The Silesians and theories of garden art from the 16th to the 18th century with new research from the Wrocław University Library collection

Wojciech Brzezowski

doi:10.5277/arc130101

Abstract

The importance endowed upon gardens in the period of the Renaissance and the Baroque may be witnessed not only in realizations but also in the number of treatises devoted to them. In the collection of old prints of the Wrocław University Library there is a substantial collection of works devoted to agronomy, botany and garden art. A considerable part of them was used in Silesia in the 17th and 18th centuries, as they originate from collections of old Wrocław libraries or Silesian monastic libraries. But the Silesians were not only passive recipients of works devoted to gardens, they also participated in propagating the knowledge of garden art. As early as 1590 there appeared a work devoted to agronomy, whose author was Martin Grosser, a parish priest from Szewce (Schewitz) near Wrocław. The treatise of Johan Christof Hibner, Horticultura […], was published in 1664. Hibner was a gardener of the duke of Oława. For the first time in the history of Silesia the potato was mentioned in this work. It also contains a register of garden plants of over 40 pages. However, it seems hardly possible that at that time all the plants mentioned by Hibner were cultivated in Silesian gardens and this text is more of an expression of an ideal vision, nevertheless, no doubt, it had an influence on spreading new tendencies in the art of gardening. A similar function was performed by another 17th century work of Silesian gardeners – the treatise of Georg Herbst Des Schlesischen Gartners Lustiger Spatziergang, published in 1692. The author performed the function of the gardener of duke Christian Ulrich von Würtemberg. An event which went beyond the area of Silesia was the publishing in Wrocław in 1708 the German translation of the work called Curiositez de la nature et de l’art sur la végétation, written by Pierre le Lorrain de Vallemont. The translation of this work was carried out by Ferdinand Ludwig von Bresler und Aschenburg, a member of the Wrocław municipal counsel. The work of Jacques Vanière Praedium rusticum devoted to gardening and published in 1727 by the printing house of the Jesuit College, should also be mentioned here. There are many other garden treatises in the collections of Wrocław. Ownership signs and one-time inventory numbers indicate that most of them belonged to former Silesian libraries and so this points to the fact that it was known and with all certainty influenced the art of gardening in Silesia.