Location: 4km (2.5 mi) North- East of Bayreuth
Tel. (0921) 759 69 37
Open: 16 Apr- 14 Oct: 9am- 6om daily
The Hermitage in Bayreuth is a historical park with water
features and buildings that was created from 1715 and is one of the
city's sights. The so-called Old Castle, the New Castle (Orangery
with the Temple of the Sun) and other smaller buildings are also
located there. It is divided into a landscape park, a geometrically
laid out baroque garden and an area that has become overgrown with a
forest. The Hermitage is officially a district of the independent
city of Bayreuth.
The landscape park is a rococo gem and a
prime example of 18th-century horticulture. It has a varied design,
with a grotto, artificial ruins in the form of a ruin theater
(1743), an ancient tomb, the hermitage for Margrave Friedrich III.
and a lost hermitage for Margravine Wilhelmine and a number of
fountains. In anticipation of the parks of the Romantic period,
there were also many hidden corners and constantly changing views
and insights.
The garden is divided into geometric areas with
bosquets, avenues and water features. The whole is surrounded in a
semicircle by dense deciduous forest. Wilhelmine followed baroque
ideas by adopting traditional elements (arcades, water features and
hedge quarters). The individual parts stand freely next to each
other, the axis of symmetry customary in the baroque period is
missing.
The 52-hectare park is located on a hill on the eastern edge of the Bayreuth basin in the immediate vicinity of the Sankt Johannis district. In the east and north it is bordered by the deep valley of the Red Main, to the south is the district of Eremitenhof.
17th century
Through a
purchase in 1616, the Bayreuth margraves came into possession of an
extensive forest area near the village of St. Johannis with a total
area of almost 50 hectares. There had been a zoo there since 1664,
a fenced-in forest area reserved for the court for hunting. Just one
year later, planning for a summer house began.
18th century
The Hermitage under Margrave Georg Wilhelm
From 1715, under
Margrave Georg Wilhelm, a summer palace (old palace) and other
smaller buildings (outbuildings, water tower as storage for the
fountains) were built as the center of a courtly hermitage. The
plans came from the court architect Elias Räntz. Although the
inauguration of the then almost 40 hectare park was celebrated on
August 15, 1719, the work lasted until 1722, because material
deliveries from that year are still documented.
In 1718 the
so-called Parnassus was created, on an artificial rock there were
statues of Apollo and the nine muses. Its name should be reminiscent
of the mountain of the same name in Greece, which was dedicated to
the god Apollo. The inauguration of the Hermitage in 1719 was
celebrated with a market for the population and a three-day folk
festival, which from then on was repeated every year as the
Hermitage church fair.
In 1720 the private house of the
engineer Johann Heinrich Endrich was built. Wilhelmine of Prussia,
to whom Monplaisir is named, received it as a present from her
father-in-law Georg Friedrich Karl when she entered Bayreuth in 1732
as the wife of Hereditary Prince Friedrich.
The castle was a
four-wing complex with a small inner courtyard. In each of the two
side wings there were twelve small rooms for the "hermits" and
"hermit ladies". The north wing running across it contained a
magnificent hall and, on the side, spacious apartments for the
margrave and margravine. The "Inner Grotto" was added to the
southern part of the castle, a room clad with glass slag and shells,
in which water can spray from more than 200 nozzles. To the
amusement of the court society sitting dry on the balcony, the
concealed puzzle beams shot under the crinolines of the unsuspecting
ladies among the guests.
To the west of the palace, Georg
Wilhelm had a hedge labyrinth laid out on an area of about one
hectare, which Margravine Wilhelmine had removed again for the
construction of the New Palace and the “Upper Grotto” pool in front
of it. The princess house for Georg Wilhelm's daughter Christiane
Sophie Wilhelmine that existed at the inauguration was later "sold
for demolition".
The margrave couple and the court played
hermit life: during the day they stayed alone like hermits in one of
the pavilions scattered in the forest. Dinner was taken in the
castle. Because of this pseudo-hermitage of the court, the facility
was named Hermitage. Everything that could have reminded of the
splendor of the world was strictly eliminated. The court dress was
exchanged for a brown hermit dress, a straw hat, a gourd and a staff
formed the remaining hermit ornaments. The way of life was supposed
to complete the hermit, one ate with wooden spoons made of brown
earthenware. Both sexes were only allowed to enjoy the pleasures of
society at certain hours. The prince gave the signal with a bell
that was mounted on the turret of his hermitage.
Expansion
under the margrave couple Friedrich and Wilhelmine
After the
death of his father Georg Friedrich Karl, Margrave Friedrich gave
the Hermitage to his wife Wilhelmine in 1735 on the occasion of her
first birthday after taking office.
This immediately set
about expanding the small palace by adding two side wings, the
margrave wing and the margravine wing. The architects were initially
the court architect Johann Friedrich Grael and after his death in
1740 the building inspector Johann Georg Weiß. A Japanese cabinet, a
music room and the Chinese cabinet of mirrors, in which she wrote
her famous memoirs, were set up there. Two of the magnificent
lacquer panels were a gift from her brother, Frederick the Great.
