3. - Schlösser-Magazin

IV.
200
IV. Report on the Historical Importance
The Historical Significance of the Electoral
Residence at Schwetzingen
Schwetzingen is a palace that was used by
the Prince Electors of the Palatinate as a
hunting lodge as well as a subsidiary, summer
and alternative residence for around four
centuries, in the course of which it developed
under the sway of manifold cultural
influences from all over Europe and beyond.
The rich heritage of its extensive gardens
bears witness to the status and importance of
the Palatine Electors as princes of European
rather than merely German standing.
It all began with a small moated castle
belonging to aristocratic liegemen, knights in
the service of the counts palatine, which in
1427 passed into the possession of the Prince
Electors residing at Heidelberg, a dynasty
that since the fourteenth-century had steadily
risen to supremacy in the northern reaches
of the Upper Rhine, possessing the most
splendid court to be found far and wide, and
effectively commanding the position of kings.
The reason for this was their membership
of the exclusive circle of those who had the
right to elect kings, together with the office
of Imperial Seneschal. The Counts Palatine
of the Rhine, furthermore, had long held the
office of Imperial Vicar and were entitled
to sit in judgment over the King in the
Frankish-law territories, and could boast that
one of their own, Count Palatine Rupert III
(1398-1400) even held the German throne,
reigning for ten years after coming to power
as „Rupert of Germany“ in 1400. In addition,
the Prince Electors, who enjoyed abundant
revenue from the numerous road and Rhine
tolls they imposed over and above the regular
territorial taxes, exercised many prerogatives
over neighbouring princes, counts, gentry and
knights, claiming escorts, serfs, capture and
resettlement of individuals travelling through,
bastard succession, alluvial rights, and many
more privileges that extended beyond the
bounds of their own highly fragmented
territory into the surrounding lands, thus
confirming the hegemonial status of the
Palatine Counts.
There is evidence that the Prince Electors
stayed at Schwetzingen from as early as 1467,
from the time of Frederick the Victorious
(1449-1476), during whose reign the Palatinate
attained its late-mediaeval zenith. It was
during this period that the castle gardens were
extended for the first time, their use having
originally been limited to that of a herb
garden for the castle kitchen. In the 1530s
and 1540s the castle was extended to form a
three-winged palace of symmetrical design
with the cour d‘honneur that is still in place
today.
In the third quarter of the seventeenthcentury,
at at time when the Palatinate was in
the process of recovering from the devastation
wrought by the Thirty Years War, the palace
at Schwetzingen, reconstructed in 1655-58,
was home over a lengthy period of time to
Prince Elector Charles Louis (1649-1680),
who resided there with his morganatic wife
Luise von Degenfeld. It was this same Charles
Louis, son of the British princess Elizabeth
Stuart, who was responsible for restoring the
Palatinate to its former pre-eminence after
the fiasco of 1618-1621 brought about by
his father Frederick V, the „Winter King“ of
Bohemia. The fact that Charles Louis was
able to marry his daughter Elizabeth Charlotte
(1652-1721), popularly known as „Liselotte“,
to the brother of Louis XIV, the French „Sun
King“, is evidence of the renewed esteem
enjoyed by the Palatinate and the Palatine
princes among the European monarchy;
but the new-found glory was shortlived:
this marriage also triggered the Orleans
War of 1688-93, in which the Palatinate was
devastated anew, much more thoroughly so
than it had been two generations earlier in the
Thirty Years War. The palace and gardens
at Schwetzingen were among the many sites
ruined in the war.