Parc Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The historical landscape of Ermenonville ( Jardins d' Ermenonville ) was created from 1763 to 1776 by the Marquis René Louis de Girardin. The garden is mainly known for the Poplar Island ( Ile des peupliers ). The original design of the system is only partially visible. The park is located about 50 kilometers northeast of Paris.
History
The domain of Ermenonville was Girardin 1762 had fallen by inheritance; Built in 1603, the castle and the estate had been purchased in 1754 by his maternal grandfather, René Had. Owning included after 1762 and 1778 were made by purchase and exchange of land extensions an area of about 800 hectares, consisting of meadows, forests and water areas, the castle and the village Ermenonville. Comprehensive income from farming Girardin allowed the estate according to his ideas to remodel. The original park area consisted of the North Park ( Petit Parc), the wilderness and the South Park ( Grand Parc). Only parts of the landscape designs and some of the park architecture have been preserved, the road system is no longer available. The southern area is now called Parc Jean -Jacques -Rousseau. , In memory of Jean -Jacques Rousseau, who died in Ermenonville
Idea Historical Background
The park of Ermenonville can be considered as a crucial step towards the introduction of the English garden style on the continent. The model for this new type of garden design can be found in the landscape park of Stourhead, was begun in 1741. He is, in contrast to the Baroque garden, a media concept, which is to aim the realization of an ideal landscape, as they ( The Arcadian Shepherds ) is depicted in the paintings of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin.
For the design of the garden of Ermenonville another idea came to him that the novel Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse. Lettres de deux amants habitants d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes ( " Julie or the New Heloise. Letters of two lovers who live in a small town at the foot of the Alps" ) by Jean -Jacques Rousseau comes, published in 1761. Rousseau designs in his book, a garden that is exclusively committed to nature, in deliberate contrast to rationally constructed baroque garden. Consequently, integrated Girardin elements that should enhance the romantic mood ( caves, ruins ), which already was in contrast to Rousseau's idea. Rousseau was aware of the artificiality of the design of the "natural " aware: Even with a garden in the English style, it always is a landscape staging. A further elevation was the establishment of " Rousseau Island ", a passed with poplars Island, Ile des peupliers, with a tomb of Rousseau dar.
Girardin had already made his own by his stay in Luneville, Lorraine, the exile of the Polish King Stanislaus Leszczynski I. social reform ideas and learn garden design ideas. In England he found in the small garden and farm The Leasowes in Halesowen the poet William Shenstone a model that was his high and probably sometimes rigid moral demands and came close to his ideas of the simplicity of country life. For the reconstruction works in Ermenonville Girardin had two hundred men from England and employed originates in Scotland gardener.
Set over the garden design, the draft Girardin's a political statement against the monarchy, for more civil liberties represents: freedom and equality as the man from nature conferred properties.
Recording and imitation of the idea
Among other things, through engravings by Georges Louis Le Rouge in his work Jardins anglo- chinois à la mode in which and English models are presented, the new garden in the form of circles of aristocratic garden lovers became known on the continent. One of the most famous imitators was Prince Franz of Anhalt, who had designed in Wörlitz the first large English garden on the continent. Even the Rousseau Island has been mimicked in Wörlitz - adorned with a decorative urn - in ignorance of the sarcophagus in Ermenonville. A Rousseau Island is also located in the Tiergarten in Berlin and in Arkadia (Poland).
Garden structure and design elements
The landscape of the park consists essentially of two forest areas in between where meadows are loose with trees and bushes. There is a large and a small pond and a seeähnlich dammed river. Two parts of the garden were designated as contemporary Désert ( "wilderness "). The Castle (Château d' Ermenonville ) located on an island in the river Launette. The concept of the park is characterized by the harmonious combination of different landforms, the same landscape images were created that stimulate you to linger and look.
The main axis along the valley of the Launette led, from the windows of the great salons of the castle visible northward into the area of Petit Parc. The scenery was designed here as a Dutch landscape: water and wind mill associated with a channel-like stream with low bridges, supplemented by a brewery. Today only exist the channel and the mill.
Characteristic and programmatically significant are a number of follies that are interspersed in the parkland. There is a hermitage ( Hermitage ) with a grotto, an artificial ruin ( temple ruins) and the house of the philosopher ( maison du philosophe ). A tower in neo-Gothic style, the Tour Gabrielle, who had received its final form by Jean -Marie Morel, was present; he burned down in 1793. The tomb of Jean -Jacques Rousseau was added after his death in 1778. Originally it was an urn on a cube-shaped base, 1781 was the sarcophagus, designed by Hubert Robert, executed by the sculptor Jacques Philippe Lesueur. The corpse of Rousseau is since 1794 no longer in Ermenonville, but in the Panthéon in Paris. On the southern shore opposite the island lies the grave of Georg Friedrich Meyer (1733-1779), one originating from Strasbourg painter.
The park has already been described in a contemporary garden guide, mapped the different landscapes in twenty-five accompanying engravings. The text of this book with the title Promenade des jardins d' ou Itinéraire Ermenonville is repeatedly falsely Cécile Stanislas Xavier de Girardin attributed, but the author is not yet known. The engravings are from MERIGOT the Younger
Subsequent development
The park of Ermenonville should have never reached the aesthetic quality of the great English landscape gardens such as Stourhead. Even during construction, it was a disagreement between Girardin and his architect Jean -Marie Morel, the authoritarian manners Girardin had violated come. A violent storm devastated in 1787 a part of the park; the damage was not eliminated. After the revolution of 1789, the gardens fell further. The couple Girardin left the property in 1794.
Subsequent owners pursued the concept Girardins no further. For example, plantings of Rhododendron and other changes were made. Palace and gardens remained until 1878 owned by the Girardin family that in 1874 the "wilderness" sold. According to Girardin, the property belonged to Constantin Radziwill. 1932 Ettore Bugatti acquired the property, sold the 1938 South Park, southern lake and the Ile des peupliers to the Touring Club de France. Since 1985, the Oise is the owner. The Désert with the cottage Rousseau now belongs to the Institut de France and is preserved in the form of neglected. The Château d' Ermenonville is now a luxury hotel in private ownership.