In the 18th century, the passionate enthusiasm for the aesthetic design of landscape parks and gardens led to so-called parkomania, particularly in Europe. Jenisch Park, created in the late 18th century, is to this day one of Hamburg’s most beautiful and popular parks and an important horticultural monument far beyond the borders of northern Germany.
The long and eventful history of the park will be presented in several facets in the new exhibition in the Jenisch Haus. From 1785, Caspar Voght created the most important ornamented farm in northern Germany on the grounds in Klein Flottbek, modelled on the country estate ‘The Leasowes’ by the English poet William Shenstone. His aim was to combine the beautiful with the useful and to integrate agricultural land into a park landscape in the style of an English landscape garden. This model agricultural estate, on which Voght realised his ideas as a garden artist, farmer and social reformer, became a model for the progressive agriculture of his time.
Martin Johan Jenisch, owner of the park since 1828, discontinued its agricultural use and had the grounds redesigned into a classic landscape park. As part of the remodelling, Jenisch also built the summer villa named after him today. When his later heirs planned to parcel up and sell the estate in 1927, the city of Altona leased the park and made it accessible to the public. The city of Hamburg then bought the villa and park in 1937.
The exhibition not only highlights the creation and development of the park under Voght and Jenisch, but also the history of the park and the house during and after the Nazi era. As parts of the park, in particular the wet meadows and softwood floodplains of the Flottbek lowland stream, have been designated as the Flottbektal nature reserve since 1982, the exhibition also addresses current issues relating to the current preservation of the park and its ecosystem.
The secrets of the Jenischpark’s history, which have not yet been told, also include the involvement of its owners in the colonial trade of the 18th and 19th centuries, which will be documented in detail for the first time in the exhibition.
The content of the exhibition is already being developed with a view to the new permanent exhibition of the Jenisch Haus, which will be created as part of the modernisation of the museum planned from 2026.
