The Prussian Garden - Berlin and Brandenburg, Germany (408/418)

The Prussian Garden - Berlin and Brandenburg, Germany (408/418)

Sanssouci Park, with the summer residence positioned above the vineyard, is almost the heart of the Prussian park landscape. It is at the center, but it is not alone.

The House of Hohenzollern wanted to create an ideal landscape at the center of the Electorate of Brandenburg. Initially the sovereigns had their castles built and the parks laid out to suit themselves, each to their own taste, talent, inclination, fashion and available finances. Frederick the Great built Sanssouci Park, which is full of open and also hidden references and meanings, while his nephew, Frederick William II, built New Garden, which is mysterious and esoteric, and also Pfaueninsel which can only be described as both eccentric and surreal. It was not until the appointment of the young master gardener Peter Joseph Lenné however, that the parks began to be merged into a larger work of landscape art.
In the post-war era, it was divided along with Europe into East and West; some of it even ended up as a restricted zone and death strips. The value of this great work of landscape art was no longer recognized.