Baukunst und Gartenkunst - Dessau and Wörlitz

I asked my apartment-mate (who became the father of a little Constantin on April 18), where he would go if he could go anywhere within a day's worth of travel. He suggested Wörlitz.

Wörlitz did not come immediately to mind, but I knew that it was one of the most important palace and garden complexes in Germany. Surprisingly, Wörlitz has not come up often in the documents I am looking at, with Quedlinburg and the Magdeburger Cathederal being the main objects for preservation in Saxony-Anhalt.

Wörlitz was the summer residence of the Duke of Anhalt-Dessau and is about 8 miles away. Dessau is also famous as being the home of the Bauhaus, an architectural movement that continues to shape how buildings are created today.

Several looks at the Bauhaus building, built by Gropius in 1925-6.

Bauhaus was an attempt at to "overcome the process of modernization through design." Reflected in both art and architecture, Bauhaus incorporated rational use of space and design according to purpose. Ironically, it also foreshadowed the industrial building that dominated the GDR, a state that once denounced Bauhaus as being cosmopolitain and anti-human. Bauhaus started in Weimar but moved to Dessau in the early 1920s where many of its important works were built. Under pressure from the Nazis, it closed in 1933 after briefly moving to Berlin. For more information, go to www.bauhaus-dessau.de. (Quote is from website.)

While I didn't have a chance to see much aside from the Bauhaus itself, I did trot around Dessau for a couple hours. Dessau mirrors city development elsewhere in the GDR, especially in cities that suffered from Allied Flachenbombungen - or area bombing. The city has the typical hallmarks: the pedestrian zone with a couple preserved older buildings, in this case the city hall (the palace of the Duke of Anhalt was destroyed by the Americans in bombing raids), the showcase high-rise apartment complex, numerous Plattenbau buildings and, interesting, what appears to be a miniature of the Stalinist Karl Marx Allee.

Clockwise from top left: 1. Possible Stalinist influence pasted onto an older building? Note the neo-classical columns. 2. The Dessau Y apartment buildings. 3. Pedestrian zone. 4. Historical island in a sea of industrial buildings.

Wörlitz itself is like a garden wonderland. It represents both one of the first attempts at Classicism in Germany and was also the first, and perhapts best developed English landscape gardens to be built in Germany.

The Classicism cannot be seen in any of the pictures, as it exists inside the summer palace Landschloss, or summer palace on the grounds, where an interior courtyard (later covered with glass) was built to resemble an Italian plaza. The Duke of Anhalt-Dessau, Leopold III, was an enthusiast of Italian art and architecture, and the interior contains several statues and busts from ancient Rome that were repaired and restored. Leopold III, an "Enlightened despot" who, unlike his forefathers, did not join in Prussia's military campaigning, but stayed home to introduce educational and agricultural reforms, playing host to Rousseau, Voltaire and Goethe.

The grounds are an example of an English landscape garden, which can be thought of as an opposite to the symmetrically arranged and ordered baroque gardens of the French, particularly at Versailles. The land is arranged as a stylized English landscape, with axes and sight lines between buildings and smaller monuments. What makes Wörlitz unique is how it incorporates the river landscape of the Elbe region, with ponds, islands and lakes.

		Train station in Wörlitz - the train appears to be run by a group of amateur enthusiasts. The Fachwerk building has a Denkmal or preservation shield used by the DDR.
		War memorial in Wörlitz, has the approved DDR epitaph, "The Fallen" (Die Gefallenen). Landschloss at Wörlitz. For the 18th century, it was high-tech, with running water and a complete sewage system. The Duke being an enlightened ruler, had it and the garden open to his subjects.
		The neo-Gothic St. Petri church. I was impressed by it's light and elegant spire. Next, the Landschloss from across one of the lakes.
		A view of the synagogue and St. Petri church from the "Golden Urn." The view was constructed to represent religious tolerance. Next, a view across the Wörlitzer See towards the New Bridge.
		The Venus Temple, followed by a picture of a field of rapeseed in bloom.
		The rear of the Gothic House, which is home to one of the world's largest collections of Swiss painted glass (the Calvinists sold it all off). This house was the private residence of the Duke, where he lived with the gardener's daughter in a low-key affair.
		Two last views of the Wörlizer Park, one with the Landschloss in front of the St. Petri church, and the second one with the church behind the landscape.