Friedrich Schiller and the English Garden

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Friedrich Schiller and the English Garden: ber den Gartenkalender auf das Jahr 1795 Author(s): Sheila Benn Source: Garden History, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 28-46Published by: The Garden History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1586991Accessed: 23-04-2015 21:29 UTC

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SHEILA BENN

FRIEDRICH SCHILLER AND THE ENGLISH GARDEN: UBER DEN GARTENKALENDER AUF DAS JAHR 1795

FRIEDRICH SCHILLER'S LIFETIME (I759-I805) coincided with the development of what has been termed the modern pre-Romantic feeling for nature. This new sensitivity towards nature in the eighteenth century was characterized by a desire for a return to the simplicity of nature and an Arcadian existence which led to the creation and the subsequent great popularity of the English landscape garden.

Schiller's love of nature is confirmed by biographical evidence which reveals that he enjoyed walking and living in the countryside and that he often visited English gardens in Germany. Unlike his friend and contemporary Goethe, who was so enthusiastic about the English garden movement in the I770s, and I78os that he even created an English garden complete with hermitage, grotto and memorials at Weimar, Schiller, although the son of a gardener, was not a practical gardener. However, the English garden played a very important theoretical role in his writings.

In the Thalia fragments of his play Don Carlos, written between 1785 and 1787, Schiller shows his debt to the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau by associating the English garden setting with the free expression of emotion, friendship, and love and the ability to shed tears, and the French garden with political despotism, intrigue and insincerity. However, in his uncompleted dramatic fragment, Der versohnte Menschenfeind, begun in 1786 and continued in 1788, Schiller is critical of the Rousseauian advocacy of a 'Return to Nature' which involved the complete abandonment of culture, for when the protagon- ist von Hutten seeks refuge in an isolated area of his estate, the mood of which is similar to that of the English garden, Schiller shows that the melancholic atmosphere of this landscape invites an indulgence in feelings and a retreat from reality which are actually damaging.

In the collection of letters Kallias oder uber die Schonheit of I793, Schiller criticizes another aspect of the English landscape garden which he had previously regarded as unproblematic: that of uncontrolled natural growth. In the Kallias letters, Schiller's idea of a beautiful landscape is not one where individual organic elements use their freedom to grow luxuriantly in whatever direction they wish, but a garden which shows ordered chaos or 'beau desordre'. Schiller's overriding concern with balance is also apparent in the review of Friedrich von Matthisson's poems Uber Matthissons Gedichte of 1794 and the

c/o Dr and Mrs Blain, Braco Lodge, 42 Mayne Road, Elgin, Moray Iv30 IPB


treatise Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung of 1795, for in both works he criticizes the Rousseauian advocacy of an escapist return to nature which involves the complete abandonment of culture, arguing that this will never awaken man from his torpor and apathy. For Schiller, the ideal landscape garden is not one which merely encourages man to abandon the world, but one which prompts him to strive for a new, higher harmony, where all the advantages of man's reason and culture are combined with the qualities of nature. It is in the review Uber den Gartenkalender aufdasJahr I795 that Schiller gives full expression to the idea that a landscape garden could carry man forward to perfection, comforting him and healing all the divisions in his psyche.

On 15 September 1794 the publisher Cotta sent Schiller a copy of the Taschenkalen- der aufdasJahr I795 fur Natur- und Gartenfreunde which he had just published, with the request that Schiller review it in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. Some measure of Schiller's enthusiasm for the enterprise can be gauged from the fact that only a few days after receiving Cotta's letter, Schiller wrote to the editor Schiitz, requesting that he publish the review in the ALZ.

The Gartenkalender review is very rarely examined on its own terms. It is most frequently mentioned in relation to Der Spaziergang of I800, for the description of the 'Weg von Stuttgart nach Hohenheim' in the second half of the review is seen by many critics as providing the model for the landscape depicted in the elegy.' The review is thus regarded as important only in so far as it played a minor role in the composition of Der Spaziergang and includes some interesting autobiographical details.

Examining the review on its own terms, I wish to suggest that it has a greater significance, since in it Schiller wants to endow the modern feeling for nature with legitimacy. It can be seen as a further response to the problematic aspects of the English garden which emerged in the Menschenfeind fragment and the Kallias letters, for his main concern lies with prescribing the qualities which the ideal landscape garden must possess if it is to have an aesthetic effect on man. That he is determined to use the review as a pretext to advance these prescriptions in the form of a theory of the German garden is clear in his letter to Schiitz of 30 September 1794:

Zugleich frage ich bey Ihnen an, ob Sie es wohl zufrieden sind, dab ich einen Garten Calender recensiere, der kiirzlich in Schwaben erschienen ist, und der mir Gelegenheit giebt, mein Glaubensbekenntnif uiber die deutschen Parks und dgl. abzulegen (xxvII, 55-56, my italics).2 [At the same time, I wonder whether you agree to my reviewing a garden almanac which has recently been published in Swabia, and which gives me the opportunity to express my creed on German parks and such things.]

The review could in fact be seen as a sequel to the Kallias letters, for just as the concept of freedom in appearance mediates between a completely wild and a completely regular garden landscape, so the German garden mediates between the English and French styles in garden design. However, the Gartenkalender review goes one step further than the Kallias letters, for in his demand for a synthesis between the French and the English garden, Schiller is adopting a much more positive and conciliatory attitude towards the previously despised French garden.

Like the Matthisson review, the Gartenkalender review has a bipartite structure. In the first half of the review, based loosely on Gottlob Heinrich Rapp's comments in the

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FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

essay Fragmentarische Beitrage zur Ausbildung des deutschen Gartengeschmacks, Schiller examines the conditions under which a German garden could be developed, while in the second half, prompted by Rapp's Beschreibung des Gartens in Hohenheim, he gives his interpretation of Hohenheim garden near Stuttgart. I shall examine the two halves of the review in turn, showing how Schiller initially advances the concept of a German garden and then determines the aesthetic value of particular German landscape gardens by testing them against this concept.

In the review as a whole, Schiller wants to break new ground by developing a poetic which would have some place for the modern art form of the landscape garden. However, like the Matthisson review, the Gartenkalender review opens on a cautious note, with Schiller reiterating the objections which had traditionally prevented landscape gardens from being seen as 'beautiful' art forms. He declares that the vogue for landscape gardens in Germany, fuelled by Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld's monumental five-volume Theorie der Gartenkunst, had not always advanced the cause of good taste, for no strict principles had been laid down for the landscape gardener to follow, with the result that the composition of many landscape gardens was characterized by arbitrariness. He reiterates at length the traditionalists' view that landscape gardens were the product of dilettante artists and hence could not be seen as true works of art:

Diese Geburten des nordlichen Geschmacks [= asthetische Garten] sind von einer so zweideutigen Abkunft und haben bis jetzt einen so unsichern Charakter gezeigt, daB es dem echten Kunstfreunde zu verzeihen ist, wenn er sie kaum einer fliichtigen Aufmerk- samkeit wiirdigte und dem Dilettantism zum Spiele dahin gab (xxII, 285). [These fruits of Northern taste (= aesthetic gardens) are of such an equivocal origin and have hitherto shown such an unsteady character that the true lover of the arts can be forgiven if he hardly deemed them to be worthy of his passing attention and abandoned them entirely to the fancy of mere dilettantes.]

