Schwetzingen - Schlösser-Magazin

VI.
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VI. Schwetzingen – Historical Context
Once the garden house for Pater Seedorf and
its enclosing wall had been finished, only
one plot was left on the north side of the
market-place. Nobody expressed an interest
in building there until the townsman Franz
Wilhelm Ritter asked to be granted the
vacant corner. Keller Windecker raised the
following objections: “Because the corner
lies directly within the prospect of the
Elector’s palace, and should consequently be
built with greater splendour than the other
houses on this square, Ritter will not be able
to achieve it.” Ritter was therefore allocated
a site on the mulberry avenue. 55 A plan of
the palace square produced around 1755
shows that the Franz Wilhelm Rabaliatti, a
master-builder at the Elector’s court whose
accomplishments included the two quartercircle
pavilions, had by this time developed
the corner. In his own inimitable style, he
created an elegant patrician residence with
an elaborate portal and a side wing facing
Pater Seedorf’s garden. Rabaliatti died on 24
March 1782 and his heirs sold the property
for 4,700 guilders to Imperial Count Carl
August von Bretzenheim. 56 In December 1801
Theodor Zeller, a counsellor in the Court
Chamber, bought it for the princely sum of
7,000 guilders. 57 When the Palatinate passed
to Baden, and Schwetzingen was granted the
status of a District capital, this building served
from 1821 to 1924 as an administrative office
for the District Council of Schwetzingen. It
was privatized in 1931. 58
55 Blank, Heuss 1979, vol. 1, p. 127.
56 Stadtarchiv Schwetzingen B42. Imperial Count von
Bretzenheim (1769-1823) was the illegitimate son of Elector
Carl Theodor and the dancer Josepha Seyffert.
57 Stadtarchiv Schwetzingen B47.
58 Grundbuchamt Schwetzingen.
Development South of the Market-Place
Whereas building made early progress along
the north of the market square, with the
garden house for Pater Seedorf begun in
1748, the development of the opposite end
was held up for years by the resistance of
Johann Michael Renkert, the landlord of the
“Ox”. To complete the new market square,
he was asked to pull down his property,
which protruded some way in, and rebuild it
somewhere else. In 1749 an agreement was
reached that his new home could stay where
it was, as long as the house in the yard, the
barn and the stables were demolished. The
land where the barn stood was of particular
interest, as Count von Piosasque and the new
director of gardens and water works, Nicolas
de Pigage, were keen to locate Schwetzingen’s
new town hall here. The drawings also
indicated that the town hall and the adjacent
home of innkeeper Renkert would be enclosed
by a wall, just like across the square. Johann
Michael Renkert refused on grounds of cost,
and so the Court Chamber agreed to bear the
expense. 59 Ultimately, however, the idea of
locating a new town hall on this site seems to
have been discarded for lack of funds.
New barracks for the Elector’s Mounted
Lifeguard were to round off the southern
development. Planning was entrusted to the
engineer and artillery major L’Angé, who had
built the stables for Count Palatine Friedrich
Michael von Pfalz-Zweibrücken on the
mulberry avenue in 1750. In December 1752
he presented an estimate of 7,000 guilders
for a single-storey building 235 feet long
with two corner pavilions to house 2 officers,
40 soldiers and 48 horses. On 7 February
1753 Counsellor Sartorius of the Court
Chamber presented a convincing argument
for raising the barracks to two storeys. As
the location was so conveniently close to the
palace, Sartorius suggested billeting not only
troops, but also court domestics, musicians
and outsiders. In his opinion, this would cut
back the great expense of accommodation. 60
59 GLA Karlsruhe 221/Schwetzingen no. 21.
60 GLA Karlsruhe 221/Schwetzingen no. 33.