillier, 1993),
43-4.
11 RA
GEO/52573f.
Carl
planned
a
journey
to
Enland and visits Richmond in the summer of
1771
(52576),
followed
by
his brother the
following year
(52588).
12
RA
GEO/5z56of., Georgian Papers:
Ernst on
4
April 1770
sends a book of trees to the
king
and
writes: 'je
sais combien votre
Majeste
aime cette
branche du
jardinage',
and about
Richmond;
and RA
GEO/52538f.:
in
c.I766,
Carl
exchanges
with the
king
ideas of
economy, hunting
and
gardening.
13
Diary
of
Jobst
Anton v.
Hiniber,
MS
[no title],
1766/67, 418, Family
Archive v.
Hintiber,
Hanover-
Burgdorf.
14
RA
GEO/5z598f.
15
For his
biography,
see Curtis Botanical
Magazine, 47 (I8zo), 2143:
Petandria
Monogynia
Azalea calendulacea- discovered
by John Bartram,
grown by Thomson;
Blanche
Henrey,
British
Botanical and Horticultural Literature
Before
800o
(London:
Oxford
University Press, 1975), II, 352f.;
Gardener's
Magazine (1832), 256:
Archibald
Thomson.
16
Stroud, Capability Brown, I33f.
He was not
only
a botanist
gardener,
but also
responsible
for the
pleasure garden
as a bill
shows;
Bedfordshire Record
Office, G/DDA/I53/I,
6 December
I777(?).
17
See also Hustaed Hohenzieritz and Hohenzieritz
Konrad,
Neustrelitz I910 (I924/2); Georg Krtiger,
Mecklenburg-Strelitzer
Kunst- und
Geschichtsdenkmaler
(1921),
bd
i/i, 103-12;
and
Christine
Hinz, Parklandschaft
Hohenzieritz
(Museum
der Stadt
Neustrelitz, 1988).
18 Michael Dane et al. '8z
Schloflpark
Gotha
Thuringen. Denkmalpflegerische Zielstellung
(Weimar, i999).
19
Ginther
Thimm,
Gdrten und Parks in
Thuiringen (Marburg: Hitzeroth, I992), 60;
for the
plants,
see
Hirschfeld,
Theorie der
Gartenkunst, IV,
238.
20 I am very
grateful
for the
unpublished
information
supplied by Justin Baker,
London. In
Soane's notebook is marked a notice on a drawn
map
of
Hannover-Herrenhausen,
which Haverfield lend
to Soane in
I813 (S. notebooks).
It is
quite likely
that
he never lost contact with German
garden
art.
21
Written
by
the Gotha librarian
Reichard;
Hirschfeld,
Theorie der
Gartenkunst, IV, 234.
22
'I drove to the
park
where we went out to see the
grave/tomb-Island
in the lake. One is carried
by
a
small
ferry....
The three dukes lie on different
places
but all
very
close to each
other, fully
covered
with
flowers,
which makes a
pretty
and
peaceful
effect. An old
gardener
named Eiserbeck who is there
since a
long
time said that our beloved Grandmother
want to be buried
there'; Stroud, Capability Brown,
23,
n.i6.
23 Ludmilla
Assing, Briefwechsel
und
Tagebucher
des Fursten Hermann von Puckler-Muskau
(Hamburg:
Hoffmann &
Campe), II, 322.
24
Landgrafin Mary
of
Hessen-Cassel,
sister of
Princess
Augusta,
was also keen on
gardening.
The
connections to
England
are not
very
well researched.
25
It
goes
back to a
spectacular
find of slavic
sculptures (Prillwitzer Idole)
near Hohenzieritz in
1772,
which
proves
the
existing
Rhetra that was
immediately compared
as a German Herculaneum
and
very important
for the
growing
national interest.
Andreas Gottlieb
Masch,
Die
gottesdienstlichen
Alterthtmer...
(Berlin:
Daniel
Wogen, I77I),
i
(dedicated
to
Queen Charlotte).
26
Together perhaps
with the
architect-gardener
Joseph
Ramee.
35
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