For the traditionalists, landscape gardening is a 'dubious' activity, for it is the product of a modern age and is not legitimized by the canon of Greek Classicism. In addition, Schiller admits that the change in taste from the French to the English style in garden design would tend to support the traditionalists' view that landscape gardening has an 'unsicherer Charakter' (xxII, 285) and consequently that it is merely a 'pleasant' art.

Schiller then examines the French and the English garden in turn, pointing out the features which prevent each of them from being seen as beautiful works of art. In a formulation reminiscent of the Kallias letters, he criticizes the French taste in garden design for imposing geometrical and architectonic shapes on organic objects, thereby violating their nature and destroying their autonomy:

Der Baum mufite seine hohere organische Natur verbergen, damit die Kunst an seiner gemeinen Korpernatur ihre Macht beweisen konnte. Er mufite sein schones selbstandiges Leben fur ein geistloses Ebenma13 und seinen leichten schwebenden Wuchs fur einen Anschein von Festigkeit hingeben, wie das Auge sie von steinernen Mauern verlangt (XXII, 285). [The tree was obliged to conceal its higher organic life so that art could show its power on the tree's base corporeal nature. It had to sacrifice its beautiful independent life in exchange for a dull regularity and its light, free-floating growth for an appearance of rigidity, a quality which the eye demands of stone walls.]

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SHEILA BENN

Schiller is equally critical of the excesses to which the English garden is prone, attacking its 'regelloseste Lizenz' (XXII,286) and its tendency to take the lawless anarchy of the imagination as its sole model. Just as the imagination leaps from one image to the next, so in an English garden the onlooker is confronted with many different unconnected scenes in a small area, with the result that nature loses its simplicity:

Sie [= die Natur] sinkt nun, in unsern sogenannten englischen Garten, zu einer kindi- schen Kleinheit herab, und hat sich durch ein iibertriebenes Bestreben nach Ungez- wungenheit und Mannigfaltigkeit von aller schonen Einfalt entfernt und aller Regel entzogen (xxII,286). [In our so-called English gardens, it (nature) now descends to the level of a childish littleness, and because of an exaggerated endeavour to appear informal and varied, it has become estranged from all beautiful simplicity and rule.]

As in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, Schiller sees this type of garden as the product of the aberrant manifestation of the modern feeling for nature which had been encouraged by the gross sentimentality of the age, the 'weichlicher Charakter der Zeit' (xxII, 286).

Schiller does not, however, lose hope in the face of these formidable objections to landscape gardening. He is determined to demonstrate that a landscape garden is potentially a 'beautiful' rather than merely a 'pleasant' art form, as the following comment shows:

Da es so schwer halt, der asthetischen Gartenkunst ihren Platz unter den sch6nen Kiunsten anzuweisen, so konnte man leicht auf die Vermutung geraten, daB sie hier gar nicht unterzubringen sei. Man wiirde aber Unrecht haben, die verungliickten Versuche in derselben gegen ihre Moglichkeit iiberhaupt zeugen zu lassen (xxI, 286). [As it is so difficult to allocate aesthetic landscape gardening a place amongst the beautiful arts, we might easily suppose that this art does not belong to their number. We would, however, be wrong to let the unsuccessful attempts at landscape gardening testify against the possibility of elevating aesthetic gardening to the rank of an art.]

Whereas before, Schiller had concentrated exclusively on the deficiencies of both the French and the English garden, he now seeks to legitimize each of them by demonstrat- ing that both the French and English styles sprang from legitimate human needs.

Turning to the French style in garden design, which he terms 'architektonischer Geschmack' (xxII, 286), he points out that the French gardener was justified in making a connection between architecture and gardening, firstly because the origins of both arts lay in a common physical need which determined their forms, and secondly because both arts used natural materials as a means to produce new, ordered and geometrical shapes. The French garden became excessively regular only when the practitioners of the style were led astray by the common origin of both arts, with the result that architecture influenced gardening, and order was championed to the complete exclusion of freedom. By pointing out that the parallels between architecture and landscape gardening had a legitimate basis, Schiller is clearly adopting a much more conciliatory attitude towards the French style in garden design than had previously been the case.

Schiller is equally keen to demonstrate that the stress on freedom in the English garden has a legitimate basis, for in an argument which he would later expand in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, he states that the pleasure which modern man feels in

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contemplating landscapes arises from his awareness that the hand of the artist has played no part in their composition:

Einem aufmerksamen Beobachter seiner selbst konnte es nicht entgehen, daf3 das Vergniigen, womit uns der Anblick landschaftlicher Szenen erfiillt, von der Vorstellung unzertrennlich ist, dalf es Werke der freien Natur, nicht des Kiinstlers sind (xxII, 287). [An attentive observer could not fail to notice that the pleasure with which the sight of rural scenes fills us is inseparable from the idea that they are works of free nature and not of the artist.]

The English garden designer, intent upon arousing a similar feeling of pleasure, thus took the freedom of nature as his model and banned all traces of art from his garden. According to Schiller, excesses in this style arose when landscape gardening overstepped its limits and followed the laws of painting, disregarding the fact that the small scale of the latter could not be satisfactorily applied to an art form which represents nature through itself. The inevitable consequence of this misjudgement was that a legitimate desire for variety and freedom degenerated into triviality and arbitrariness, as grand natural phenomena were reproduced on a small scale.

Schiller clearly recognizes the importance of the English garden as an antidote to excessive formalism and regularity, but at the same time he is critical of the excesses to which it is prone. He resolves this ambivalence by postulating the idea of a 'middle way', a 'ganz guter Mittelweg zwischen der Steifigkeit des franzosischen Gartengeschmacks und der gesetzlosen Freiheit des sogenannten englischen' (XXII,288) [quite a good middle way between the stiffness of the French taste in garden design and the lawless freedom of the so-called English], in which the advantages of the French garden would be combined with the advantages of the English garden and the excesses of both styles would be avoided. Because it would mediate between the French and the English garden, the German garden would appeal in equal measure to both the intellect and the emotions:

Es wird sich zeigen, da13 es sehr ausfuhrbar und verniinftig ist, einen Garten, der allen Foderungen des guten Landwirts entspricht, sowohl fiir das Auge als ftir das Herz und den Verstand zu einem charakteristischen Ganzen zu machen (xxiI,288). [We shall see that it is feasible and sensible to lay out a garden which meets all the requirements of the good farmer, and which is appreciated as a characteristic whole by the eye as well as by the heart and the mind.]

Schiller uses Rapp's ideas as a springboard for his own argument, for in terms reminiscent of the Matthisson review, he describes how this new type of landscape garden would be capable of expressing an emotional state. It would thereby be endowed with the necessity of the human realm and would be a 'beautiful', rather than a merely 'pleasant' work of art:

So halt er [= Rapp] es keineswegs fiir unmoglich, symbolische und gleichsam pathetische Garten anzulegen, die ebenso gut als musikalische oder poetische Kompositionen fahig sein miifiten, einen bestimmten Empfindungszustand auszudriicken und zu erzeugen (xxII,289). [Thus he [= Rapp] does not think that it is at all impossible to lay out symbolic gardens, or gardens of a pathetic nature, which like musical or poetic compositions, would be capable of giving rise to and expressing a certain emotional state.]

