3. - Schlösser-Magazin

VI.
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VI. Interpretation of the Palace Gardens as a whole: Dr. Michael Niedermeier
and who, in 1777, was even elevated to the
rank of “electoral privy councillor” and the true
“spiritual privy councillor in Mannheim”. Frank,
who also enjoyed the Prince Elector’s absolute
trust in matters going beyond questions of
belief, acted from that time on as a spearhead of
the censorship of Enlightenment works and the
fanatical persecutor of the enlightened order of
Illuminati. In 1784/85, the Prince Elector ordered
the disbanding throughout his territories of
the secret society of the Illuminati, which had
started with Professor Adam Weisshaupt of
the former Jesuit university of Ingolstadt and
which, with its decidedly anti-Jesuit thrust, had
the reputation of wanting to undermine the
lodges and the institutions of the state in the
interest of foreign powers. This was followed by
tough measures against its members, who were
sacked from all public offices and persecuted.
The Illuminati branch, which had been founded
in 1782, had about twenty members in each
of Mannheim and Heidelberg, while the order
of the Illuminati in Munich even held two
so-called “Minerva churches”, with more than
two hundred members. The actual centre of
the society in Germany was in Munich up until
its prohibition in 1785. Its intention was to
penetrate the Freemasons’ lodges with a view
to taking control of them and steering them. 36
The ancient gods, Minerva and Mercury, had
a predominant position in the imagery used
by the Freemasons, the secret societies and the
Jesuits.
Along with the temple of Minerva, with its
mysterious underground cellar, it is the temple
of Mercury that is the feature in Schwetzingen
Gardens that has had the greatest significance
ascribed to it on many occasions. In his guide
to the gardens, Zeyher refers to a temple of
36 Cf. for example: „Fortgang der Illuminatenverfolgung in
Baiern; Etwas zum Trost für Freymäurer und Illuminaten. Aus
Brantoms Biographie oder Lobrede der Catharina von Medicis,
Gemahlin Heinrich II. Königs von Frankreich“. In: Journal von
und für Deutschland, 2nd annual vol., 1785, pp. 196ff.; On the
utopian potential of the illuminati: Adam Weisshaupt: Grössere
Mysterien. In: Johann Joachim Christoph Bode: Journal von
einer Reise von Weimar nach Frankreich im Jahr 1787; including
an introduction, comments, a register and a documentary
annex by Hermann Schüttler. Munich 1994, p. 372. Richard
van Dülmen: Der Geheimbund der Illuminaten. Darstellung,
Analyse, Dokumentation. Stuttgart 1975, pp. 25, 90, 339 and
393; Hermann Schüttler: Die Mitglieder des Illuminatenordens
1776-1787/93. Munich 1991, pp. 214ff
Mercury reputed to have stood on the site of the
cathedral buildings of St. Johannes /St. Guidon
in Speyer (Spires) in the Upper Rhineland. He
also claims that in Heidelberg, where Roman
monuments had already been discovered over a
long period of time up until then, the Romans
had erected a fort and a temple of Mercury on
the “holy mountain”. 37 Father Christian Meyer,
the astronomer and mathematician who had
studied under the Jesuits, whom Prince Elector
Carl Theodor had appointed court astronomer in
1761 and for whom he had had an observatory
with a moveable roof and equipped with
English instruments built on the palace roof in
Schwetzingen in 1763, kindled Carl Theodor’s
enthusiasm for observing the planet Mercury. A
year earlier than that, Carl Theodor, whom the
guide to the gardens refers to panegyrically as
“the German Salomon” 38 , had made the gardens
into the place for observing Mercury’s transit
across the sun: “In 1762, at the time of the
transit across the sun by the Planet Mercury,
Carl Theodor, Prince Elector of the Palatinate,
had a small wooden observatory erected
on this spot [the open space in front of the
orangery], where the scholarly Jesuit and court
astronomer, Christian Mayer [sic!], observed this
strange occurrence in our planetary system.” 39
This event, which occurs approximately every
ten years and which used to be of central
importance, lives on in tradition, and it is also
known that it is necessary to have a specially
equipped telescope to be able to see it.
A statue of Mercury by Gabriel de Grupello was
erected in the southern angloise, right next to
the temple of Minerva. It had the attributes
of a winged hat, winged feet, a cockerel and a
caduceus (staff) with intertwined snakes (of
which only the staff remains distinguishable
today). The origins of the temple of Mercury
can be seen as evidence that the gods featured
in Schwetzingen Gardens were more than a
fortuitous late-baroque collection and had a
broader significance ascribed to them in the
37 Zeyher [1820], pp. 11 and 14
38 Zeyher [1820], p. 53
39 Zeyher [1820], p. 152