SCHLEISSHEIM PALACE

Description

Essentials about Schleissheim Palace

Along with Nymphenburg Palace, the Schleißheim Palace complex is one of the largest residences in the Munich area and is one of the most important Baroque palace complexes in Germany. The complex, which is more than a kilometer long, consists of a complex of three individual palace buildings (the Old Palace, the New Palace and Lustheim Palace) dating from the 17th and 18th centuries and connected by a spacious garden. The ensemble of buildings was built by the Bavarian electors as a summer residence, but the complex remained unfinished. Today, in addition to the historical room sequences, changing exhibitions are shown in the Old Palace, the New Palace serves as a baroque gallery for the Bavarian State Painting Collections, and Lustheim Palace houses a Meissen porcelain collection.

The history of Schleissheim Palace

The origin of the Schleissheim Palaces was a Schwaige with a small chapel acquired by Duke Wilhelm V from the Freising cathedral chapter in 1597. From 1598 to 1600, the duke had various farm buildings, a simple manor house and several chapels built there in the neighboring woods in addition to the farm. In 1616, his son, the later Elector Duke Maximilian I, took over the Schleissheim estate. He had the manor house of the Schwaige replaced by today’s Old Palace in the years 1617-1623.

Duke Maximilian’s grandson Maximilian II. Emanuel had Lustheim Palace built at some distance from the old palace building as a festive garden palace on the occasion of his wedding by 1688. In anticipation of the imperial crown, he also had the New Palace designed starting in 1701, which was to serve as a residence modeled on Versailles and accommodate an extensive court. The plans called for the Old Palace to be integrated into the new building, which was planned as a spacious four-wing complex. However, the designs, which were reduced several times, could not be executed for cost reasons, and in the end only the east wing of the planned complex was built. The giant torso of the New Palace was rarely inhabited under the Wittelsbach dynasty and was opened to the public as a museum palace in the 19th century.

The Old Palace

Today, two exhibitions are presented in the Old Palace, the Ecumenical Collection of Gertrud Weinhold “The Year of God and its Festivals” and the Collection for the Regional Studies of East and West Prussia, both branch museums of the Bavarian National Museum. The total of over 6,000 objects in the Weinhold Collection document the calendar festivals of the religious year as well as their customs, devotional materials and ritual objects in a worldwide comparison, while the Prussian Collection with 400 objects is dedicated to the history and culture of Prussia, beginning with the missionary work and colonization by the Teutonic Order to the products of the Royal Majolica and Terracotta Workshops and works by East Prussian artists.

Lustheim Palace

Lustheim Palace was established in 1971 as the first branch museum of the Bavarian National Museum. Since then, it has housed the Meissen Porcelain Collection of the Ernst Schneider Foundation, whose scope and significance alone is comparable to the porcelain collection in Dresden’s Zwinger. The presentation of more than 2,000 exquisite porcelains offers insight into the impressive diversity of the Meissen Manufactory’s products and its virtually inexhaustible wealth of invention in the first decades after its founding.

The New Palace

Some rooms today contain a Baroque gallery of the Bavarian State Painting Collections. Among the masters exhibited in the palace are such prominent painters as the Flemish Peter Paul Rubens and Anthonis van Dyck, but also many German, French, Italian and Spanish masters.

The Court Garden

One part of Schleissheim Palace that is particularly worth seeing is the large courtyard garden, designed by Dominique Girard, a student of the legendary garden architect André Le Nôtres. The garden consists of several individual sections: The parterres in front of and behind the New Palace, designed with broderie beds, the central axis as the absolute organizing principle of the garden with the bosques at the sides, as well as Lustheim Island and a landscaped area to the south.

The central axis initially served as a course for theaille-maille game popular at court before the Great Canal was constructed at the end of the 18th century. Since then, water has formed the central element within the garden complex. The Great Canal in the center of the garden and the circular moat on Lustheim Island are connected to the Nymphenburg Palace complex via the North Munich Canal System, a system of waterways.

The Baroque garden complex has been largely preserved in its original form and, unlike numerous other palace gardens, was not converted into a landscape park during the 19th century. Along with the Great Garden in Hanover-Herrenhausen, Schleissheim Park is considered the only Baroque garden in Germany that still exists in its original basic structure, although some of its architectural decoration is now lost.