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SHEILA BENN

In order to differentiate Schiller's concept of the 'middle way' in garden design from the mainstream of opinion, it is important to examine it in the context of contemporary thought on the subject. Schiller was not the first German thinker to voice concern about the lawless freedom of the English garden and to show some appreciation for the regularity of the French garden. Justus Moser had criticized the excesses of the English garden in his satirical essay Das englische Girtgen of 1773, in which a woman named 'Anglomania Domen' writes to her grandmother describing the transformation of her kitchen garden into a sentimental park complete with hills and valleys, meandering paths, a river, a Chinese bridge and a Gothic cathedral. In Letter 7 of his Briefe uber die Kunst an eine Freundinn, Joseph Friedrich Racknitz advances beyond Moser in that he attempts to give an objective evaluation of the merits of the French garden at a time when it was much maligned. He argues that the term 'garden' implies order and regularity, and without wishing to deny the advantages of the English garden, he suggests that in the craze for novelty the relative merits of the French garden had been unjustly ignored:

Ohne daher dem englischen Geschmack in Garten seine Schonheiten absprechen und seine Vorzuge bestreiten zu wollen, lasse man - ich wiederhole es, - dem ehemaligen franzosischen doch auch Gerechtigkeit wiederfahren.3 [Without, however, wishing to deny the beauties of the English taste in garden design and to contest its merits, let us - and I repeat this - also do justice to the former French garden.]

He declares that it is in fact preferable to lay out a French garden where the soil is infertile, where only a limited area is available for improvement, round a palace built in a regular architectural style, or in towns. It can be assumed that Schiller supports Racknitz's stance on landscape gardening, for in a letter to Goethe on 23 December I795, he describes the Briefe as being worthy of an appreciative acknowledgement in his journal Die Horen. However, although Racknitz is intent upon giving an objective appraisal of the merits of the French garden, his ideas are not so wide-ranging as Schiller's in the Gartenkalender review, for he does not go as far as advocating a 'middle way' between the French and the English garden.

Hirschfeld, however, does do this in his Theorie der Gartenkunst. Criticizing both the French and the English garden for their excesses, he recommends a synthesis of the two styles:

Also nicht bloBe Nachahmung so wenig des englandischen, als des franzosischen Gar- tengeschmacks, ... Es wird sich in der Folge zwischen beyden Arten des herrschenden Geschmacks ein Mittelweg ergeben, der, indem er die alte Manier verlaBt, sich nicht ganz in die neue verliert, sondern zwar zuweilen in ihren gebahnten Pfad einbiegt, aber noch ofter seine eigene Richtung verfolgt.4 [Thus, the mere imitation of the English and of the French tastes in garden design is equally undesirable, ... In future, a middle way between the two types of the prevailing taste will come to light, which while it will depart from the old style, will not become completely absorbed in the new style, which will in fact turn into its cleared path from time to time, but which more often will follow its own direction.]

He suggests that the result of this synthesis, a truly German garden, would eliminate 'Gallomanie' and 'Anglomanie', the slavish imitation of foreign styles of garden design in Germany. Although Johann Christian August Grohmann argues that Hirschfeld's

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FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

concept of the 'deutscher Garten' remains shadowy and unspecific,5 Hirschfeld is explicit about its 'Germanness', but is not specific about how to combine regularity and freedom, which is the essential problem posed by the criticisms of the French and English styles. He states that only plants and trees which are indigenous to Germany should be grown in it, and he also recommends that it should contain Gothic rather than Greek ruins because the former are more 'German' than the latter. Hirschfeld also insists that statues in German gardens should represent only national artists and philosophers:

Der Deutsche wird doch wohl so patriotisch gesinnt seyn, dem einheimischen Verdienst vor dem auswartigen den Vorgang zu gonnen. Dadurch wirden unsere Garten, die so lange Nachahmungen der Mode und so selten Werke unsers Genies sind, nicht allein einen Theil von einem eigenen Nationalcharakter, sondern auch eine Kraft zu weit lehrreichern Unterhaltungen gewinnen, als alle die gew6hnlichen Kopien von Statiien des Alterthums nicht geben konnen (Th, II, 132). [The German will surely be so patriotically minded as to give precedence to indigenous merit over foreign merit. Thereby, our gardens, which for so long have been imitations of fashion and have so seldom been works of our genius, would not only gain a part of our own national character, but also a capacity for much more instructive entertainment, something which the usual copies of statues of antiquity cannot furnish.]

In addition, Hirschfeld states that inscriptions on buildings and memorials should preferably be taken from German writers. He even prints sixty different inscriptions from German authors which he sees as being suitable for inclusion in a German garden. It is clear that with his concept of the German garden, Hirschfeld is attempting to inspire a sense of patriotism and national consciousness in his fellow Germans.

Schiller would also have encountered the concept of the 'deutscher Garten' in Johann Jakob Atzel's essay Ideal eines teutschen Gartens, which he published in the Wirtember- gisches Repertorium of 1783. Atzel refers contemptuously to the French style in gardening as 'gedankenloser Pracht, abgezirkelte Tdndeley, ein Gemisch von Unsinn und Ueppigkeit, kurz ein Beweifi der traurigsten A usartung des Menschengefiihls'6 [unthinking magnificence, dalliance measured with compasses, a mixture of nonsense and luxuriance, in short, proof of the most unhappy degeneration of human sentiment]. However, he also criticizes the Germans' eagerness to take the English garden as their model: 'Meistens geschieht aber auch dieses mehr aus Nachafferei oderAnglomanismus, als aus wahrem Gefiihl fur das Schine'7 [Mostly, however, this also arises more out of mimicry or anglomania than out of a true feeling for beauty]. The ideal of a 'German garden' which Atzel postulates as an alternative to the French and English gardens also has strong patriotic overtones, for in the 'teutscher Garten' which he describes, German history is recounted in a series of tableaux in the area of the garden termed 'Paradies'. The primeval German forest evoked by Atzel contains Hermann's grave, temples to heathen gods worshipped by Germanic tribes, Charlemagne's grave, a Gothic mausoleum honouring ancient German heroes who furthered knowledge and art, a grotto containing graves of German warrior heroes of the Middle Ages, a grove dedicated to the Minnesanger, urns celebrating Kaiser Heinrich vi, King Wenceslaus von Bohmen, Winsbecke, Walther von der Vogelweide, Eschilbach and Herzog Heinrich von Breslau, and memorials to Luther and Melanchthon.

The German garden Schiller prescribes can be clearly differentiated from that proposed by Hirschfeld and Atzel, for patriotism plays no part in his ideas in the

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Gartenkalender review. He understands 'Germanness' in garden design not as the patriotic glorification of specifically German heroes or German history in a landscape garden, but as the ideal mediating force or golden mean between the excesses of French and English taste. That this notion is one which is characteristic for Schiller is clear from the fact that the same pattern is evident in his comments on literature. A decade before the review, he expressed the hope that he would be able to create a literary style which mediates between the two extremes of French and English literature: 'Ich hoffe zwischen zwei Extremen, Englischem und Franzosischem Geschmak in ein heilsames Gleichgewicht zu kommen'8 [I hope to find a salutary equilibrium between two extremes, English and French taste]. And he still took this view in 1794, for in the essay Zerstreute Betrachtungen iiber verschiedene isthetische Gegenstinde, he criticizes his fellow Germans for having slavishly followed either the extremes of French taste or the extremes of English taste, and actually sees a parallel between their literary works and their landscape gardens:

Die Gartenkunst und die dramatische Dichtkunst haben in neuern Zeiten ziemlich dasselbe Schicksal, und zwar bey denselben Nationen, gehabt. Dieselbe Tyranney der Regel in den franzosischen Garten und in den franzosischen Tragodien; dieselbe bunte und wilde Regellosigkeit in den Parks der Englander und in ihrem Shakespear; und so wie der deutsche Geschmack von jeher das Gesetz von den Auslandern empfangen, so mufte er auch in diesem Stuck zwischen jenen beiden Extremen hin und herschwanken (xx, 237-38). [Landscape gardening and dramatic poetry have recently - and, in fact, in the same nations - had more or less the same fate. We discover the same tyranny of rule in the French gardens and in French tragedies, the same confused and wild irregularity in the parks of the English and in their Shakespeare; and just as the German taste has always received its guiding principles from foreigners, so in these spheres too it had to balance to and fro between those two extremes.]

