Hermann, Fürst von Pückler-Muskau

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Muskau
Hermann von Pückler-Muskau
Count (1785)
Fürst (1822)
Portrait of Hermann, Fürst von Pückler-Muskau
Coat of arms
Full name
Hermann Ludwig Heinrich von Pückler-Muskau
Born(1785-10-30)30 October 1785
Muskau Castle, Electorate of Saxony
Died4 February 1871(1871-02-04) (aged 85)
Branitz, Kingdom of Prussia
BuriedSchloss Branitz
Noble familyPückler
Dowager CountessLucie von Pappenheim, née von Hardenberg
FatherCarl Ludwig Hans Erdmann Pückler
MotherClementine of Callenberg
OccupationLandscape gardener; author; soldier

Prince Hermann Ludwig Heinrich von Pückler-Muskau (listen

landscape gardening, as well as the author of a number of books mainly centering around his travels in Europe and Northern Africa, published under the pen name
of "Semilasso".

Life

Pückler-Muskau was the first of five children of Count Carl Ludwig Hans Erdmann von

Napoleon I of France, he left Muskau under the General Inspectorate of his friend, the writer and composer Leopold Schefer. As an officer under the Duke of Saxe-Weimar he distinguished himself in the field. Later, he was made military and civil governor of Bruges
.

Farina
in Cologne 1811

After the war he retired from the army and toured

Eliza O'Neill), studied parkland landscaping, and in Wales visited the Ladies of Llangollen in 1828. In 1822, in compensation for certain privileges which he resigned, he was raised to the rank of "Fürst"[1] by King Frederick William III of Prussia. In 1817 he married the Dowager Countess Lucie von Pappenheim, née von Hardenberg, daughter of Prussian statesman Prince Karl August von Hardenberg
; the marriage was legally dissolved after nine years, in 1826, though they did not separate and remained on amicable terms.

Mahbuba, ca. 1840

He returned to England in 1828 where he became something of a celebrity in London society spending nearly two years in search of a wealthy second wife capable of funding his ambitious gardening schemes. In 1828 his tours took him to Ireland, notably to the seat of Daniel O'Connell in Kerry.[2] On his return home he published a not entirely frank account of his time in England. The book was an enormous success in Germany, and also caused a great stir when it appeared in English as Tour of a German Prince (1831–32).

Pueckler's name carved in the Great Enclosure of Musawwarat

A daring character, he subsequently traveled in

Asia Minor, Greece, and Vienna, where he introduced her to European high society, but Mahbuba developed tuberculosis and died in Muskau in 1840. Later he would write that she was "the being I loved most of all the world."[3]

He then lived in Berlin and Muskau, where he spent much time cultivating and improving Muskau Park, which still exists today. In 1845 he sold this estate, and, although he still lived from time to time at various places in Germany and Italy, his principal residence became Schloss Branitz near Cottbus, where he laid out another splendid park.[4]

Politically he was a

Freiherr vom Stein. This, together with his pantheism and his colourful lifestyle, made him slightly suspect in the society of the Biedermeier
period.

In 1863 he was made a hereditary member of the

Battle of Königgratz
, even though the then 80-year-old Prince had slept throughout the day of the battle.

In 1871 the prince died at Branitz. Since human cremation was illegal at that time for religious reasons, he resorted to an ingenious evasion of traditional burial; he left instructions that his heart be dissolved in sulphuric acid, and that his body should be embedded in caustic soda, caustic potash, and caustic lime. Thus, on 9 February 1871, his denatured remains were buried in the Tumulus - an earth pyramid surrounded by a parkland lake at Branitzer Castle.

Dying childless, Pückler-Muskau's castle and estate passed to the heir of the princely title, his nephew Heinrich von Pückler, with money and other assets going to his niece Marie von Pachelbl-Gehag, née von Seydewitz. The prince's literary estate was inherited by writer Ludmilla Assing, who wrote his biography and posthumously published correspondence and diaries unpublished during his lifetime.

Artist

Muskau Park

As a landscape gardener, he is considered of European importance. As a writer of travel books, he holds a high position, his powers of observation being keen and his style lucid, animated, and witty. This is most evident in his first work Briefe eines Verstorbenen (4 vols, 1830–1831), in which he expresses many independent judgments about England and other countries he visited in the late 1820s and about prominent people he met. Among his later travel books are Semilassos vorletzter Weltgang (3 vols, 1835), Semilasso in Afrika (5 vols, 1836), Aus Mehemed Ali's Reich (3 vols, 1844) and Die Rückkehr (3 vols, 1846–1848).[4] Andeutungen über Landschaftsgärtnerei (1834, "Remarks on Landscape Gardening") was the only book he published under his own name and was widely influential.

