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

“TEUTONIC” TRENDS
25. Groundplan of the Grove of the
Saxons (from R. Berkelmann,
“Der Sachsenhain bei Verden
a. d. Aller,” Gartenkunst 50
[1937], 125)
naturally a floodplain for the nearby river Aller. The whole area has been shielded from the Aller
by a dam but is, nevertheless, flooded time and again. One might interpret this as emblematic of
the fall of National Socialism; one has to interpret it as an indication of how landscape architects
consciously tried to create—against natural conditions—“natural”-looking landscapes, then suggested
they would be proof of the close-to-nature relation of the Germans, and, as was done for
the Grove of the Saxons, stated that the whole site would have “developed out of the natural
conditions.” 63
The center of the Grove of the Saxons is the so-called small thingstead (Fig. 26) with the two
“leader’s pulpits” (Fig. 27), overshadowed by huge beech trees. In front of these pulpits a small
rivulet, the Halsebach, flows to the river Aller. In the middle of this site is a council ring, a
campfire built of boulders. The remaining large meadow was intended to serve as a big thingstead
for special parades. At the north end of the oval are situated three farmhouses, which were moved
from other parts of northern Germany to the Grove of the Saxons and rebuilt there in 1935.
It has been shown above why the use of rocks and boulders, as George Mosse describes it in
his book Fallen Soldiers, “was thought especially apt as a monument, singled out as symbolic of
63 Cf. R. Berkelmann, “Der Sachsenhain bei Verden a. d. Aller,” Gartenkunst 50 (1937), 128. There is nothing
wrong with the artificial creation of natural-looking landscapes; it only shows how manipulatively claims for an assumed
close relationship of the German people to nature were used by German landscape architects.
213