Andrea Domenico Cadenazzi, Carlo Daldini Bossi and Giovanni Battista
Pedrozzi were involved in the plastering of these rooms.
The margrave couple acquired almost 10 hectares to the south for the
Hermitage and laid out the "canal garden" there. Wilhelmine changed the
character of the park and planted hedges with a total length of 6 km. In
this way, she created – instead of the flowered parterres over which one
wanted to see and be seen – small, intimate retreats under the open sky,
which were perfectly combined with the Rococo attitude to life.
From 1737 the "Lower Grotto" was built by the court architects Johann
Friedrich Grael and Joseph Saint-Pierre, later the stone hermitage next
to it for the margrave. Saint-Pierre also created the "Roman Theater",
an open-air stage designed as a ruin. Wilhelmine appeared there herself
as an actress: at the side of Voltaire, who had accompanied Frederick
the Great to Bayreuth in 1743 and who embodied the vizier Acomat in the
verse tragedy Bajazet by Jean Racine, her role was that of Roxane.
Between 1749 and 1753 the New Palace was built to the west of the
previous palace (not to be confused with the New Palace built in the
city center from 1753). It consists of two curved, detached arcade
wings, which were completed in 1751 as an orangery and two years later
contained the margravial apartments. During the conversion to a
residential palace, the eastern wing was widened to accommodate the
Margravine's rooms. The narrower "Men's Wing" was not completed until
the 1770s under Karl Alexander.
Between the wings there is a
central building with a circular floor plan, with which they are not
connected. Its domed roof carries a gilded quadriga, which is steered by
a torch-carrying Apollo as a symbol of the sun. Therefore, the building
is usually referred to as the "Sun Temple". The original plaster and
lime quadriga created by Giovanni Battista Pedrozzi was removed in 1758
and replaced by one in bronzed wood.
At the same time, the large
upper water basin (“Upper Grotto”) with several groups of figures, but
without a central figure, was framed by arcades (so-called treillages,
built by the French carpenter Martin Roubo). The 56 fountains from the
sandstone figures should direct the view from the north directly to the
sun temple. The whole ensemble embodied the four elements. Georg Wilhelm
had the Hermitage opened up with an avenue that leads to Mount Parnassus
and then branches off to the north to the Old Palace. Wilhelmine had a
new axis laid out, which leads there from her little castle Monplaisir,
past the Upper Grotto to the north.
The Hermitage under Ansbach
and Prussian rule
Margrave Karl Alexander von Ansbach, who took over
the principality of Bayreuth in 1769, showed little interest in the
Hermitage. The cost-intensive maintenance of hedges and arcades was
reduced, so that wild growth spread in many places. Part of the park
gradually became a forest again. In 1771/72 the Margrave had an
octagonal pagoda, the “Chinese Pavilion”, built on the “Schneckenberg”
according to designs by Johann Gottlieb Riedel.
In 1790 Karl
August von Hardenberg came to Bayreuth as the leading minister of
Margrave Karl Alexander. After the abdication of Karl Alexander and the
transfer of the principality to Prussia in 1791, he led the
incorporation of the new province. In the same year, the movable garden
inventory, including the statues, was auctioned off. The new lords of
the Hermitage wanted to "anglicize" the park, which they described as a
"frill work of French design" and "horticultural qudlibet".
Hardenberg's 1793 fourteen-year-old daughter Lucia lived from that year
for several summers in the east wing of the New Palace. In addition to
the Hermitage, she also got to know the courtyard garden and the park of
Fantaisie Palace. Later she created the Fürst-Pückler-Park in Bad Muskau
and the Branitzer Park with her second husband Hermann von
Pückler-Muskau.
19th century
At the end of the 18th century,
already under Prussian rule, the garden was landscaped and partly used
for agriculture. In 1810, after four years of French occupation, it was
sold with the town by Napoleon to the Kingdom of Bavaria. Since Bayreuth
was no longer a residential city, there was no need for such a pleasure
garden. In 1811, under Bavarian rule, the canal garden and the nursery
grounds were sold. Probably in 1819 the quadriga was removed from the
sun temple, which remained uncrowned for about 90 years.
In 1830, the Bavarian Duke Pius, who spent several summer weeks in
the Hermitage, had the hermitage chapel that still existed built. Then
the system was only used sporadically, so the Bavarian King Ludwig II
lived in the Old Castle on the occasion of his visit to the Richard
Wagner Festival in 1876. From the original register of 1852 it can be
seen that by then the majority of the geometric designs and the strictly
geometric network of paths had already disappeared.
20th and 21st
centuries
In 1907, the state acquired a bronze eagle at the Nuremberg
Trade Show, which was enthroned on the building from 1908 to April 1945.
