The Johannapark is an 11 hectares (27.2 acres) park near the city center in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

. In the southwest it merges seamlessly into the Clara Zetkin Park and together with it and the

Palmengarten The Palmengarten is one of three botanical gardens in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It is located in the Westend-Süd district. It covers a surface of 22 hectares. It is a major tourist attraction. History Like many public sites in Frankfurt ...

forms a large park landscape that continues in the north and south in the ''Leipzig Auenwald''.

Location

The park is located in the Westvorstadt area of Leipzig, in the borough of

Leipzig-Mitte Leipzig-Mitte is one of 10 boroughs (''Stadtbezirke'') of Leipzig, located in the center of the city. It includes numerous architectural monuments. Most of them are located in the subdivision "Zentrum", which is sited inside the Inner City Ring Ro ...

. It is framed to the north-west by ''Ferdinand-Lassalle-Strasse'', to the north-east by ''Paul-Gerhardt-Weg'' and ''Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse'', to the south by ''Karl-Tauchnitz-Strasse'' and to the south-west by ''Edvard-Grieg-Allee''. Adjacent residential areas are the Bachviertel, the inner Westvorstadt and the Musikviertel.

History

The Johannapark was created between 1858 and 1863 by the Leipzig entrepreneur and banker ''Wilhelm Theodor Seyfferth'' (1807-1881) at his own expense and later donated to the city. He wanted to commemorate his daughter ''Johanna Natalie Schulz'', who died at the age of 21. According to tradition, she was broken when, according to her father's wishes, she had to marry the unloved ''Dr. Gustav Schulz''. Full of remorse, her father thought of leaving something to posterity that would have been in her interest: Lutherkirche über Teich

Seyfferth acquired the Martorff meadow on the banks of the

Pleiße The Pleiße is a river of Saxony and Thuringia, Germany. The Pleiße has its source southwest of Zwickau at Ebersbrunn, then flows through Werdau, Crimmitschau, Altenburg, and other towns and villages in Saxony and Thuringia, before flowing ...

and some adjoining areas and let them convert into a park in the style of

English landscape garden The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (french: Jardin à l'anglaise, it, Giardino all'inglese, german: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, pt, Jardim inglês, es, Jardín inglés), is a sty ...

s according to plans by

Peter Joseph Lenné Peter Joseph Lenné (the Younger) (29 September 1789 – 23 January 1866) was a Prussian gardener and landscape architect. As director general of the Royal Prussian palaces and parks in Potsdam and Berlin, his work shaped the development of ...

(1789–1866). The park was laid out by the Leipzig council gardener ''Otto Wittenberg'' (1834–1918). As is usual with Lenné, many exotic tree species were planted, giving the park the character of a

botanical garden A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens, an ...

in places. A

pond A pond is an area filled with water, either natural or Artificiality, artificial, that is smaller than a lake. Defining them to be less than in area, less than deep, and with less than 30% Aquatic plant, emergent vegetation helps in disting ...

with a small island and two bridges was created in the center of the park. With Seyfferth's death in 1881, the park passed to the city of Leipzig in his

will and testament A will or testament is a legal document that expresses a person's ( testator) wishes as to how their property (estate) is to be distributed after their death and as to which person ( executor) is to manage the property until its final distributi ...

, with the condition that the area should never be built over. It was again enlarged to a floor area of eight hectares (19.8 acres). With the construction of the Lutherkirche between 1884 and 1887, an architectural accent was set in the

neo-Gothic style Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

. The park came to its present dimensions by merging it with the gardens and grounds of some of the buildings destroyed in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. In 1955, the Johannapark was combined with the neighboring ''Albertpark'', the ''Scheibenholzpark'' and the ''Palmengarten'' under the name ''"Clara Zetkin" Central Culture Park''. Since April 2011, the park has returned to its old name, ''Johannapark''.

Monuments

In 1896 the city erected the ''Seyfferth monument'' in the park for the

donor A donor in general is a person, organization or government which donates something voluntarily. The term is usually used to represent a form of pure altruism, but is sometimes used when the payment for a service is recognized by all parties as rep ...

