page_title: Englischer Garten
section_title: Creation
hierarchical_section_title: Englischer Garten / History / Creation
caption_attribution_description: English: The Rumford-Denkmal (Rumford Monument) in the English Garden
context_page_description: The Englischer Garten is a large public park in the centre of Munich, Bavaria, stretching from the city centre to the northeastern city limits. It was created in 1789 by Sir Benjamin Thompson, later Count Rumford, for Prince Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria. Thompson's successors, Reinhard von Werneck and Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, advisers on the project from its beginning, both extended and improved the park.
  With an area of 3.7 km², the Englischer Garten is one of the world's largest urban public parks. The name refers to its English garden form of informal landscape, a style popular in England from the mid-18th century to the early 19th century and particularly associated with Capability Brown.
context_section_description: When the Elector of Bavaria Maximilian III Joseph, the last ruler from the Bavarian branch of the Wittelsbach dynasty, died childless in 1777, his throne passed to Charles Theodore, count and elector of the Palatinate.  The new ruler preferred his existing home in Mannheim on the Rhine to living in Bavaria and tried unsuccessfully to trade his unloved inheritance for the Austrian Netherlands. Understandably, the people of Munich returned his disdain. To offset this unhappy atmosphere, Charles Theodore devoted much attention to improvements in the city. Among others, he created an art gallery in the northern arcades of the Residence's Hofgarten ("Court Garden") and made both the garden and the new gallery open to the public (the former in 1780, the latter in 1781).
  While the Hofgarten was then the only public park in Munich, that was not the primary motivation for the creation of the English Garden. Rather, it was part of a series of military reforms being pursued under the guidance of Sir Benjamin Thompson, the new Elector's chief military aide, later created Count Rumford and appointed as Bavarian war minister. Born in Massachusetts, Thompson had served on the Loyalist side in the American Revolutionary War, and after the British defeat had returned to England before moving to continental Europe and entering Charles Theodore's service in 1784. In 1788 Thompson proposed that in peacetime the majority of the soldiers of the Elector's army should be given leave to do civilian work, such as farming and gardening. In February 1789, Charles Theodore decreed that military gardens should be laid out in each garrison city, to provide soldiers with good agricultural knowledge and also to serve as recreation areas, accessible also to the public.
  The planned location of the Munich gardens was the area north of the Schwabinger city gate, a hunting ground of the Wittelsbach rulers since the Middle Ages. Known as the Hirschanger (or "deer park"), the higher part of the hunting ground closer to the city was included in the scheme, while the Hirschau (also meaning "deer park"), lower and further north, and a more densely wooded part to the south known as the Hirschangerwald ("Deer Park Wood") were  originally not included. The whole area had been subject to flooding from the Isar, the river on which Munich stands, a little to the east. This problem was soon removed by the construction of a river wall in 1790, which became known as the "Riedl-Damm" after the engineer Anton von Riedl, who had supervised its construction.
  The laying out of the military garden was begun in July 1789, and an area of 800 by slightly less than 200 metres was quickly made ready for cultivation, but soon the idea was extended to the creation of a public park, of which the military garden should be only a small part. On August 13, 1789, Charles Theodore published a decree, devoting the Hirschanger to the amusement of the people of Munich. To advise on the project, the Royal Gardener Friedrich Ludwig Sckell (ennobled in 1808) who had studied landscape gardening in England and had previously worked for Charles Theodore at Schwetzingen, had been summoned to Munich earlier in August. Various associated projects were made part of the park development, among them the Elevengarten ("Pupils' Garden", a garden for the students at the recently formed military academy), a "Schweizerey" (cattle farm), "Schäfery" (sheep farm) and "Ackerbauschule" (arable farming school) to improve farming techniques, and a "Vihearzneyschule" (veterinary school) for the treatment of cattle diseases. Most of these projects did not long survive the creation of the park, but the veterinary school went on to become what is now the Tierärztliche Fakultät (Veterinary Faculty) of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The gateway from 1790 can be seen at the Veterinärstraße entrance to the garden.  The park was initially named "Theodors Park", but it very quickly became known by the descriptive name of "the English Garden". By May, 1790 sufficient progress had been made to allow Charles Theodore
caption: The Rumford Monument in the park honours Sir Benjamin Thompson's contribution
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