The writer Virginia Woolf, who was in Bayreuth in the summer of 1909,
described the Hermitage as "overgrown and deserted".
From 1933,
in connection with the construction of the Reichsautobahn, the
opportunity arose to buy back the previously sold areas. In order to
shorten the walking distance for the guests expected from the Gau
capital, a car park was laid out opposite the sun temple. The canal
garden was therefore moved to the south when it was restored. During the
Second World War, a model tree nursery was set up at Kanalgarten, and in
1944 more than 900 fruit trees were planted there.
Shortly before
the end of the Second World War, parts of the Reich Film Archive were
brought from Berlin to the Hermitage. Wehrmacht soldiers and officers
from the Army High Command's educational film department billeted in the
Old Castle. 60,000 educational films for soldier training as well as
furniture and pictures from the old castle were stored in the new
castle.
On April 14, 1945, when Bayreuth was otherwise largely
taken without a fight, the New Castle was severely damaged by American
troops, with the nitrocellulose films stored there leading to an
explosive fire. The entire interior burned, the old castle and the
former royal stables were also damaged. American air reconnaissance had
spotted military vehicles in the immediate vicinity of the buildings.
Since General August Hagl, who was in Sankt Johannis, refused to
surrender the city without a fight, eight P-47 fighter-bombers fired on
the Hermitage. From 2 p.m. she was attacked with eight explosive bombs
weighing 250 kilos, 18 rockets and on-board weapons.
The
reconstruction of the New Castle in the 1960s only took place on the
outside, the restoration work stretched over ten years. The interiors
were not reconstructed. In May 1969, a quadriga, a work by the sculptors
Richard Stammberger and Bernhard Krauss, was installed on the sun
temple.
A large proportion of the previously sold plots of land
were bought back, and parts of the park that had been lost were
redesigned. Attempts were made to restore the park to the way it existed
at the end of the margrave period. The cascade on the north slope was
restored and from 1972 the canal garden with the bosquets in the
southwest of the complex was restored. In 2003, the snail mountain also
received an octagonal pagoda (“Chinese Pavilion”), the predecessor of
which had disappeared around 1812. In January 1970, the castle of
Monplaisir, which had served as a school for the children of St. John's
for more than 100 years, became the property of the Bavarian Palace
Administration.
Since 2005, the old castle has been extensively
renovated. The Marble Hall, the Chinese Hall of Mirrors, the Japanese
Lacquer Room and other magnificent rooms in the Margravine Wing can now
be visited again.
The Bavarian administration of the state palaces, gardens and lakes looks after the outdoor facilities and the buildings.
The old
castle serves as a museum and can only be visited as part of a guided
tour.
There is a café in the east wing of the Orangery. From the
2014 season, the museum shop will be located in the Old Palace of the
Hermitage. The west wing is used for art exhibitions during the summer
months. Like the central building, the sun temple, it can also be rented
for small and medium-sized private celebrations.
Until 2019, the
palace hotel Hermitage and the palace restaurant were located in the
former stables.
Since August 1970, the summer night festival has
taken place regularly in the park. In the past, there have always been
problems with the weather (e.g. cancellation due to the risk of storms)
and the associated deficits that are borne by the city.
Since
1982, performances by the Studiobühne Bayreuth have taken place in the
Roman Theater during the summer months. In July 1995, Joan Baez
performed an open-air concert in the Hermitage.
Large amounts of water had to be provided for the
trick fountains in the Old Palace, in the Lower Grotto and on Mount
Parnassus, as well as for the cascade and the drinking water supply. The
first water tower was therefore built in 1718 and is still in use.
Originally it got its water from the Pensen mountain range to the east
of the Red Main valley. The feed took place in a closed line system made
of hollowed out tree trunks according to the principle of the culvert.
Most of it was laid underground, but the bottom of the valley was
crossed in a lead pipe over a bridge.
A second water tower was
built around 1750 as part of the construction of the Upper Grotto. It
received the water from the Red Main by means of a piston pumping
station driven by a water wheel via a 200 meter long rod.
The Königsallee leads from the district of Dürschnitz near the city
center to the Hermitage. Margravine Wilhelmine had the road laid out as
a "royal road" on the occasion of the upcoming visit of her brother
Frederick II of Prussia. Not far from the Bayreuth-Nord junction of the
A9 federal autobahn, Eremitagestraße begins and ends on the park
grounds.
The municipal bus lines 302 and 303 go to the Hermitage
in the tariff network of the greater Nuremberg transport association.
From 1910 to 1973 there was the Hermitage station on the Weiden–Bayreuth
railway. There is a parking space for mobile homes near the Lohengrin
Therme in the district of Seulbitz.
The Hermitage Palace is mentioned in Theodor Fontane's novel Effi Briest when Effi reads about a "white woman" who is said to have appeared there to Napoleon Bonaparte. However, the event to which Fontane refers took place in the New Palace in downtown Bayreuth.