Indeed, Schiller himself was addressed by Karl Friedrich Reinhard as the prototype of the German genius in that he combined the advantages of both French and English taste in his work:

Sie verbinden die Korrektheit franzosischen Geschmacks mit der Innigkeit und der Vollstandigkeit deutscher Empfindung und mit englandischer Gedankenfiille.9 [You combine the correctness of the French taste with the intensity and the completeness of German feeling and with English wealth of ideas.]

It is thus not surprising that in the Gartenkalender review, Schiller should quote Rapp's fulminations against the 'Anglomanie' (xxII,289) of many German landowners in support of his argument that the Germans' task of achieving an ideal balance between the French and the English taste in garden design would remain unfulfilled as long as they slavishly imitated either model. As in his attitude to literature, Schiller's ideal is clearly that of an independent German garden design which reconciles the diametrically opposed characters of French and English taste by adopting their advantages without partaking of their excesses.

In the second part of the review, Schiller turns his attention to Hohenheim garden near Stuttgart. Duke Karl Eugen began the task of laying out the garden around I780, with Hohenheim palace being added late in 1782. Hohenheim was, however, quite different from the French gardens at the duke's palaces in Ludwigsburg and Solitude,

SHEILA BENN 35


FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

.?" . we .S .

Figure I. The mosque at Schwetzingen. From Geschichte der Gartenkunst, vol. II, by Marie Louise Gothein (Jena, I914)

Photo: British Library

for it owed much to the influence of Karl Eugen's mistress, Franziska von Hohenheim. Her diary shows that she was a disciple of Rousseau and that she favoured an idyllic existence close to nature. In 1776 she visited England and was so impressed by the English gardens which she saw that on her return to Germany she wanted to create a landscape garden at Hohenheim. With this in mind, Karl Eugen and Franziska visited many landscape gardens, including Weimar, Worlitz, Schwetzingen (Figure i), Schonbrunn and Versailles. Karl Eugen himself also contributed to the laying out of the new garden in that he was eager to recreate some of the monuments from antiquity which he had seen during his travels in Italy on his Grand Tour. The resulting garden was a landscape of ruins in which fragments of Roman remains, including a copy of the Temple of the Vesta in Rome, Roman baths, Roman city walls, Nero's grave and a copy of the Sibyl's Temple at Tivoli, were juxtaposed with quaint rural buildings, such as a shepherd's house, a mill, a gardener's house, a barn, a Swiss cottage and a dairy farm, all of which were furnished as though they were inhabited by imaginary beggars, peasants and milkmaids (Figure 2).10 As Johannes Proelfi points out, Schiller was well acquainted with the garden and had visited it on many occasions before he fled from Stuttgart in the summer of I782.11 For example, after Schiller's illicit visits to Mannheim to see his play

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SHEILA BENN

Figure 2. 'Die Meierei' (dairy farm) at Hohenheim. From Ansichten des Herzoglich - Wurtembergischen Landsizes Hohenheim by Victor Heideloff (Niirnberg, 1795)

Photo: British Library

Die Riuber performed, it was to Hohenheim that he was summoned by Karl Eugen, who showed him round the garden and then promptly forbade him to write any more plays.12 It is also certain that Schiller visited the garden again in spring 1794 in the company of Rapp and Dannecker.13

A variety of reasons have been advanced in an attempt to explain Schiller's praise of Hohenheim in the Gartenkalender review. Siegmar Gerndt speculates that Schiller praised the garden so highly because he was friendly with Rapp, who was the brother-in- law of Dannecker, one of his friends from the days of the Karlsschule, the military academy, and because he was striving for a more objective judgement of Karl Eugen's merits after the duke's death in I793.14 Neither of these suggestions is entirely satisfactory. Schiller was indeed a close friend of Rapp's, and the two families frequently dined together,15 but this friendship alone cannot explain Schiller's praise of Hohen- heim, for as will become evident, he merely takes Rapp's description of Hohenheim in the Taschenkalender as a starting point for a personal interpretation of the garden which is embedded in his own ideas. As for Gerndt's second explanation, it is true that Schiller is

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FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

purported to have spoken with some degree of affection of Karl Eugen at his graveside in 1793, but this is recounted by von Hoven in an autobiography written many years after the alleged incident, so there is some doubt as to the veracity of the report.16 More important, a particularly hostile reference to the 'Tod des alten Herodes' in a letter to Korner of Io December I793 hardly suggests that Schiller felt conciliatory towards Karl Eugen after his death.17 Moreover, Schiller makes a veiled reference to Karl Eugen's exploitation of his subjects at the end of his interpretation of Hohenheim in the Gartenkalender review itself: 'Er [= der Stifter dieser Anlagen] wufite nicht in seinen Garten allein Wasserwerke von der Natur zu erzwingen, wo sich kaum eine Quellefand' (xxII , 291) [It was not in his gardens alone that he (= the founder of this park) knew how to force waterworks from nature in a country where hardly a spring was to be found]. It is thus extremely unlikely that Schiller intended his praise of Hohenheim in the Gartenkalender review to be a eulogy of its creator.

A more convincing explanation for Schiller's praise of Hohenheim emerges if the review as a whole is compared to the Matthisson review, which was written only a few months before. In the Matthisson review, Schiller argues that Matthisson's poems are 'beautiful' rather than merely 'pleasant' because they satisfy all the requirements advanced in the first part of the review. Just as Schiller's extravagant praise of the poems arises from the fact that he interprets them as the empirical illustration of the pure concept of descriptive poetry, so his praise of Hohenheim results from the fact that he interprets it as the empirical illustration of the pure concept of the 'middle way' in garden design.

In his interpretation of Hohenheim, Schiller argues that it represents the synthesis of opposites and hence illustrates in practice the theory of the 'middle way' in garden design. He states that the juxtaposition of Roman graves, temples, decaying city walls and the gloomy remains of a prison with cheerful Swiss cottages and flowerbeds is not arbitrary, for these disparate elements form a harmonious whole because of a unifying principle underlying the composition of the garden. He defines this as the idea that a rural colony had been founded in the midst of the ruins of a Roman city, though he seems uncertain whether to impute its origin to Rapp or Karl Eugen. Schiller thus sees the disparate architectural styles of the buildings at Hohenheim as providing welcome variety, but due to the unifying role of the single idea the excessive variety and arbitrariness of the English garden are avoided.

