ABSTRACT
At the beginning of his description of Wörlitz, the most famous "English" garden in late eighteenth-century Germany, the Belgian prince Charles Joseph de Ligne exhorts his readers, "Gärtner, Maler, Philosophen, Dichter, gehet nach Wörlitz. Ihr werdet das nämliche Vergnügen geniessen." (Gardeners, painters, philosophers, poets, go to Wörlitz. You too will enjoy this pleasure there.) 1 The significance of this quotation, taken from a 1799 translation by Wilhelm Gottlieb Becker, lies as much in its availability to German readers as it does in what de Ligne actually says. For the late eighteenth century in Germany was a time when garden theorists like Becker, along with many other intellectuals east of the Rhine, were absorbing the cultural currents of French- and English-speaking Europe in unprecedented ways. A treatise written in French, describing an "English" garden in Germany, and available in German translation, was in that context simply par for the course. And despite the seeming marginality of the topic, it was not unusual that such an array of persons, representing divergent areas of expertise, would be expected to take a special interest in gardens. In a world where agriculture was still the basis of most economies and where much of cultural life centered around country estates, garden art and its theorization were very much on the minds of educated persons.
