(1789 - 1866)

Peter Joseph Lenné

P.J. Lenné comes from an old court gardener family in Bonn. In his youth he felt attracted to Paris, the city which also became the focus of a new artistic development in Europe in the wake of the French revolution. Here he studied modern French landscape gardening and architectural theory in 1811/12.

In 1816 Lenné came to Potsdam, where he started work as a "gardener's assistant" in the royal administration of gardens. It was probably State Chancellor Prince Hardenberg who arranged this job for him, for in the same year the prince commissioned Lenné to landscape the park of Glienicke Palace, which he had purchased. Here Lenné became acquainted with Schinkel, who was in the process of converting Glienicke Palace.

Lenné and Schinkel soon realised that they shared similar artistic goals: both wanted to harness in their work the enormous thrust of artistic renewal emanating from the French revolution - and both saw Potsdam's lakes and hilly landscape as the ideal terrain for their ideas. The idea was to "beautify" this landscape at prominent points with architecture designed to blend into it, and to interconnect all the individual elements into a single whole. For both artists, the objective of these efforts was the "aesthetic education of people".

Lenné had probably already recognised the potential of designing a spacious park landscape immediately after his arrival in Potsdam. In the same year he already developed a "plan of Sanssouci and its surroundings together with a project to add flowing water and fountains, and to beautify the promenades". An expert opinion prepared by Lenné in 1821 already contains ideas of "harmoniously combining all the isolated but beautiful historical buildings in Potsdam's surroundings by means of a beautified landscape".

This draft also takes up the old idea of the overall beautification of the "island of Potsdam", which had been developed in the late 17th century. However, the idea of the "paradise isle of Potsdam" could not be put into practice during the Electors' times. For Lenné, however, this idea became the basis of his later work. After his appointment as Director General of the Royal Prussian Gardens in 1824, he was able to put into practice his spacious design principles on a continuous basis, often complementing the work of Schinkel.

In a further "beautification plan for the surroundings of Potsdam" dated 1833, Lenné already intended to lay out the Havel river landscape "as a lake with a large park extending for almost two German miles, from Karlsberg hill near Baumgartenbrück all the way to the Peacock Island". The intensely designed royal gardens were at the centre of the concept. Taking them as starting points, some of the Havel banks were to be planted with deciduous woods, existing forests partially opened up to form a park-like landscape, and fields and hills wooded. Lenné finally found a patron in King Frederick William IV, who took over the government in 1840 and enthusiastically shared his ideas on laying out Potsdam's park landscape.

Up to Lenné's death in 1866, the various elements of Potsdam's surroundings were joined together piece by piece as part of the large, overall project: the modified New Garden, the redesigned Sanssouci Park, Peacock Island, the Palace Parks of Glienicke, Babelsberg and Sacrow, the Pfingstberg hill, and Lindstedt Park.