Branitz became possession of the counts of
Pückler in 1696. From 1784, the family lived in Muskau. The
property was leased from this year on. After the sales of
Muskau in 1845, where Hermann Fürst of Pückler-Muskau
(1785-1871) had been creating a landscape garden since 1811,
he returned to Branitz. In that same year, he began to work on
the new park.
The landscape park, which was created by him and
completed by the successor Heinrich Graf von Pückler
(1835-97), is an artistic garden of international importance.
The well-known writer and world traveller Fürst Pückler was
one of the best-known German garden designers of the 19th
century, alongside Peter Joseph Lenné and Friedrich Ludwig von
Sckell.
The Branitz park is a landscape garden with
artistically differentiated park ranges, according to the
'zoning principle'. The 'internal park', which includes the
economic and market gardens, is spread over an area of approx.
100 hectares. In addition to that, Fürst Pückler also arranged
'the exterior park' as an 'ornamental farm' in an area of
approx. 600 hectares. He built a flower park with flower
patches, plastics, further decorative elements and ornamental
shrubs around the Schloss. Here Pückler also used foreign
wood, in the park however, he only used native plants. For the
design of the park, Fürst Pückler used the high groundwater
level and the river Spree, located nearby, in order to create
an artificial water system in the park. With the excavation
from the lakes and channels, he created the formatively
completed relief of the park.
The reed-sea section in particular is
beautifully modelled. The pyramid level with the built land
pyramid, previously formed in steps (1860-63) and the
'Tumulus' (1856-57) have a unique effect. Fürst Pückler was
buried in 1871 in the 'Tumulus' ( sea-pyramid). In 1884, his
wife who had passed in 1854 and lifelong companion, Lucie von
Pückler-Muskau (born in 1776), were also buried there.
By masterful grouping of the wood, artistic
treatment of the relief and skillful route configuration, the
prince created a kind of a picture gallery in the park, in
which the viewer experiences a sequence of three-dimensional
garden pictures./font>
The Schloss built in 1770-1772 is situated in
the centre of the park. It accommodates the Fürst-Pückler
museum with historical dwellings and an exhibition of the life
and work of Fürst Pückler as well as the Cottbus collection of
Carl Blechen's paintings. Opposite the Schloss, there is the
Marstall with exhibition rooms and the 'Kavalierhaus', in
which a restaurant is located.
Between the two buildings lies the 'Pergola'
with reliefs of the Danish sculptor Berthel Thorwaldsen,
antiquity copies from zinc casting and a bronze casting of the
Venus Italica by Canova. Other buildings in the park include:
at the south-east end of the 'internal park' is the neo-Gothic
park, which accommodates the administration of the
Fürst-Pückler-Museum Branitz Park and Schloss, in the North
there is the classical Cottbus tower house which is used as a
guest house, and the historical greenhouses of the market
garden as well as the property supervisor house with the
accompanying stable buildings.
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