II. - Schloss Schwetzingen

nymous author of one garden guidebook put
it in 1830.
The garden of the summer residence in particular,
opened to the public by Carl Theodor
early in his reign, completed despite the
fact that the court had moved to Munich in
the meantime, and further enriched by features
like the mosque and the Temple of Mercury
since then, became a magnet for cultureloving
tourists. In this way, the Schwetzingen
garden became one of a number of exquisite
European gardens, familiar to the public because
they were open to the public. Versailles
had been publicly accessible in the time of
Louis XIV, the royal gardens at London had
been opened during the 17th century as well;
the rules of conduct for visitors of the Herrenhausen
park date from 1720, those for Charlottenburg
from 1741 and those for Brühl
from 1748. 7
Schwetzingen in Travel Literature
Once the electoral residence had been moved
to Munich in 1778, the reasons for visiting
Schwetzingen changed. People no longer
came for the sake of the court, but for that of
the fi ne former residence and its beautiful gardens.
The descriptions of the palace and grounds
in visitors’ letters, journals and memoirs grew
longer. Schubart’s enthusiastic response to the
garden was shared by young Friedrich Hölderlin,
who came visiting in the course of his
fi ve-day tour of the Palatinate in the Pentecostal
holidays of 1788. In a letter to his mother
he wrote enthusiastically: “I had to get up at
four o’clock again, and at fi ve I was sitting in
the coach, to the relief of my weary limbs. We
crossed the Rhine again, and a few hours later
we reached the famous electoral pleasure
gardens at Schwetzingen. It is no use describing
them. You would have to see the whole
splendour for yourself – the beautiful works
of art, the exquisite paintings, the building,
the water features and so on – if you want to
get an idea of it. I’ll name just one detail. They
7 Clemens Alexander Wimmer, Geschichte der Gartentheorie,
Darmstadt 1989, p. 436.
III. Schwetzingen – Historical Context
have a Turkish mosque (a temple) here; some
people might not even notice it among all these
beauties, but I liked it best of them all. The
whole thing is like Hohenheim and the Solitude
taken together, as far as I am concerned.“ 8
If travelling constituted an ideal opportunity
for self-education in the spirit of Enlightenment
and promised a wealth of experiences,
a garden constituted an ideal travelling de-
8 Letter to his mother (Brief an die Mutter aus der Zeit vom
6-15. Juni 1788, Nr. 23). Adolf Beck (ed.), Friedrich Hölderlin,
Sämtliche Werke, Vol. 6: Briefe, Stuttgart 1954, p. 32.
Hölderlin may be referring to the mosque in the garden
of Hohenheim, which was built 1778. Cp. Andrea Berger-
Fix/Klaus Merten, Die Gärten der Herzöge von Württemberg
im 18. Jahrhundert (= exhibition catalogue), Worms 1981.
Catalogue No. 15: Hohenheim mosque.
III.
Fig. 1: Front page of the
guidebook written by Garden
Director Johann Michael Zeyher,
c.1824 (original: Schlossbibliothek
Schwetzingen).
Fig. 2: Notes about Schwetzingen
in Leopold Mozart’s
travelling journal (From:
Leopold Pelker 2004, p. 26).
157