In the theoretical section of the review, Schiller argued that the French garden appealed predominantly to the intellect, while the English garden spoke mainly to the feelings, and postulated that the landscape garden representing the 'middle way' between the two styles would speak to both the intellect and the emotions. That Hohenheim contains none of the actual stylistic features of the French or the English garden is hence unimportant, for Schiller defines the garden for which he is calling by its effect rather than by its character. He clearly regards Hohenheim as fulfilling his requirement, as is shown by his description of the effect on the onlooker of the contrast between the rural simplicity of the new colony and the sublime, decaying ruins of a lost civilization:

Landliche Sirmplizitat und versunkene stadtische Herrlichkeit, die zwei aufiersten Zus- tande der Gesellschaft, grenzen auf eine riihrende Art aneinander, und das emste Gefiihl

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der Verganglichkeit verliert sich wunderbar schon in dem Gefiihl des siegenden Lebens. Diese gliickliche Mischung giefit durch die ganze Landschaft einen tiefen elegischen Ton aus, der den empfindenden Betrachter zwischen Ruhe und Bewegung, Nachdenken und Genuf schwankend erhalt und noch lange nachhallet, wenn schon alles verschwunden ist (xxIi, 290). [Rural simplicity and decayed urban magnificence, the two most extreme conditions of society, border on each other in a touching manner, and the solemn feeling of transience is absorbed in a most wonderful manner by the feeling of triumphant life. This successful combination imbues the whole landscape with a deep, elegiac atmosphere, which keeps the sensitive observer hovering between rest and movement, reflection and enjoyment, and which reverberates for a long time after we have left the garden.]

Schiller claims that Hohenheim represents the synthesis of opposites: of ruins and entire buildings, of transience and renewal, of urban magnificence and rural simplicity and of Classicism and Rousseauian sentimentality. And he suggests that, as such, it speaks to both sides of man's psyche, providing stimulus for his intellect as well as sensual enjoyment.

The additional significance for Schiller of this effect on the onlooker is apparent when it is seen in the light of the ideas he put forward in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. Modern man, in the form of the visitor to the garden, is moved by the contrast between culture and rural simplicity. The ruined remains of a vanished civilization evoke a melancholy, elegiac mood, but the awareness of the transience of glory and greatness is tempered by a counterbalancing feeling of hope which flows from the sight of the flourishing peasant settlement rising out of the very heart of decay and destruction. The garden thus fulfils the function Schiller ascribes in his essay to the pure concept of the elegy, for it exercises both a relaxing and an energizing effect on the visitor who seeks out nature in order to obtain some relief from the rigours of culture. Hohenheim garden thus provides the solution to the problem posed in Der versohnte Menschenfeind, where von Hutten's garden has only a relaxing effect, for in visiting Hohenheim, modern man will find not only relaxation, but also the energy to return to everyday life.

A comparison between Schiller's interpretation of the effect of Hohenheim on the visitor and the ideas of Uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen of 1795 provides further evidence that he saw such a garden as potentially playing a very important role in furthering the development of mankind and in restoring modern man's lost harmony. In the Aesthetic Letters, Schiller sees modern man as being alienated from himself as a result of the lack of equilibrium between the two main forces in his psyche. Because of the nature of contemporary society, modern man is divided against himself: he is either a savage, in the thrall of his animal instincts, or a barbarian of culture, having developed only one function of his psyche, abstract thought, to its full potential. Schiller argues that all the catastrophic events befalling contemporary society, such as the 'Reign of Terror' during the French Revolution, are the direct result of this disharmony. In order to resolve it, he postulates the idea of the aesthetic condition in which man's rational being and sensual being are brought into complete equilibrium. Schiller stresses that man can only experience this equilibrium of the forces in his psyche through the contemplation of beauty: 'Durch die Schonheit wird der sinnliche Mensch zur Form und zum Denken geleitet; durch die Schonheit wird der geistige Mensch zur Materie zuriickgefiihrt, und der Sinnenwelt wiedergegeben' (xx, 365) [By beauty the sensuous man

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is guided to form and thought, by beauty the spiritual man is led back to matter and given back to the world of the senses]. In the Gartenkalender review, Schiller describes Hohenheim as being capable of leading the simple man to thought and the man of culture to feeling, and this interpretation of the garden's effect shows that he clearly regards it as a beautiful art form which is instrumental in bringing the opposing forces in man's psyche into a harmonious equilibrium and hence in furthering the aesthetic education of mankind.

Confirmation that in direct contrast with the traditionalists Schiller regarded the garden as a beautiful art form is provided by the fact that he sees the aesthetic effect of this particular sort of landscape garden as being equal to that of a Greek sculpture or a painting. As we have seen, he argues that the effect of Hohenheim is to bring about in the onlooker the opposing states of 'Ruhe' and 'Bewegung', 'Nachdenken' and 'Genuf3' (xxII, 290), and this corresponds exactly to the aesthetic effect he attributes in the 15th Aesthetic Letter to the sculpture of Juno Ludovisi:

Durch jenes [= die Anmuth der Juno Ludovisi] unwiderstehlich ergriffen und angezogen, durch dieses [= ihre Wiirde] in der Ferne gehalten, befinden wir uns zugleich in dem Zustand der hochsten Ruhe und der hochsten Bewegung, und es entsteht jene wun- derbare Riihrung, fur welche der Verstand keinen Begriff und die Sprache keinen Nahmen hat (xx, 360). [Irresistibly moved and attracted by the former (= the gracefulness of Juno Ludovisi), kept at a distance by the latter (= her dignity), we find ourselves at the same time in a state of the greatest peace and the highest emotion, and there results that wonderful feeling for which the intellect has no conception and speech has no name.]

Similarly, in An den Herausgeber der Propylaen, written on the occasion of the art exhibition organized by Goethe in Weimar in 800oo, Schiller's description of the aesthetic effect of a painting by Johann August Nahl depicting the episode in Book 6 of the Iliad where Hector bids farewell to Andromache and Astyanax before leading the Trojans in battle is very close to the aesthetic effect of the 'englischesDorf' at Hohenheim, for it too is seen as bringing the emotions and the intellect into a harmonious equilibrium:

Man fiihlt sich tatig, klar und entschieden: die sch6nste Wirkung, die die plastische Kunst bezweckt. Das Auge wird gereizt und erquickt, die Phantasie belebt, der Geist aufgeregt, das Herz erwarmt und entziindet, der Verstand beschaftigt und befriedigt (xxII, 308). [We feel active, sharp-witted and resolute: the most beautiful effect which plastic art can produce. The eye is stimulated and refreshed, the imagination invigorated, the mind aroused, the heart warmed and kindled, the intellect occupied and satisfied.]

Schiller not only regards the garden as contributing to the development of mankind by encouraging harmony within the individual; he also ascribes to it a historical significance. In his description of Hohenheim, Rapp argued that the garden could only be fully appreciated in high summer. Schiller, however, is less interested in the season than in the notion that the visitor could only enjoy the full aesthetic effect of the garden if he approached it from the direction of Stuttgart. Schiller's description of the way from Stuttgart to Hohenheim clearly shows his familiarity with and love of his native Swabian countryside and his openness towards impressions from the natural world. He sees the 'Weg von Stuttgart nach Hohenheim' (xxII, 290) as the symbolic representation of the history of landscape gardening. The orchards, vineyards and farms alongside the road

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from Stuttgart represent the first stage of landscape cultivation, where man's physical need to feed himself determined the manner in which he shaped his environment. In contrast, the long avenues which link Hohenheim with the open country represent the French garden, the second stage in the history of landscape gardening. The symbolic representation of the third stage in the history of garden design is the 'sogenanntes englisches Dorf' (xxII, 29I), the main part of Hohenheim garden.

