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06/10/2025 | Excursion

Excursion in Kassel: The revolution in the garden

On May 27 and June 3, 2025, students from the "Garden and Garden Revolution in the 18th Century" seminar (led by Nikola Roßbach) set off on two walks through Kassel's Karlsaue and Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. Between visual axes, water features and picnic blankets, it was possible to experience how the change from baroque to sensibility and freedom can be seen in the garden.

If you want to learn about "Garden and Garden Revolution in the 18th Century" (seminar led by Nikola Roßbach), Kassel is the place to be. Karlsaue and Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe: our two historic parks show how closely the garden art of the 17th and 18th centurieswas linked to literary, aesthetic, philosophical and political concepts. The transition from the geometrically regular baroque garden of absolutism, which forced nature under its rule, to the English landscape garden, which stands for freedom, individuality and sensibility, is paradigmatic here.

The Karlsaue is Baroque in character (and is only partially modified in terms of landscape gardening further south), while the Bergpark is the opposite: although the monumental Hercules figure, including the visual axis to the palace and extended across Wilhelmshöher Allee, has been preserved from its late Baroque origins, the park as a whole has been fundamentally changed and transformed into one of the most important German landscape gardens in the English style.

All of this was to be discovered after the literary garden discourses from Brockes and Gessner to Möser and Goethe as well as the "Theory of Garden Art" by Christian Cay Laurenz Hirschfeld were first discussed in the seminar.

On May 27 and June 3, 2025, the focus shifted from theory to practice: two long walks offered new perspectives, short presentations and an extensive picnic break. Unfortunately, the carriage was missing in the Karlsaue for the perfect baroque feeling, but the gigantic fountain rose into the air in the Bergpark (quite unexpectedly on a Tuesday) - as a welcome to our seminar!