. Inscription on the base: ''"To the donor of the Johannapark the grateful city"''. The

pedestal A pedestal (from French ''piédestal'', Italian ''piedistallo'' 'foot of a stall') or plinth is a support at the bottom of a statue, vase, column, or certain altars. Smaller pedestals, especially if round in shape, may be called socles. In c ...

is by

Hugo Licht Hugo Georg Licht (21 February 1841 in Nieder-Zedlitz (today Siedlnica, Poland) – 28 February 1923 in Leipzig, Germany) was a German architect. Life Licht was the son of the landholder Georg Hugo Licht. In the years 1862 and 1863 he was mason ...

(1841-1923), the marble bust by Melchior zur Strassen (1832-1896). A wall tomb of the Seyfferth family is located outside the

choir A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which s ...

of the Lutherkirche. The 1897 Leipzig memorial to

Chancellor Chancellor ( la, cancellarius) is a title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the or lattice work screens of a basilica or law cou ...

Bismarck by Adolf Lehnert (1862-1948) and Josef Mágr (1861-1924) was destroyed in 1946. In 1967, the

Clara Zetkin Clara Zetkin (; ; ''née'' Eißner ; 5 July 1857 – 20 June 1933) was a German Marxist theorist, communist activist, and advocate for women's rights. Until 1917, she was active in the Social Democratic Party of Germany. She then joined the I ...

memorial by the sculptor Walter Arnold (1909-1979) was erected on the same site to mark her 110th birthday. In 1996, the Leipzig entrepreneur

Walter Cramer Wilhelm Bernardo Walter Cramer (1 May 1886, Leipzig, Kingdom of Saxony – 14 November 1944, Berlin) was a German businessman from Leipzig and a member of the failed 20 July Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia. ...

(1886-1944), who was involved in the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) on 20 July 1944, was honored here with a memorial by the city of Leipzig. The stele made of black

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies und ...

and green Saxon

serpentinite Serpentinite is a rock composed predominantly of one or more serpentine group minerals, the name originating from the similarity of the texture of the rock to that of the skin of a snake. Serpentinite has been called ''serpentine'' or ''ser ...

is the work of the sculptor Klaus Friedrich Messerschmidt (* 1945).Riedel (2005), p. 97

Büste Wilhelm Theodor Seyfferth.jpg, Memorial to Wilhelm Seyfferth (bust), 2010 Leipzig - Ferdinand-Lasalle-Straße - Lutherkirche - Grabmal Seyfferth 01 ies.jpg, Tomb of the family Seyfferth at the Lutherkirche, 2016 Bismarckdenkmal Leipzig.jpg, Previous memorial to Bismarck from 1897 Clara-Zetkin-Denkmal Leipzig.jpg, Memorial to Clara Zetkin, 2010 Cramer-Stele.jpg, Center piece of the memorial to Walter Cramer, 2011

References

Literature

* Hans-Christian Mannschatz: ''Park und Rennbahn''. In: ''Das Leipziger Musikviertel''. Verlag im Wissenschaftszentrum Leipzig, 1997, ISBN 3-930433-18-4, S. 135 ff. (in German) * * Petra Friedrich, ''Johannapark Leipzig'', in: Staatliche Schlösser, Burgen und Gärten Sachsens (ed.), ''Sachsen Grün. Historische Gärten und Parks'', L & H Verlag Hamburg / Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-938608-02-1, pp. 169–172, in German * ''Johannapark'', in: Peter Benecken, ''Parks & Gärten im Grünen Ring Leipzig'', ed. by Pro Leipzig, Stadt Leipzig, Grüner Ring and culturtraeger Leipzig, Leipzig 2014, ISBN 978-3-945027-10-3, p. 16f. (in German) *

Weblinks

Johannapark, entry in Leipzig-Lexikon (in German

Johannapark
at the web page of the city of Leipzig (in German)
Stadt Leipzig, ''Clara-Zetkin-Park und Johannapark. Entwicklungskonzept'', December 2016, 115 pages (in German)

Picture gallery in Deutsche Fotothek
{{Coordinate , NS=51/20/4.3908/N , EW=12/21/45.058/E , type=landmark , region=DE-SN Parks in Leipzig