LENNÉ, Peter Joseph - b. 1789 Bonn, d. 1866 Potsdam

German landscape architect and gardener. He was the son of the court and university gardener Peter Joseph Lenné the Elder (1756-1821). As director general of the Royal Prussian palaces and parks in Potsdam and Berlin, his work shaped the development of 19th-century German garden design in the Neoclassical style. His parks were laid-out according to the principles of the English landscape garden.

He began his apprenticeship as a gardener in 1808 with his uncle, Josef Clemens Weyhe, court gardener at the electoral Augustusburg and Falkenlust Palaces, Brühl. From 1809 to 1812, Lenné took many study trips, which took him to Southern Germany, to France, and to Switzerland. In 1811, he completed a long internship in Paris with Gabriel Thouin (1747-1829), who was then one of the most famous garden architects in Europe. This made him a master landscaper. On another of these trips, Lenné made the acquaintance of the creator of the English Garden in Munich, the landscape gardener Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, who would have a lasting influence on Lenné’s work.

From Lenné’s many designs for landscape parks, the Park Sanssouci in Potsdam, the Park Glienicke in Berlin, and the Tiergarten in Berlin should be mentioned.

Lattice pavilion

At the same time when Lenn� worked on the Neue Garten, he tackled also the huge area of the park, which adjoined the terraces at the Palace of Sanssouci, changing it into a Romantic landscape garden. The appropriate buildings, like the Chinese teahouse built in 1754 by Johann Gottfried B�ring or the Temple of Friendship built in 1768 by Carl von Gontard, were already standing, and Linn� linked them with a system of paths to create the desired poetic prospects.

The photo shows one of the lattice pavilions at the Palace of Sanssouci. Golden suns decorate the lattice pavilions at both sides of the palace as symbols of the Enlightenment and humanity. They are also references to the secret society of Freemasons, of which Frederick the Great was a member.