Nature and Ideology: Natural Garden Design in ... - Dumbarton Oaks

“TEUTONIC” TRENDS
This racist idea, held by Wiepking and others, of a specific German feeling for landscape
beauty and nature, and the search for national identity and for links from present German society
to the ancient Germanic tribes, had a considerable impact on landscape design during National
Socialism. The study of prehistoric Germanic landscapes became an important part of Wiepking’s
curriculum. Many of his students wrote their master’s theses on related topics. One of these
studies was carried out by Werner Lendholt (1912–80), who later was Wiepking’s successor at the
University of Hannover. Wiepking introduced Lendholt’s work in 1937 to the readership of the
magazine Gartenkunst, the most influential landscape architecture magazine in Germany at that
time, as follows:
Mr. Lendholt had the task of proving, on the basis of the large-scale map of Hohenzieritz,
that our ancestors already during the Bronze Age had a highly developed sense of landscape
beauty and that they were already landscape designers. The task of Mr. Lendholt is part of
the investigation of the entire Ur-Germanic space with regard to these aspects. His work
produced wonderful confirmations. We know now that we possess an ancient culture, and
we know that the Germanic idea of Midgart does not belong merely to the world of
myths 43 (Fig. 6).
It need only be mentioned here that Lendholt did not have the task of investigating whether the
ancestors of the German people “had a highly developed sense of landscape beauty” but “the task
of proving” it. This serves as one of numerous examples that provide evidence of Wiepking’s
unscholarly and doctrinaire way of teaching.
These remarks may suffice to explain the ideological background for the design of the
Grove of the Saxons and the Places of the Ancestors at Hilligenloh and Seelenfeld, the sites that
are discussed below.
The Places of the Ancestors at Hilligenloh and Seelenfeld
The Grove of the Saxons and the cemeteries of Hilligenloh and Seelenfeld are situated in
the northern part of Germany: the Sachsenhain near Verden on the river Aller, the Seelenfeld
cemetery between Minden and Nienburg, and Hilligenloh near Oldenburg. These regions are
characterized by agricultural use and heather landscapes that contain numerous examples of
ancient Germanic burial sites. The cemeteries of Seelenfeld and Hilligenloh were laid out around
1930 by members of the so-called Tannenberg League and the German People’s Parish, two
volkish organizations which were closely interwoven. The Tannenberg League was founded in
August 1925 by Erich Ludendorff, a “leading German general in the First World War (and) coleader
of the Munich beer hall putsch.” 44 Ludendorff’s Tannenberg League was part of a movement
that “advocated some form of national socialism which was at times more ‘volkish,’ more
‘consciously German,’ more ‘national bolshevist’ than the rather vaguely defined nationalization
plans of the NSDAP.” 45 Ludendorff’s wife Mathilde (1877–1966) established the so-called Ger-
43 H. Fr. Wiepking-Jürgensmann, “Über die Umwelt des deutschen Volkes,” Gartenkunst 50 (1937), 2, 43.
44 P. Rees, Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right since 1890, New York, 1990, 2,238.
45 Hermand, Old Dreams, 123.
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