3. - Schlösser-Magazin

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VI. Interpretation of the Palace Gardens as a whole: Dr. Michael Niedermeier
those striving for knowledge. Nor is it to be
excluded that, in an age of the overrefinement
and stylisation of royal courts, it was important to
be able to enjoy the fun of allusions and secrets,
whilst remaining within the constraints to be
cautious for political and moral reasons. The
inscriptions might thus make both direct and
indirect statements and convey both tangible
and abstract references, which only the initiated
would be able to understand in full.” 58 Similar
situations might well also apply to the temple of
Botany, which can be understood as the temple
of Ceres/Persephone, the so-called “Arboricum
Theodoricum” or the Roman water fort. If Carl
Theodor had wanted to reunite the alienated
Christian churches in a single global concord
church, then he might well have considered ideas
close to the synchretising and combinational
views of the Jesuits, who saw a part of divine
wisdom in all cultures, peoples and religion. In
times of warmongering tensions between enemy
camps in which the Prince Elector also wanted to
be sure of lasting memorials in the countryside
to himself and his pedigree, the combinational,
analogy-based language of metaphors, as had
been devised by the Jesuits, linking in with the
cultural and religious traditions, crossing the
divides between denominations and camps,
would have been a binding system of codes that
all would have understood. That Schwetzingen
Gardens (like hardly any others) have survived
all the ravages of time essentially unscathed and
have maintained the balance between baroque
and landscaped elements exactly as Carl Theodor
had imagined them for his monument as Prince
Elector meant that, as early as 1828, John Claudius
Loudon, the author of the garden encyclopaedia,
considered them to be the “most splendid” and
“most delightful gardens in Germany (…).” 59
Berlin, November 2009
PD Dr. Michael Niedermeier
58 Udo Simon: Die arabischen Inschriften der Moschee im
Schwetzinger Schlossgarten. In: Symbolism in 18th-century
gardens. The Hague 2006, pp. 189-202, here p. 201
59 John Claudius Loudon: An encyclopaedia of gardening. New
edition London 1850, pp. 143-146