3. - Schlösser-Magazin

Garden Mosques
The mosque, built 1782-95, is the largest of the
buildings in the Schwetzingen grounds, and
was preceded by the Ambulatory (cloister).
The first reference to a Turkish Garden dates
from 1774. 83 From 1779 an ambulatory with
pavilions took shape in this jardin turc, to be
finished by 1784. Work on the actual mosque
building started in 1782, 84 that is to say only
after Elector Carl Theodor had moved to
Munich. 85 By 1786 all facades of the main
building were finished, as were the dome
and the quarter-circle walls connecting the
structure with the minarets. 86
The Ambulatory itself already represents
contemporaneous ideas of what a mosque
building looked like; the similarities with
the depictions and descriptions of the holy
sites of Mecca 87 in Fischer von Erlach’s book
”Entwurf einer historischen Architektur“ (A
Plan of Civil and Historical Architecture) are
as unmistakable as the similarity of the corner
pavilions with the mosque built by William
Chambers at Kew Gardens.
The mosque itself, a building just outside the
”cloister“, enlarges the iconographic spectrum
– it is a fairly autonomous structure with a
temple-like portico and Baroque dome, and
represents the attitudes, based on the ideal of
tolerance, of the patron, Carl Theodor of the
Palatinate. In its embodiment of the changed
intellectual and political attitudes towards
the Orient it leaves others, merely decorative
garden buildings behind.
The Model at Kew Gardens
The architectural type of the garden mosque
that spread throughout Europe in the second
half of the 18th-century originated at Kew
Gardens near London, seat of the Crown
83 Wiltrud Heber: Die Arbeiten des Nicolas de Pigage in den ehemals
kurpfälzischen Residenzen Mannheim und Schwetzingen,
Part II. Darmstadt 1986, p. 595.
84 The term ”Mosqué“ first appeared in the building documents in
1782. Heber 1986, p. 596.
85 Heber 1986, pp. 596-600. See also Claus Reisinger: Der
Schloßgarten zu Schwetzingen, Gerlingen 1987, pp. 63sqq.
86 Reisinger 1987, p. 63.
87 An image of the “Prospect von einen theil der großen Stadt
Mecha“ can be found in Harald Keller (ed.): Johann Bernhard
Fischer von Erlach. Entwurf einer historischen Architektur.
Dortmund 1978, p. 90.
3. Justification for Inscription
Prince, Frederick Prince of Wales, and later of
his widow, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg.
In the landscape garden, laid out from 1730,
a number of exotic structures were built
from plans by Sir William Chambers; the
idea was to have a microcosm of the world’s
civilisations contained within the garden.
The main attraction, besides numerous other
follies, was provided by three sensational
buildings – the pagoda, the alhambra and
the mosque, of which today only the pagoda
(constructed 1761) remains. The mosque
was the first example of Turkish-“Oriental“
architecture in a landscape garden; it
appeared in numerous publications and
from 1763 onwards became well known on
the European continent, too. Chambers took
the inspiration for his numerous buildings
from his travels but also from the depictions
in Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s
influential book of copperplate engravings
published in 1721, A Plan of Civil and
Historical Architecture, the first attempt at a
universal history of the world’s architecture.
Compared to the Schwetzingen building the
3.
William Chambers, view of the
Mosque at Kew, 1763
(Plans, elevations, and
perspective views of the
gardens and buildings at Kew
in Surry, London 1763).
107