⛲The Real Thing 本物
- Nigel
- Jun 21
- 4 min read
21st June 2025 年6月21日
You know that phenomena?... You live near some famous site and you never actually get around to visiting it. This is the story of myself and Kassel. And it just took a short text from Phe for me to jump on a train with a couple of others and head north out of Frankfurt. A day out sightseeing on a public holiday. At the Berg Wilhelmshöhe, Kassel.
Feudalism? Democracy? Fascism? Dictatorship?.........How about a spot of Absolutism?
If you were a Landgraf ( something like a duke🤴) in 18thc."Germany", you were pretty important. But you had to show that you were the no.1 🥇.
How did you do this? You had no A.I., no internet, no photos, no film.....so...you had to create something which would be the talk of the town - the country - even the world. You would defy nature itself and show you were the absolute ruler.
And this is what the the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel did. On top of a hill outside Kassel, they put up this enormous bronze statue of Hercules 💪, crowning a weird sort of baroque fortress-like building (It reminded me of one of those Hawskmoor churches in east London). You can see in on the horizon in this print from 1800.
And from here, at proscribed times, as if by the power of the Duke himself, water came gushing out under the statue. It then passed through a complex series of channels, valves, aqueducts, and water-wheels as it flowed from the monument down through the park. As it indeed still does today. The water tumbles through a Baroque water theatre,
a grotto, fountains, two hydraulic organs🎵 and several waterfalls........I liked this one the best. It was called the Aquaduct, a sort of cut-off Roman structure like the Pont-du-Gard in the south of France.
The central waterfall (350 meters long) is called the Great Cascade, and ends at a pond below. No pumps are used (in the 18thc. there were none anyway), just ingenious hydraulic and pneumatic contraptions and the force of gravity. It still functions 300 years later.
Of course you could dismiss all this as a gross and vulgar display of wealth and (bad) taste. Standing in front of the spectacle, I asked Carrie from Taiwan what she thought of it. After a moment she said simply "....I like it..." continuing on that in China wealthy people had built impressive things in the past which you can visit today. Yes, I thought, You could regard all this as a rather vulgar and decadent display of wealth. But what fun it is! And thank goodness those old dukes left something behind which we can enjoy today.
Look at the crowds.......this is real physical stuff. No A.I. contrived fantasy.......
At about 50 meters (160 ft) high, the Great Fountain at the bottom was the largest fountain in Europe at the time of its creation in 1767. Actually it's more of a Geyser......
.....and can be watched in comfort from grass level......
Below the lake and the fountain, the water runs into ponds and pools at the Wilhelmshöhe Palace, built for the Elector of Hesse William I in the late 18th century.
The same palace which Kaiser Wilhelm II used as a summer residence,
......and where the German high command under Paul von Hindenburg organized the demobilization and withdrawal of German troops at the end of World War I. You are never far away from history....
What a lot of grim men in trenchcoats. A far cry from this happy young visitor today...
Just a note: To get here, we had alighted at Kassel Wilhelmshöhe station and caught a Nr.1 tram to the beginning of the park. Even without the water spectacle, the park offered a pleasant 2km walk.....Here I think Carrie and Noelia are discussing Eastern therapies in great depth....
.....whilst walking past heavenly smelling (western) roses.....
As always, thank you for reading, and if you know anyone who might be interested in this blog then do send it on. 読んでくれてありがとう
See you....... matane!
Nigel 🖋️
Notice
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I will be moving this site, along with my business site geigenbau-ruddock, away from WIX as soon as possible.
お知らせ
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