More importantly, this actual landscape symbolizing the history of landscape gardening is, for Schiller, also the symbolic representation of the three stages of the history of mankind as expounded in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. The visitor approaching the garden this way thus passes through all the stages of civilization. The first stage of man's development, when he was in complete harmony with his natural environment, corresponds to the first stage of landscape cultivation. The regimented avenues of poplar trees leading to Hohenheim palace represent the advent of the French style in garden design and thus symbolize the increasing advance of culture, the second stage of man's development, while the artificiality and degenerate excesses of culture are symbolized by the lavish and grand interior decoration of the palace. This extravagant splendour prompts the visitor to long for the simplicity of nature and to seek out the 'englisches Dorf' at Hohenheim:

Durch den Glanz, der hier [= im Schloss] von allen Seiten das Auge drickt, und durch die kunstreiche Architektur der Zimmer und des Ameublement wird das Bediirfnis nach- Simplizitat bis zu dem hochsten Grade getrieben und der landlichen Natur, die den Reisenden auf einmal in dem sogenannten englischen Dorfe empfangt, der feierlichste Triumph bereitet (xxII, 290-9I). [Through the splendour which here (= in the castle) presses on the eye from all sides, and through the elaborate architecture and the furniture of the rooms, the need for simplicity reaches its highest level, and the most solemn triumph is prepared for the rural landscape which now welcomes the traveller in the so-called English village.]

The 'englisches Dorf' thus functions as a welcome antidote to the degenerate excesses and artificiality of culture as represented by the palace. This 'Return to Nature' is, however, very different from a return to man's original state, for the 'englisches Dorf' with its flourishing rural colony built in the midst of the relics of a splendid civilization is not the nature from which man set out:

Die Natur, die wir in dieser englischen Anlage finden, ist diejenige nicht mehr, von der wir ausgegangen waren. Es ist eine mit Geist beseelte und durch Kunst exaltierte Natur, die nun nicht blof den einfachen, sondern selbst den durch Kultur verw6hnten Menschen befriedigt und, indem sie den erstern zum Denken reizt, den letztern zur Empfindung zurickfuhrt (xxII, 291). [The nature which we find in this English garden is no longer the nature from which we had set out. It is a nature enlivened with intelligence and exalted through art, which does not merely satisfy the simple man, but even the man spoilt by culture, stimulating the former to thought and leading the latter back to feeling.]

The 'englisches Dorf' is the symbolic representation of the third and most advanced stage of man's development, where all the advantages of culture and the prerogative of man's reason are combined with the simplicity of nature. As such, it provokes an aesthetic response in the visitor, for it restores balance in both the simple and the overcivilized

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man. By returning to nature as represented by Hohenheim garden, modern man thus ensures that he will not merely regress to the unconsciousness which he enjoyed in 'Arcadia', man's original state, but will be carried forward to his perfection in 'Elysium'.

In Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, written shortly after the review, Schiller contrasts examples of literary works which illustrate the pure concept of the satire, elegy and idyll with those which do not. This pattern is already prefigured in the Gartenkalen- der review, for Schiller ends the review by contrasting Hohenheim garden with Schwetzingen and Seifersdorfer Tal, which he regards as degenerate manifestations of the art of landscape gardening.

Schiller was well acquainted with Seifersdorfer Tal through his friendship with Gottfried Korner, who lived in Dresden during the I78os. In a letter to Schiller of I9 October 1787, Korner describes the garden in some detail and recommends it to him as 'sehenswerth'.18 Schiller's attitude, however, is revealed by the fact that, as far as we know, he neither acknowledged nor carried out the request of Tina von Briihl, the creator of the garden, conveyed to him in Korner's letter of i July I788, that he should compose an inscription for the Altar of Truth which had been erected in her garden. In the essay Uber den moralischen Nutzen isthetischer Sitten of 1793, vulgar sentimentality plays no part in Schiller's interpretation of Prince Leopold von Braunschweig's sacrifice of his own life in an attempt to save others, for he sees it as a moral act prompted by reason which overruled the demand of the senses for self-preservation (xxI, 32-34). In contrast, in Seifersdorfer Tal, the prince's self-sacrifice is glorified with all the tearful 'Schwirmerei' typical of this garden. 19 It is this sentimentality and the affectation of the many inscriptions in the garden which Schiller criticizes in the Gartenkalender review:

Das Urteil des Vf. [= Rapp] fiber das Seifersdorfer Tal bei Dresden wird jeder Leser von Geschmack, der diese Anlage in Augenschein genommen, unterschreiben und sich mit demselben nicht enthalten konnen, eine Empfindsamkeit, welche Sittenspriiche, auf eigne Tafelchen geschrieben, an die Baume hangt, fur affektiert zu erklaren (xx I , 291). [Every reader with a sense of taste, who has had a close look at this garden, will subscribe to the judgement of the writer (= Rapp) on the Seifersdorfer Tal garden near Dresden, and along with Rapp will be unable to refrain from declaring as affected a sentimentalism which hangs on trees moral aphorisms written on separate small panels.]

The garden clearly does not fulfil the demand that a landscape garden should represent the synthesis of polarities and appeal to both the intellect and the emotions, for as Schiller was to stress in Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, a feeling for nature characterized by vulgar sentimentality is worthless and of no aesthetic value, for it satisfies only one part of the human psyche and encourages resignation, quiescence and physical inertia.

In the light of this evidence, it is puzzling that Schiller should recommend Becker's description and illustrations of Seifersdorfer Tal to Goethe in a letter of 23 December 1795:

Haben Sie denn auch die schonen Abbildungen vom Seifersdorfer Thal mit Herrn Beckers (in Dresden) Beschreibungen gesehen? Als einem so groBen Liebhaber von Kunstgarten und sentimentalischen Produktionen empfehle ich Ihnen dieses Werk. Es verdient, neben Rackenitz Schrift, eine gelegentliche wiirdige Erwahnung in den Horen (xxviii, I4I).

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[Have you then also seen the beautiful illustrations of Seifersdorfer Tal with Herr Becker's (in Dresden) descriptions? I recommend this work to you as such a great lover of landscape gardens and sentimental creations. It deserves, alongside Racknitz's work, an occasional worthy mention in the Horen.]

By I795, Goethe was hardly a 'Liebhaber von sentimentalischen Produktionen' as Schiller suggests, for as early as 1778 he had, in the Triumph der Empfindsamkeit, satirized the taste for sentimentality in landscape gardens and literature,20 and in the 1790s he even lost interest in Weimar park. It is thus not surprising that Goethe's response to Schiller's recommendation of Becker's work is curt and dismissive. In his reply of 26 December 1795, he describes the work as 'die A bbildung des Seifersdorfer Unwesens' [the illustrations of the Seifersdorf monstrosity] and refers to Tina in similarly unflattering terms as 'die Trude' [the witch] (xxxvi, i, 64). Schiller's suggestion that Becker's work should be given a favourable mention in Die Horen is particularly difficult to comprehend in view of his intention that the journal should educate the wider reading public about the realm of beauty, good taste and the ideal of ennobled humanity.21 A possible explanation is that he saw the garden's albeit degenerate appeal to the emotions as helping the excessively rational man to achieve a harmonious balance, but ultimately, his enthusiasm for Becker's work rests uneasily alongside his condemnation of the garden in the Gartenkalender review.

