II. - Schloss Schwetzingen

The Schwetzingen grounds provide new food
for thought regarding the development of
garden art too. Hitherto the landscape garden
was considered a formal representation of
masonic iconography. At Schwetzingen it
becomes evident that both the French garden,
with its traditional array of sculptures, and the
landscape garden, with its carefully arranged
“fabriques” are capable of expressing very
complex masonic ideas.
Schwetzingen was chosen by Carl Theodor to
be his summer residence; here he stayed in
the company of selected guests, who delighted
in discovering the garden’s hidden secrets.
It is not electoral power and glory that is
displayed here; instead there emerges, in
carefully chosen images, a different, “secret”
and “forbidden” belief. Of course there was
also the Mannheim residence that spoke of
Carl Theodor’s political power and status in
the grand, sweeping gestures appropriate to
the Elector.
The blazing star on the dial of the palace
front’s clock, no longer complete today, and
the incorrectly executed star symbols in the
newly renovated mosque are proof, that a
cultural monument can be preserved only if it
is understood. For that reason further research
is indispensable.
The grounds of Schwetzingen Palace are
among the very few lavishly decorated and artistically
valuable European gardens of the late
18th century, that have retained their original
appearance to the present day. Moreover, the
garden is a unique monument of Freemasonry
that has no equal in all of Europe.
(Monika Scholl, Jan Snoek & Andréa Kroon)
II. Schwetzingen – A Prince Elector’s Eighteenth-Century Summer Residence
II.
Fig. 20: Masonic carpet,
copperplate engraving from:
Leonard Gabanon, La Desolation
des Entrepreneurs modernes
du Temple de Jerusalem ou
Nouveau Catechisme des
Francs-Macons, 1747 (private
property).
Fig. 21: Schwetzingen Palace,
clock on the west (garden) front.
The hands and the painted
dial form a “blazing star” motif
(photo: Förderer).
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