3. - Schlösser-Magazin

2. 2.b)
26
2. Description
History and Development
Early History
Schwetzingen’s history can be traced back
to the Neolithic period (c. 5000 BC). Finds
from the Celtic (300 BC), the Suebi Nicrenses
(100 AD) and the Merovingioan (500-700 AD)
periods attest to the fact that its favourable
location in the alluvial cone of the Neckar
continued to be exploited by later settlers.
It was first mentioned as “Suezzingen”
(“belonging to Suezzo’s homestead”) in
the Lorsch codex for the year 766, and
in the records of 805 and 807 there was
an upper and a lower village. These two
foci of settlement can still be discerned in
Schwetzingen’s street layout.
From 1350 there is evidence of a castle in
Schwetzingen belonging to the aristocratic
Von Erlickheim family; in 1427 it passed
into the possession of the Counts Palatine
and started to be regularly used as a base for
hunting in the surrounding forests.
The village and the castle were razed to the
ground in 1635, during the Thirty Years War.
The castle was rebuilt from 1656 by Prince
Elector Carl Ludwig, but destroyed again
in 1689 during the War of the Palatinian
Succession.
Eighteenth-Century:
Conversion to Summer Residence
Prince Elector Johann Wilhelm (1658-1716;
Prince Elector from 1690) commissioned
the rebuilding of the site from 1698 to 1717
and had it extended as a Baroque palace: on
the east side the wings overlooking the cour
d’honneur were added, on the west the main
wing doubled in size. These additions to the
original complex were designed to stand in
strict alignment with the axis formed by a
line drawn across the Rhine plain between
the Königstuhl and Kalmit hills. When
Carl Philipp (1661-1742) became Prince
Elector in 1716, the main electoral residence
moved from Heidelberg to Mannheim,
and Schwetzingen was used as a hunting
lodge and summer residence. In 1718, Carl
Philipp’s architect Alessandro Galli da Bibiena
constructed an orangery to the west of the
palace (demolished around 1754) and created
a pleasure garden between the orangery and
the palace.
1742-1799: The Era of Carl Theodor, the
“Golden Age of the Electoral Palatinate”
The accession to power of Carl Theodor (1724-
1799) in 1742 marked the beginning of a new
era in Schwetzingen’s history. For several
months every summer between 1743 and
1778, Schwetzingen was home to the electoral
household along with the court orchestra, thus
functioning as the focal point of the Electoral
Palatinate. Work was carried out throughout
these thirty-five years to transform the palace
and gardens into an ideal summer residence,
one in which pleasure (recreation, enjoyment
and amusement) and necessity (the business
of ruling) could be perfectly combined.
From the 1750s onwards, the main residence
of Carl Theodor in Mannheim and his
summer residence in Schwetzingen evolved
into a centre of scientific and artistic
excellence of Europe-wide significance.
Schwetzingen’s function as a “court of
muses”, a space in which the arts and sciences
were patronised and given free reign to
flourish, played an important part in this
process. Schwetzingen offered a scope for
experimentation which would have been
unthinkable at Mannheim, bound as the main
court was to strict protocol; Schwetzingen
provided a space for the implementation
of ideas that in Mannheim were fostered
through the establishment of academies
(1763: Academy of Sciences; 1757: Sculptors‘
Academy; 1770: Drawing Academy; 1775:
German Society). This is attested not only
by the rich artistry found at the summer
residence, but also by projects such as the
surveying of the Electoral Palatinate, which
used as its base the axis running from
Heidelberg to Schwetzingen (Christian Mayer,
1763: publication of the manuscript Basis