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Eighteenth-Century Life 28.3 (2004) 90-117


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Les Aventures de Télémaque:

A Reading of the Franconian Rock Garden, Sanspareil

Marilyn Roberts

Waynesburg College

The brainchild of the Margravine Friederike Sophie Wilhelmine of Bay-reuth (1709-1758), Sanspareil is an extraordinary garden of about fourteen hectares near the town of Wonsees in a region of Bavaria known as die Fränkische Schweitz (Franconian Switzerland). As well as drawing on a variety of traditions in landscape design, Wilhelmine based the garden on a personal interpretation of literary works about the adventures of Telemachus. At times witty and playful, Sanspareil also highlighted didactic elements of the Telemachus narratives as lessons to members of Wilhelmine's family. Accounts written about Sanspareil thus far tend to focus on its place in the history of landscape architecture. Even the few articles that examine the literary program of Sanspareil have not offered a close analysis of Wilhelmine's sources. The tour I shall provide challenges the organization offered in the official guidebook and follows instead the sequence described by the two dedication poems composed for the garden.

Wilhelmine, who was the crown princess of Prussia and the elder sister of Friedrich II (Frederick the Great), first saw the property in 1732, during a hunting expedition with her husband, Friedrich, at his family's medieval fortress, Burg Zwernitz.1 In 1744, having decided to establish a private [End Page 90]


Click for larger view		 Figure 1
Morgenländischer Bau (Oriental Building)

hunting preserve near Zwernitz, Friedrich, who was by then the Margrave of Bayreuth, acquired some prime woodland and ordered the construction of several small buildings near the fortress.2 Within the next few years, Friedrich purchased more land and added a variety of new structures to his preserve (Pfeiffer, 213-15), including a hermitage for himself and one for his wife, a kitchen house with wings for accommodating courtiers, and the Morgenländische Bau (Oriental Building) (figure 1). In keeping with the style of a typical hunting retreat, these buildings were modest in size and sported rough stone facades. Wilhelmine apparently collaborated with architect Joseph St. Pierre on the new buildings and took responsibility for [End Page 91] decorating their interiors as well as for designing the gardens developed out of the unusual landscape.3 In September 1746, after two years of successful work on their retreat at Zwernitz, Friedrich announced that the spectacular property would be renamed "Sanspareil" (Pfeiffer, 215).


Click for larger view		 Figure 2
Parterre with Kitchen Building and Burg Zwernitz (in background)

In the center of the residential portion of the property, Wilhelmine installed a traditional Baroque garden, a colorful parterre (figure 2). The coexistence of a formal geometrical garden near a residence and a more expansive and innovative garden farther into a property was a typical juxtaposition on the estates of those who experimented with new trends in [End Page 92] landscape design during the 1730s through 1740s.4 Behind the Morgenländische Bau lies a woody and mysterious landscape of rough, towering rock formations. To traverse such a mysterious place is to participate in an adventure.

Perhaps inspired with a similar spirit of wonder and playfulness, between the years 1744 and 1748, Wilhelmine eventually developed Sanspareil as a kind of theme park based on the adventures of Telemachus, son of Odysseus. Realizing that she would destroy the impact of this unique spot by relying on traditional Baroque garden designs that force nature to conform to an artificial symmetry, Wilhelmine came up with the innovative strategy of making her plan conform to nature. In a letter to her brother Friedrich, dating from September 1749, she wrote, "Die Natur selbst war die Baumeisterin" (Nature herself was the architect) of Sanspareil.5 Paths and stone steps provided connections among the various rock formations. Rather than moving rocks and trees to complement buildings, Wilhelmine and the margrave placed buildings on or among rocks and left much of the forest uncut. As a result, a map of Sanspareil looks more like a swimming fish than a geometrical figure (figure 3...

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