CHAPTER IX 

 GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN GARDENS 



N garden-craft, as in architecture, we find that Germany 

 has always been a follower rather than a leader. The 

 great princely gardens of the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries were generally designed by Dutch artists ; 

 in the eighteenth century they closely followed the 

 school of Le Notre, under the direction of designers 

 who had served their apprenticeship at Versailles, and 

 finally, towards the end of the eighteenth century, they eagerly took up 

 the craze for the English garden then pervading the Continent. 



But although Germany has never been distinguished by a school of 

 her own she has produced in Hirschfeld a writer whose comprehensive work ^ 

 played an important part in spreading theoretical knowledge. He deplores 

 the Gallomania pervading his country in the eighteenth century, from the 

 prince down to the peasant, " ainsi font les fran^ois ; voild ce que f ai vu 

 en France ; these words were sufficient to reduce the German to a mere 

 copyist, and in consequence we had French gardens as we had Parisian 

 fashions. Our nobles gave the first example of imitation, and everywhere 

 laid out miniatures of Versailles, Marly and Trianon.'' 



Botanic gardens were founded in Germany soon after those of Italy, 

 and the earliest private one is said to have been formed by WilHam, Land- 

 grave of Hesse, early in the sixteenth century ; his example was imitated by 

 many of the nobility, and in 1 5 80 the first public botanic garden was established 

 at Leipzig by the Elector of Saxony, while those of Giessen, Ratisbon, Altdorf 

 and LUm soon followed. A famous writer on botany was the apothecary 

 Basil Besler of Nuremberg (i 561-1629). In 161 3 he published his work, 



■*■ Theorle de rart dcs Jardins. Leipzig, 1770. q vols. 



