Schwetzingen - Schlösser-Magazin

III.
Fig. 5: Mosque courtyard, back
front of the entrance pavilion
(Photo: Förderer).
58
III. Architectural Features
although these may well be located outside
the building even in an authentic mosque.
Usually a mosque will have a minbar or
pulpit, frequently a wooden construction
with stairs, which it would have been possible
to build later. 29 Often the mosque has a
courtyard enclosed by walls; the walls may
form the back wall of a colonnade, but the airy
construction of the Schwetzingen “cloister”
bears little resemblance to one.
The main hall of the mosque aims at height
and lofty distance; the hall itself is quite
small. It is decorated with ornamentation that
despite some reminiscences, cannot be called
Oriental. 30 If the mosque, as Heber assumes
from the many crescent shapes, symbols not
only of the Ottomans but also of Diana, was
intended to have a special connection with
the hunter goddess 31 , it certainly does not
lend itself to social gatherings after the hunt.
The room is altogether too cool and lacking
in intimacy. It is better suited as a place of
worship for a small community – not, one
29 According to a contemporary witness, the box surmounting
the western entrance, with its painted curtain, was intended
to serve as a pulpit. Cp. Martin Gaier, “Die Moschee im
Schwetzinger Schlossgarten”, in: Semra Ögel, Okzident und
Orient, Istanbul 2002, p. 53.
30 Wiltrud Heber, Die Arbeiten des Nicolas de Pigage in den ehemals
kurpfälzischen Residenzen Mannheim und Schwetzingen,
I. II. Worms 1986, I. p. 626.
31 Heber 1986, pp. 651-652.
suspects, of Muslims, although this, too, has
been known to occur. 32
As a whole the mosque is given a note of
playfulness and lightness by the blend of
architectural styles on the exterior, a serene
grace by its location and surroundings, and a
degree of severity by the sacral atmosphere
and the inscriptions of the interior. The
specifically Islamic aspect is represented
merely by the word allâh and the use of
Arabic letters. The morals conveyed by
most of the inscriptions are not specific to
any religion, or in fact to religion as such;
they vacillate between generally applicable
ethics and a suggestion of numinous
transcendency. 33 What is unmistakable is the
tendency to appeal to an élite of the virtuous
and the wisdom-seekers. There is, however,
another possibility. In an age of courtly overrefinement
and stylization, as well as delight
in allusions and mysteries, an age when
the necessity of exerting caution for moral
and political reasons was paramount, the
inscriptions may have conveyed both a direct
and an indirect message, a concrete and an
abstract meaning, that became evident only to
the initiated.
It is this very openness to a variety of
interpretations that adds to the mosque’s
appeal, the slightly unsettling atmosphere
this place communicates, and always did – for
the very reason that it never was just another
garden folly born of a fashionable taste for the
exotic.
(Udo Simon)
32 Despite not really being an Islamic sacral building, the mosque
has been used in this capacity – after the Franco-Prussian
War of 1870/71 by wounded prisoners of war staying at a
Schwetzingen hospital, and in the 1970s and 1980s by Muslims
from the Rhine-Neckar region. Cp. Muhammad S. Abdullah,
Geschichte des Islams in Deutschland, Graz 1981, p. 21.
33 Some of the adages are reminiscent of the recommendations
in Pythagoras’ Carmina aurea. E. g. “Moderation is best in
all things”, “Beware of doing what will incur the envy of
others”, &c. Cp. Hans Daiber, Neuplatonische Pythagorica in
arabischem Gewande. Der Kommentar des Iamblichus zu den
Carmina aurea, Amsterdam 1995.