Imaginationen des chinesischen Gartens in der deutschen Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts

The article examines the representation of the Chinese garden in 18th-century German literature. The idea of the Chinese garden was first introduced by William Chambers in England, therefore these gardens were known in Europe as ‘Anglo-Chinese gardens’. Chambers’ treatises Designs of Chinese Building (1757) and Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (1772) have drawn quite widespread attention among scholars. In Germany it was Ludwig August Unzer who first discussed Chambers’ ideas, however, the well-known German professor and gardening theorist Christian Cay Lorenz Hirschfeld, author of the popular book Theorie der Gartenkunst, holds a different view about Chambers and revealed his doubts about the existence of Chinese gardens. It took almost forty years before Christian August Semler made a comparative study between Chinese and European aesthetics, revising Hirschfeld’s thoughts.