3. - Schlösser-Magazin

VI.
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VI. Interpretation of the Palace Gardens as a whole: Dr. Michael Niedermeier
Italy in 1774 and 1785, about which he was
most enthusiastic. As was the case with other
princes of the time, the classical garden follies
as well as the exotic (oriental, Chinese, Tahitic,
etc.) and Gothic-style ones did not primarily
make their way into the Prince Elector’s
gardens fortuitously, as the fruit of a passion
for collecting or on account of a claim to have a
mission to educate the masses. They were often
also monuments to the ruler’s own (fictitious)
genealogy, which set out to position their own
dynasty in an impressive line of tradition and to
adorn the landscape with “genuine” monuments,
imaginative reconstructions and structures made
artificially to look like ruins, to act as proof of
their claim to eternity.
The Jesuits, such as the court astronomer and
professor of mathematics, Father Christian
Meyer (whose observatory was very significantly
located on the roof of Schwetzingen Palace), and
the Prince Elector’s tutor and confidant, Father
Franz Seedorf (who lived in a sumptuous house
in Schwetzingen just in front of the palace,
known today as “Palais Hirsch”), maintained
that there was a universal claim to knowledge,
spanning everywhere in space and time. For
the Jesuits, who were steeped in Renaissance
knowledge, all the various stages of development
of society, the regions of the world, religions and
philosophies were, in principle, comparable in
their various appearances and characteristics
and, in the final analysis, all stood for God’s one
and only revelation. Since, having espoused
these premises, the Jesuits were then able to
adapt to ruling foreign cultures, they were
amongst the first to be in a position to research
and understand such cultures and to bring
the first viable findings from the most remote
parts of the world to Europe. In this way, they
also managed to research and explain foreign
civilisations and other periods of time, such
as ancient Egypt. One of their most influential
intellects, Father Athanasius Kircher, “the last
of the universal scholars”, tried through mystic
intuition and his own enormous breadth of
knowledge, including that of specialist fields, to
produce an overview of the cultures and to give
them legibility. Starting with ancient theology,
he thus managed to compile a comparative
study of the religions and the world, in which he
interpreted the artefacts of all peoples as forms
of expression of Christian or divine beliefs.
Kircher saw the polytheism and idolatry of the
Egyptians as the origin of Greek and Roman
religion and also as the starting point for the
beliefs of the later Hebrews, the Chaldeans, the
Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Turks and
the American Indians. 30 Given that all tribes and
all knowledge were descended from Adam and
Noah, they all had a share in the same primeval
tradition and were all inspired by the same
“Holy Ghost” (a mirror image of this familygenealogical
structure has also existed since the
Renaissance as regards the origins of the old
princely ruling houses of Europe and even as
regards the genealogy of the popes in the Holy
See). 31
IV. Playing with antique, natural/mystic and
arcane motifs and symbols is significant for
many early “English” gardens in the Old Empire
in the second half of the eighteenth-century
(including Sanssouci, Gotha, Wörlitz, Neuer
Garten, Hohenzieritz, Machern, Neuwaldsegg,
Vöslau and Schönau), but there is evidence
of the same phenomenon too for various
British, Polish, French and Russian gardens.
Iconography and symbolic references to do
with Freemasonry have also been ascribed to
Schwetzingen Gardens for some time now. 32 It
was, however, an exceptional situation for the
30 Cf. Thomas Leinkauf: Mundus combinatus. Studien zur
Struktur der barocken Universalwissenschaft am Beispiel Athanasius
Kirchers SJ (1602-1680). Berlin 1993; Joscelyn Godwin:
Athanasius Kircher. A Renaissance man and the quest for lost
knowledge. London 1979. (German edition: Berlin 1994)
31 Cf. for example B. A. Kircher: Arca Noé. Amsterdam 1675, p.
140. – Cf. also: Alfred Schröcker: Die deutsche Genealogie im
17. Jahrhundert zwischen Herrscherlob und Wissenschaft.
Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von G. W. Leibniz. In:
Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 59, 1977, pp. 432ff.; Genealogie als
Denkform in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Edited by Kilian
Heck and Bernhard Jahn. Tübingen 2000. Michael Niedermeier:
Altertümer und Artefakte. Patriotische Baukunst im frühen
Landschaftsgarten und ihr Wandel um 1800. In: Klassizismus
– Gotik. Karl Friedrich Schinkel und die patriotische Baukunst.
Edited by Annette Dorgerloh, Michael Niedermeier and
Horst Bredekamp with the participation of Axel Klausmeier.
München 2007, p. 17-42
32 Carl Ludwig Fuchs, Claus Reisinger: Schloss und Garten
zu Schwetzingen. Worms 2001, pp. 177-184; Symbolism in
18th-century gardens. The Influence of Intellectual and Esoteric
Currents, such as Freemasonry. Edited by Jan A.M. Snoek,
Monika Scholl und Andréa A. Kroon. The Hague 2006