II. - Schloss Schwetzingen

DER MINERVATEMPEL
Ernst Bloch, 1973.
gest. von Haldenwang
„ “
Most beautiful is the palace garden at Schwetzingen. Along with the reeded ponds and the urns,
all that is memorable in the world has been collected here in the shape of facades and dummies
– a green exhibition hall. An exhibition hall, however, that presents nothing but moods and
fantasies given voice, a natural treasury full of artifi cial, imagined valuables. […] This was the
pleasure garden of princes, the stage of courtly masques and promenades, yet at the same time, a
breath of rapture, of a fantastic remoteness lingers. Susanna’s aria from the Marriage of Figaro
lives right here, the nobility of Mozart’s music is heard in these gardens next to the fl amboyance
that creates its curious artifi cial world from history, mythology, foreign parts. And among all the
empty facades these gardens are always furnished with, one is always missing, that of a church.
Instead it is Arcadia that is represented – in the Baroque garden an Arcadia full of curiosities, in
the English garden one with Zephyrus, nocturne and a crescent moon.