Schiller's interest in Schwetzingen as a young man is well documented. He passed through the garden in 1782 after he fled from Stuttgart, and he also spent the summer months of 1785 in Schwetzingen.22 The announcement in 1784 of the themes which he intended to treat in his journal, the Rheinische Thalia, also gives some indication of his interest in Schwetzingen:

Schone Natur und schone Kunst in der Pfalz. - Reisende, besonders aus dem nordischen Deutschland, haben uns beides beneidet und die merkwurdigen Gegenden am Rhein wie die herrlichen Monumente der Kunst mit Bewunderung verlassen. Die gliickliche Lage von Heidelberg, der ehrwiirdige Ruin seines Schlosses, der Garten zu Schwetzingen, ... bleiben auch noch in der Schilderung interessant (xxII, 95-96). [Beautiful works of nature and beautiful works of art in the Rhineland - travellers, especially those from the North of Germany, have envied us them and have left the curious regions on the Rhine as well as the magnificent monuments of art with admiration. The happy location of Heidelberg, the venerable ruin of its castle, the garden at Schwetzingen ... even remain interesting in a literary portrayal of them.]

It has even been suggested that Schiller was so impressed by Schwetzingen that he took it as the model for the garden setting in the Thalia fragments of his play Don Carlos.23 However, some measure of the extent to which his opinion of the garden had changed by I794 can be gauged from his comments at the end of the Gartenkalender review, where he describes the juxtaposition of mosques with Greek temples at Schwetzingen as the product of a 'barbarischer Geschmack' [barbaric taste] (xxII, 29). He criticizes Schwetzingen because he does not consider that it fulfils the demands of the first part of the review, for while the diversity of architectural styles in Hohenheim is praised for showing evidence of a 'geistvolle Einheit' [a unity replete with aesthetic beauty] (xxII, 290), that in Schwetzingen is dismissed contemptuously as a chaotic 'buntes Gemisch' [confused jumble] (xxII, 291).

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This contrast between Schiller's views of Hohenheim and Schwetzingen highlights the main weakness of the review, for, as always, he encountered difficulties in his attempt to illustrate a priori reasoning with actual examples. As we have seen, he insists that all the disparate elements in the Hohenheim garden form a harmonious whole because of the single idea underlying its composition. However, in many accounts of Hohenheim, the buildings in the garden are criticized for the lack of unity in their architectural styles. In I797, on his way to Switzerland, Goethe visited Hohenheim in the company of Dannecker, and his description of the garden highlights the subjectivity of Schiller's approach. In direct contrast with Schiller, he maintains that there is no unifying characteristic linking the disparate architectural styles in the garden: 'Nur machen viele kleine Dinge zusammen leider kein gro/3es' [Only many small things unfortunately do not add up to a great thing].24 In his account of the garden, the Prince de Ligne refers to the presence of Arabic and Oriental elements alongside English elements in the garden: 'Les Turcs et les Chinois n'ont pas ete oublies, ony trouve meme leJapon; ily a aussi de l'Anglais' [The Turks and the Chinese have not been forgotten, even Japanese elements are found there, there are also some English touches].25 This comment too suggests a chaotic mixture of disparate architectural styles which could hardly be seen as a 'geistvolle Einheit' as Schiller argues. Modern critics also stress the chaotic variety of architectural styles which caused the intention to achieve a sublime effect to misfire. Christopher Thacker, for example, states that 'the sixty-odd features, all on a fairly small scale, and dotted around the park, were of such an indiscriminate mixture - medieval castles, Chinese pagodas and rococo dairies - that the grandeur, melancholy and strangeness of the sublime degenerated into the bizarre and almost the grotesque'.26

Schiller also overlooked what others saw as the artificiality of Hohenheim. In the theoretical section of the review, he had criticized the tendency on the part of the English gardener to seek variety by crowding as many different scenes as possible into his garden. However, in several eyewitness accounts, Hohenheim is seen as embodying precisely this fault. Although Hirschfeld's description of the garden is couched in predominantly glowing terms, even he expresses the reservation that it appears rather too crowded with buildings, and hopes that the immature trees and bushes will soon grow and separate the disparate scenes, creating a greater sense of space (Th, v, 35 ). Like Hirschfeld, Goethe too criticizes the garden for being overcrowded and ridicules the buildings themselves for being purely decorative and serving no useful purpose:

Der ganze Garten ist mit kleinen und grofiern Gebauden iibersaet, die mehr oder weniger teils einen engen, teils einen Reprasentationsgeist verraten. Die wenigsten von diesen Gebauden sind auch nur fur den kiirzesten Aufenthalt angenehm oder brauchbar.27 [The whole garden is strewn with small and larger buildings, which betray to a greater or lesser extent partly an intimate, partly an official character. Very few of these buildings are agreeable or usable for even the shortest stay.]

And Friedrich Meinecke argues that Schiller was so enthusiastic about Hohenheim that he did not notice the contrived character of the 'englisches Dorf', and compares the artificial manner in which an idea was imposed on the landscape at Hohenheim to Schiller's tendency to allow his thought to dictate the images in his lyric:

DaBf Schiller sich durch die 'Idee' bestechen lief und das eklektisch Gewollte und Zurechtgemachte der Veranstaltung nicht empfand, erinnert uns an die empfindlichsten

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Schwachen seiner Dichtungen, deren Gestalten immer mehr gewollt als gewachsen sind.28 [The fact that Schiller allowed himself to be captivated by the 'idea' and did not discern the eclectically forced and artificial aspects of the arrangement of Hohenheim, reminds us of the most noticeable weaknesses of his poems, the forms of which are always artificial rather than organically evolved.]

In order to demonstrate that the a priori concept of the German garden is fulfilled in practice, Schiller thus ignores those elements of Hohenheim which do not conform to his theory. For example, the presence of a mosque with its adjoining garden for exotic birds29 could not easily be explained by the idea that a rural colony had been built in the midst of the ruins of a Roman settlement. Nevertheless, despite the difficulties involved in attempting to illustrate theoretical arguments with an empirical example, Schiller successfully legitimizes landscape gardening as a worthwhile activity which can produce beautiful works of art with potentially the same aesthetic effect as sculpture and painting. His insistence that Hohenheim could further man's aesthetic education and so contribute to taking him forward to the perfection of 'Elysium' proves that he regarded the new feeling for nature as playing a significant role in the life and development of modern man.

REFERENCES I. See for example Karl Berger, Schiller: Sein

Leben und seine Werke, 2 vols (Miinchen, 19o0, I9I I), II, pp. 319-20; Friedrich Meinecke, 'Schillers Spaziergang', in Meinecke, Vom geschichtlichen Sinn und vom Sinn der Geschichte (Leipzig, I939), pp. 68-94 (pp. 70-73); Emil Staiger, Friedrich Schiller (Zurich, I967), pp. I91- 92; and Heinrich Viehoff, Schiller's Gedichte erliutert und auf ihre Veranlassungen und Quellen zuriickgefiihrt, neue, gr6fitentheils umgearbeitete Auflage, 3 vols (Stuttgart, 1856), II, p. I55.

2. Schiller's works are referred to by volume (roman numeral) and page (arabic numeral) of the Nationalausgabe, begrundet von Julius Petersen; fortgefuhrt von Lieselotte Blumenthal und Benno von Wiese, herausgegeben im Auftrag der Nationalen Forschungs- und Gedenkstatten der klassischen deutschen Literatur in Weimar (Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv) und des Schiller- Nationalmuseums in Marbach von Norbert Oellers und Siegfried Seidel (Weimar, I943-). 3. Briefe uber die Kunst an eine Freundinn

(Dresden, I792), part 2, p. 39. 4. Theorie der Gartenkunst, 5 vols (Leipzig,

I779-85), I, p. I44. Further references to this edition, hereafter referred to as Th, are given after quotations in the text.

