Book I. GARDENING IN GERMANY. 



49 



Subsect. 3. German Gardening, in resj>ect to horticultural Productions. 



221. In all probability horticulture was first introduced to Germany by the Romans, 

 and afterwards revived by the religious houses. The native fruits and culinary plants 

 of Germany are the same as those of France, already enumerated. In the museum of the 

 arsenal in Dresden, are still preserved, and shown to strangers, the gardening tools with 

 which Augustus the Second, Elector of Saxony, worked with his own hands. This 

 magistrate died in 1566. He is said to have planted the first vineyard in Saxony, and 

 to have greatly increased the varieties of the hardy fruits. 



222. The more common fruits of Germany, the cherry, the pear, the plum, and the 

 apple, are natives, or naturalised in the woods. Good varieties would no doubt be 

 brought from Italy by the monks, who established themselves in Germany in the dark 

 ages, and from the convents be introduced to the gardens of the nobles, as the latter 

 became somewhat civilised. This would more especially be the case with those pro- 

 »inces situated on the Rhine, where the genial soil and climate would brin°- them to 

 greater perfection, and, in time, render them more common than in the northern districts. 

 Dr. Diel, however, a native of the best part of this tract of country {Nassau Dietz), 

 complains {Obst. Orangerie in Scherben, 1st band.), so late as 1804, that apples, pears, and 

 cherries, were most commonly raised from seeds, and planted in orchards, without being 

 grafted. 



223. The finer fruits only thrive in the south of Germany, the apricot appears to have 

 been some time introduced in Austria and Hungary, and produces well as a standard in 

 the neighbourhood of Vienna. The peach is most commonly grown against walls. The 

 mulberry produces leaves for the silk-worm as far north as Frankfort on the Oder, but 

 ripens its fruit with difficulty, unless planted against walls. The vine is cultivated as far 

 north as the fifty-second degree of latitude, in vineyards, and somewhat farther in gardens. 

 The fig, -to nearly the same extent, against walls, its branches being every where protected 

 in winter ; it is, however, a rare fruit in Germany. At Vienna it is kept in large tubs 

 and boxes, and housed during winter in the wine-cellars. 



224. The pine-apple, Beckman informs us, was first brought to maturity by Baron 

 Munchausen, at Schwobber, near Hamelin. The large buildings erected by the baron for 

 this fruit, are described in the Nuremberg Hesperides for 1714. It was ripened 

 also by Dr. Kaltschmidt at Breslaw, in 1702, who sent some fruit to the imperial 

 court. At present there are very few pineries to be found throughout the whole empire. 



In Austria the best varieties of hardy fruit-trees are said (Bright' s Travels) to have been introduced 

 from Holland, by Van der Schott, about the middle of the seventeenth century ; but many of them must have 

 been in the imperial gardens long before this period, ffom the connection o'f Austria with the Netherlands ; 

 yet Meyer, in 1776, speaking of fruits, says, that" the age of Schoenbrunn will be for Franconia what that 

 of Louis the Fourteenth was for France." The Rev. J. V. Sickler, in Saxegotha, Counsellor Diel, at Nassau 

 Dietz, and Counsellor Ransleben, at Berlin, have established, within the last fifty years, fruit-tree nurse- 

 ries, where all the best Dutch, French, and English varieties may be purchased. Diel and Ransleben 

 prove the sorts, by fruiting the original specimens in pots in a green-house. Sickler has fruited an 

 immense number of sorts in the open air, and published descriptions of them in Der Teutsche Obst. 

 Gartner ; a work of which 48 volumes have already appeared. 



In Hanover George II., after establishing an agricultural society, is said to have introduced the best 

 English fruits about 1751. 



In Saxony the Earl of Findlater resided many years, and planted a vineyard at his country-seat in the 

 neighbourhood of Dresden, said to be the most northerly in Germany. He introduced flued walls, and 

 trained the best sorts of English peaches and apricots on them. The whole of his horticultural efforts 

 and his chateau were destroyed by the French army in 1813, for no other reason than his being an Eng- 

 lishman. A public walk and seat at Carlsbad remain to commemorate his taste and public spirit. 



At Potsda?n the best fruits were introduced by Frederick II., who was passionately fond of them, 

 and cultivated all the best Dutch varieties on walls, espaliers, under glass, and in the open garden. He 

 was particularly fond of pine-apples, of which he grew a great number in pits; and is censured by an 

 English traveller (Burnett), because, on his death-bed, he made enquiries after the ripening of one of them, 

 of which he expected to make a last bonne bouche. Potsdam and Schwobber are the only parts of Germany 

 where forcing has ever been practised to any extent. There are now in the royal gardens of Prussia, 

 excellent pine-apples reared under the care of the director Linne, who has visited England. 



At Weimar, the chief proprietor of the Landes industrie comtoir, and author of a work on potatoes, has 

 an excellent garden and extensive hot-houses where he raises the finest fruits. The whole, Jacobs ob- 

 serves (Travels, 1819, 332.), is kept in excellent order. 



In Hungary horticulture has been much neglected, but fruit-tree nurseries were established there by 

 government in 1808, and subsequently by private gentlemen. Plums, Dr. Bright informs us, are culti- 

 vated in order to make damson brandy. The Tokay wine is made from the variety of grape figured and 

 described by Sickler, in his Garden Magazine of 1804, as the Hungarian blue. The soil uf the Tokay vine- 

 yards is a red brown clay, mixed with sand, incumbent on a clayey slate rock ; and it is observed by a 

 Hungarian writer quoted by Dr. Bright, that " in proportion as the soil is poor and stony, and the vine 

 feeble, the fruit and wine, though small in quantity, become more excellent in their quality." Tokay 

 wine is made in the submontane district which extends over a space about twenty miles round the town 

 of that name. The grapes are left on the plants till they become dry and sweet, they are then gathered 

 one by one, put in a cask with a perforated bottom, and allowed to remain till that portion of the juice 

 escape, which will run from them without any pressure. This, which is called Tokay essence, is generally 

 in very small quantity. The grapes are then put into a vat and trampled with the bare feet; to the 

 squeezed mass is next added an equal quantity of good wine, which is allowed to stand for twenty-four hours, 

 and is then strained. This juice, without farther preparation, becomes the far-famed wine of Tokay, 

 which is difficult to be obtained, and sells in Vienna at the rate of 121. per dozen. The Tokay vineyards 

 are chiefly the property of the emperor. 



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