Peter Joseph Lenné, landscape architect and urban planner

Abstract

Peter Joseph Lenné was undoubtledly one of the most significant German landscape architects of the 19th century. He was descended from a family of gardeners, who in the 17th century came from Belgium to Germany. Peter Lenné was born in Bonn in 1789. After attending a grammar school he decided to become a gardener, then a botanical gardener, and later a landscape architect. After his apprenticeship, Lenné made several journeys to south Germany and to Switzerland. He had probably already met Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell (1750–1823), the great landscape architect, who worked in Bavaria. Sckell created the famous English Garden in Munich. In 1811 Lenné worked in Paris in the Botanic Garden under Desfontaines, made the acquaintance of Thouin (then the first artist in landscaping in France) and studied architecture under Durand. From 1812 to 1815 he continued his instruction in Vienna, Austria. After two years in the gardens of Schönbrunn, he went to Laxenburg, where the Empress Maria Theresia had a country seat with a large park. Here he created his first important work of art, a plan of the whole park, which had run wild during the Napoleonic Wars. In Laxenburg Friedrich Wilhelm III, King of Prussia, who took part in the Vienna Congress (1815) possibly had his first meeting with Lenné. This was the beginning of a great career, and Lenné lived in Potsdam from 1816 until his death in 1866. Lenné was a convinced adherent of the landscape garden, the new style which came from England to central Europe in about 1750. The baroque gardens of Louis XIV, King of France (le roi soleil), created by the famous Le Nôtre, were then out of fashion. In Potsdam Lenné was engaged in redesigning the royal parks. One of his first works was the formation of the park Klein Glienicke, owned by the Prince of Hardenberg. In 1822 the younger Repton came from England to visit Sanssouci. He saw the new arrangements of Lenné in Potsdam and praised them highly. As a result of this Lenné received a royal scholarship for a three month visit to England. Here he became acquainted with some of the parks created by William Kent (1685–1748) (e.g. Eaton Hall near Chester). Lenné admired William Kent, whom he named “the father of the new landscape architecture”. From 1816 until his death the indefatigable Lenné designed parks and shaped large landscape areas, later he was engaged in urban planning, which had a social significance. The poor man should also have the possibility of relaxing in common parks. Lenné did much for the organization of his profession. With other like-minded men he founded the first Prussian horticultural school in Potsdam, Wildpark (1824), and a royal tree nursery. Two years before he had cofounded a Royal Horticultural Society in Germany, which still exists today as the Deutsche Gartenbaugesellschaft. He was a significant gardener, particularly interested in botany, dendrology and even in fruit culture. He was a famous landscape architect and a progressive urban planner. In the USA he had an important colleague, though this man was much younger than Lenné, Frederic Law Olmsted (1822–1903).