In 2016, the

Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn dedicated an exhibition to the eccentric prince, with the title "Die Gartenlandschaften des Fürsten Pückler". Two of his gardens are listed on the UNESCO Lists of World Heritage Sites: one at Bad Muskau, the other Babelsberg
near Potsdam, with both considered high points of European 19th-century landscape design.

There are also drawings and caricatures that he created, but did not publish.

  • Schloss Muskau
    Schloss Muskau
  • Schloss Branitz
    Schloss Branitz
  • Burial pyramid of Hermann, Fürst von Pückler-Muskau at Branitz
    Burial pyramid of Hermann, Fürst von Pückler-Muskau at Branitz
  • The likeness of Hermann von Pückler-Muskau on the stone in Muskau Park
    The likeness of Hermann von Pückler-Muskau on the stone in Muskau Park

Publications

  • Briefe eines Verstorbenen (4 vols), 1830-31 (including a description of the Park of Warwick, which influenced strongly Edgar Allan Poe's The Domain of Arnheim)[5]
  • Tour of a German Prince, 4 vols, London, Wilson 1831-32 (translation of Briefe eines Verstorbenen by
    Sarah Austin
    )
  • Andeutungen über Landschaftsgärtnerei[,] verbunden mit der Beschreibung ihrer praktischen Anwendung in Muskau (the only publication featuring him as author), 1834
  • Tutti frutti
    ; aus den Papieren des Verstorbenen.    , 5 vols, 1834
  • Semilassos vorletzter Weltgang, 3 vols, 1835
  • Semilasso in Afrika, 5 vols, 1836
  • Der Vorläufer, 1838
  • Jugend-Wanderungen, 1835
  • Südöstlicher Bildersaal (on Greece), 1840
  • Aus Mehemed Ali’s Reich (on Egypt), 3 vols, 1844
  • Die Rückkehr, 3 vols, 1846–48
  • Briefwechsel und Tagebücher des Fürsten Hermann von Pückler-Muskau (letters and diaries), 9 vols, ed. Ludmilla Assing, Hamburg 1873–76, Bern ²1971
  • Liebesbriefe eines alten Kavaliers. Briefwechsel des Fürsten Pückler mit Ada von Tresckow (love letters), ed. Werner Deetjen, 1938
  • ISBN 3-7681-9809-X

Honours

Fürst-Pückler-Eis

Fürst Pückler ice cream

His name is still used in German cuisine in Fürst-Pückler-Eis (Prince Pückler ice cream), a Neapolitan style combination of strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice cream. It was named in his honour by Royal Prussian court cook Louis Ferdinand Jungius in 1839.

In Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 the dessert named after Fürst Pückler is mentioned as an example of one's reputation being defined unexpectedly by accomplishments of lesser significance.

Orders and decorations

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Regarding personal names: Fürst is a title, translated as Prince, not a first or middle name. The feminine form is Fürstin.
  2. ^ "Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau in Limerick,1828 • People & Genealogy". 24 November 2014.
  3. ^ Mahbuba, the Beloved, Capital, November 2006
  4. ^ a b c  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Pückler-Muskau, Hermann Ludwig Heinrich, Fürst Von". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 632.
  5. ^ Bettina Clausen, Edgar Poe - Der Park von Arnheim, in: Bettina Clausen/Lars Clausen (eds.), Spektrum der Literatur, 15th ed., Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh 1990
  6. ^ a b c d Handbuch über den Königlich Preußischen Hof und Staat fur das jahr 1868, p. 318
  7. ^ Hof- und Staats-Handbuch des Königreichs Bayern (in German). Königl. Oberpostamt. 1867. p. 27. Retrieved 2021-09-26.
  8. ^ Staatshandbuch für das Großherzogtum Sachsen / Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach (1869), "Großherzogliche Hausorden" p. 13
  9. ^ Sveriges statskalender (in Swedish), 1870, p. 527, retrieved 2021-09-26 – via runeberg.org

References

  • Bowman, Peter James (2010). The Fortune Hunter: A German Prince in Regency England. Oxford: Signal Books. Archived from the original on 2011-07-18.
  • Brennan, Flora (trans.), Puckler's Progress: The Adventures of Prince Pückler-Muskau in England, Wales and Ireland as told in letters to his former wife, 1826-9 (Collins, 1987)
  • Ludmilla Assing-Grimelli, ed., Pückler-Muskaus Briefwechsel und Tagebücher ("Pückler-Muskau's letters and diaries", 9 vols., Hamburg 1873–1876, reprinted Bern 1971)
  • Ludmilla Assing, Fürst Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, 1873
  • Eduard Petzold, Fürst Hermann von Pückler-Muskau in seiner Bedeutung für die bildende Gartenkunst ("Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau - his impact on landscape gardening"), 1874
  • Chevalier Rafael de Weryha-Wysoczański
    , Strategien des Privaten. Zum Landschaftspark von Humphry Repton und Fürst Pückler, Berlin 2004

External links

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