5. 'Hirschfeld ist, soviel mir bekannt ist, der erste, der den Namen "deutscher Garten" auffuhrt: aber er bestimmt letztern nicht weiter, als dab er eine Abweichung von den englandischen Anlagen sei' [Hirschfeld is, as far as I know, the first writer to cite the name 'German garden':

however, he does not define this term fully, merely stating that it differs from the English garden]. Quoted from Wolfgang Schepers, 'C. C. L. Hirschfelds Theorie der Gartenkunst (I779-85) und die Frage des "deutschen Gartens"', in Park und Garten im i8. Jahrhundert, Colloquium der Arbeitsstelle i8. Jahrhundert, Beitrage zur Geschichte der Literatur und Kunst des 18. Jahrhunderts, 2 (Heidelberg, I978), pp. 83-92 (p. 83). 6. Wirtembergisches Repertorium, drittes Stiick

(Stuttgart, 1783), p. 394. 7. Ibid., p. 396. 8. Quoted from Schiller's letter to Dalberg of

24 August 1784 (xxIII, I55). See also Peter Andre Bloch's comment that Schiller's idea of a 'German Classicism' resides in the synthesis of French and English models: 'Schillers Idee und Experiment einer "neuen Klassik"', in Der theatralische Neoklassizismus um 1800: Ein europdisches Phanomen?, herausgegeben von Roger Bauer in Verbindung mit Michael de Graat und Jiirgen Wertheimer, Jahrbuch fur internationale Germanistik, Reihe A: Kongrefberichte, I8 (Bern, I986), pp. 40-50 (pp. 46-47). 9. Letter to Schiller of I6 November 1791.

Quoted from Peter Andre Bloch, Schiller und die franzosische klassische Tragodie: Versuch eines Vergleichs, Wirkendes Wort, 5 (Dusseldorf, 1968), p. 89. See also the poem Deutsche Groiie of 1797, in which Schiller sees Germany as the land which geographically constitutes the force of equilibrium between the great powers of France and England

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FRIEDRICH SCHILLER

and the Germans as a people which has always absorbed and synthesized the best elements from other peoples and cultures: II, i, 433, lines 13-28. Io. For a detailed description and illustrations of Hohenheim see Victor Heideloff, Ansichten des Herzoglich-Wiirtembergischen Landsizes Hohenheim: Nach der Natur gezeichnet und durch kurze Beschreibungen erlaeutert (Niirnberg, I795). Hirschfeld also gives an eyewitness description of the garden in his Theorie der Gartenkunst, v, PP. 349-55. I 1. 'Schiller in Hohenheim', in Marbacher Schillerbuch, vol. 2 (Stuttgart und Berlin, I907), pp. 126-78 (pp. 142-56). I2. See Eduard Boas, Schiller's Jugendjahre, herausgegeben von Wendelin von Maltzahn, 2 vols (Hannover, I856), II, pp. 275-76. See also ProelB, 'Schiller in Hohenheim', p. I57, and the comment by Ludwig Friedrich Goritz in his Erinnerungen, quoted in Schillers Personlichkeit, Urtheile der Zeitgenossen und Documente gesammelt von Max Hecker und Julius Petersen, 3 vols (Weimar, 1904-09), II (I908), pp. 44-45. 13. See Proelf3, 'Schiller in Hohenheim', pp. 130- 31, Eduard von der Hellen, Schillers Simtliche Werke, Sakular-Ausgabe in i6 Banden, i6 vols (Stuttgart und Berlin, I904-05), I, p. 319 and XXII, 428. I4. Idealisierte Natur: Die literarische Kontroverse um den Landschaftsgarten des 18. undfriihen I9. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland (Stuttgart, I98I), p. I39. 15. See Rapp's letter to Schiller of 13 July 1794, quoted in part by ProelB, 'Schiller in Hohenheim', pp. I74-75. i6. See Friedrich Wilhelm von Hoven, Lebenserinnerungen, herausgegeben von Hans- Gunther Thalheim (Berlin, I984), pp. 142-43. I7. Schillers Briefe, herausgegeben und mit Anmerkungen versehen von Fritz Jonas, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 7 vols (Stuttgart, no date), III, p. 415. i 8. See Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Korner von 1784 bis zum Tode Schillers, mit Einleitung von

Ludwig Geiger, 4 vols (Stuttgart, no date), I, p. I56. 19. For a description of the memorial to the Prince in Seifersdorfer Tal and its intended effect on the onlooker see Wilhelm Gottlieb Becker, Das Seifersdorfer Thai (Leipzig und Dresden, I792), PP. 43-44. 20. See also Dieter Hennebo, who sees the year 1778 as marking 'die Abkehr Goethes von der empfindsamen Gartenkunst' [Goethe's renunciation of sentimental landscape gardening]: 'Goethes Beziehungen zur Gartenkunst seiner Zeit', JFDH (I979), 9o-II9 (p. I02). 21. See Die Horen: Einladung zur Mitarbeit, Ankiindigung and Gekiirzte Ankiindigung, xxII, 103-I0, and Schiller's description of the aims of Die Horen in a letter to Friedrich Christian von Augustenburg of 9 January I796. 22. See also Schiller's letter to Henriette von Wolzogen of Ii August I783, in which he mentions a planned excursion to Schwetzingen. 23. See E. L. Stahl, Die klassische Zeit des Mannheimer Theaters: Das Europiiische Mannheim (Mannheim, 1940), pp. 277-80 (p. 279). 24. Reise in die Schweiz I797, Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gesprdche, herausgegeben von Ernst Beutler (Zurich, I948-), XII, p. I32. 25. Coup d'oeil sur Beloeil et sur une grande partie desJardins de I'Europe, Nouvelle Edition, publiee avec une introduction et des notes par le Comte Ernest de Ganay (Paris, I922 [1786]), p. I26. 26. The History of Gardens (London, 1979), p. 218. 27. Gedenkausgabe, XII, p. I32. Goethe also refers contemptuously to Hohenheim as 'der mit unzahligen Ausgeburten einer unruhigen und kleinlichen Phantasie ubersaete Garten' [The garden littered with countless monstrous inventions of a restless and narrow-minded imagination] in a letter to Herzog Karl August of II September 1797: Gedenkausgabe, XII, p. I57. 28. Meinecke, p. 72. 29. See Heideloff, 'Grundriss des Gartens in Hohenheim' (unpaged).

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Issue Table of ContentsGarden History, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 1-104Front MatterHorace Walpole as Modern Garden Historian: The President's Lecture on the Occasion of the Society's 25th Anniversary AGM Held at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, 19 July 1990 [pp. 1-11]Russian Gardens, British Gardeners [pp. 12-20]The Russian Stowe: Benton Seeley's Guidebooks as a Source of Catherine the Great's Park at Tsarskoe Selo [pp. 21-27]Friedrich Schiller and the English Garden: ber den Gartenkalender auf das Jahr 1795 [pp. 28-46]Legacy of a Bishop: The Trees and Shrubs of Fulham Palace Gardens Introduced 1675-1713 [pp. 47-59]Painting with Living Pencils: Lord Petre [pp. 60-76]An Evaluation of Archaeological Techniques Used at Castle Bromwich Hall, 1989-90 [pp. 77-99]ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 100-102]Review: untitled [pp. 102-104]

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Friedrich Schiller and the English Garden