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Berlin’s Tiergarten is one of the most important historical parks in Germany.Its social and cultural history has been documented in numerouspaintings and graphic artworks since the Age of Enlightenment.From about the middle of the 18th century, the citizens of Berlin soughtrecreation in the nearby and easily-accessible Tiergarten at the gates of thecity. At the same time, artists attended to a previously unknown genre andbegan depicting ‘moral values against a landscape background’. Thus,artists began contemplating the ‘Großer Tiergarten’ and its late baroqueworks, which had just been completed by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff(1699–1753).In contrast to the 19th century style of presenting monuments accordingto a strict pattern of grids, decorative paving and decorative flowers andtrees, the statue of Venus stood almost incidentally at the southern frontend of the basin. The statue of Flora at the Zeltenplatz (‘Marquee Square’)was positioned in a similar manner. This unspectacular positioningimproved the recreational areas in a simple, yet impressive fashion. Thepopular figure of Venus was not removed until the beginning of the 20thcentury, when it was replaced by the much more ‘elaborate’ Monument tothe Composers. Knobelsdorff created his late baroque spatial inventionswith a minimum of materials. He achieved impressive effects with a clearing,framed geometrically by trees and shrubs, sometimes complementedby trained trees, rhythmically arranged, and rounded off with a mythologicalfigure in the centre. The Zeltenplatz is an example of how he createdvedute-style framed views of the countryside beyond the landscaped elements.As a people’s park, some areas of the Tiergarten offered citizens ahigh recreational value as early as the 18th century.Towards the end of the 18th century, sentimental parks grew in popularity,as did their quality of artistic expression. The first purely landscaped sectionof the Tiergarten was built by court gardener Sello the Younger in 1792. ByRousseau-Insel, 18. Jahrhundert