Schwetzingen - Schlösser-Magazin

IV.
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IV. Palace Gardens: Role and Significance
“archaeological corpus” that played its part in
official pomp and circumstance. Excavations
in the garden, given an Ancient slant and
rendered visible by in situ monuments, were
testimonies to a long history, instruments
of genealogical anchoring which seemed to
ensure the authenticity of the iconographic
programme. The monument in the southern
bosquet corresponds with the monument to
the art of gardening. As a provisional crown
to the garden creation in 1771, they were both
given programmatic inscriptions, an absolute
exception but illustrating their pivotal role.
In 1778 Carl Theodor moved to Munich, and
the use and iconographic priorities for the
gardens shifted.
Although the estate had lost its function as
the summer residence, the gardens were not
merely preserved, but actually completed, and
probably on a larger scale that was probably
intended originally. The mosque and the
Temple of Mercury date from this period. The
mosque was exceedingly monumentalized
in the planning phase. With the two last
buildings, Carl Theodor departed from the
canonical idiom of highly Classical forms
that had been practised up until then.
The mythological aspects were strongly
emphasized, as if – now they were finally a
thing of the past – the residence and with
it the Palatinate were retrospectively to be
bathed in additional glory.
This reading of the “Golden Age of the
Palatinate”, now turned backwards, gave rise to
a consistent strategy of preservation that was
unique at the time and has continued until
today, pre-empting modern-day approaches
and seeking to preserve the pleasure garden
in its totality for posterity as a “Palatine
monument” 51 , as Nicolas de Pigage called it in
1795 in the “Protocollum Commissionale”.
(Michael Hesse, Hartmut Troll, Ralf Richard
Wagner)
51 PROTOCOLLUM COMMISSIONALE über das Schwetzinger
Hofbau- und Gartenwesen samt beylagen von 1795, Generallandesarchiv
Karlsruhe (GLA) 221 No. 46, p. 40.