The Foundation for Fürst-Pückler Museum - Branitz Park and Schloss

Branitz Park

Branitz became possession of the counts of Pückler in 1696. From 1784, the family lived in Muskau. The property was leased from this year on. After the sales of Muskau in 1845, where Hermann Fürst of Pückler-Muskau (1785-1871) had been creating a landscape garden since 1811, he returned to Branitz. In that same year, he began to work on the new park.

The landscape park, which was created by him and completed by the successor Heinrich Graf von Pückler (1835-97), is an artistic garden of international importance. The well-known writer and world traveller Fürst Pückler was one the best-known German garden designers of the 19th century, alongside Peter Joseph Lenné and Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell.

The Branitz park is a landscape garden with artistically differentiated park ranges, according to the 'zoning principle'. The 'internal park', which includes the economic and market gardens, is spread over an area of approx. 100 hectares. In addition to that, Fürst Pückler also arranged 'the exterior park' as an 'ornamental farm' in an area of approx. 600 hectares. He built a flower park with flower patches, plastics, further decorative elements and ornamental shrubs around the Schloss. Here Pückler also used foreign wood, in the park however, he only used native plants. For the design of the park, Fürst Pückler used the high groundwater level and the Spree, located nearby, in order to create an artificial water system in the park. With the excavation from the lakes and channels, he created the formatively completed relief of the park.

The reed-sea section in particular is beautifully modelled. The pyramid level with the built land pyramid, previously formed in steps (1860-63) and the 'Tumulus' (1856-57) have a unique effect. Fürst Pückler was buried in 1871 in the 'Tumulus' ( sea-pyramid). In 1884, his wife who had passed in 1854 and lifelong companion, Lucie von Pückler-Muskau (born in 1776), were also buried there.

By masterful grouping of the wood, artistic treatment of the relief and skillful route configuration, the prince created a kind of a picture gallery in the park, in which the viewer experiences a sequence of three-dimensional garden pictures.

The Schloss built in 1770-1772 is situated in the centre of the park. It accommodates the Fürst-Pückler museum with historical dwellings and an exhibition of the life and work of Fürst Pückler as well as the Cottbus collection of Carl Blechen's paintings. Opposite the Schloss, there is the Marstall with exhibition rooms and the 'Kavalierhaus', in which a restaurant is located. Between the two buildings lies the 'Pergola' with reliefs of the Danish sculptor Berthel Thorwaldsen, antiquity copies from zinc casting and a bronze casting of the Venus Italica by Canova. Other buildings in the park include: at the south-east end of the 'internal park' is the neo-Gothic park, which accommodates the administration of the Fürst-Pückler-Museum Branitz Park and Schloss, in the North there is the classical Cottbus tower house which is used as a guest house, and the historical greenhouses of the market garden as well as the property supervisor house with the accompanying stable buildings.