Meiningen Palace Park

In the years 1702 to 1705, Duke Bernhard I of Saxony-Meiningen had the forerunner of the park, a palace garden modeled on the French and Dutch Renaissance gardens at the newly built Elisabethenburg Palace. It consisted of eight squares enclosed by walls and moats that faced the castle. Pavilions, a grotto house and the “Elisabethenlust” garden house on the other side of the Werra complemented the garden.

Around 1770, during the period of absolutism and the reign of Duchess Charlotte Amalie, the strictly geometrically designed garden was enlarged to the north and converted into an English landscape park by court gardener Siegmund Friedrich Buttmann. The park was enlarged further to the south in 1859 according to plans by P.J. Lennès. In 1971/72 the palace park received a number of large sculptures.

Source: dewiki.de/Lexikon/Schlosspark_Meiningen

The large meadow in the middle of the castle park is visually dominated by the western front of the castle. It is a venue for concerts and a popular place for park visitors to relax and play. In contrast to the English Garden, there are no fountains or monuments in the palace gardens. At various locations, however, sculptures by contemporary artists enrich the park landscape, including “Mother and Child” by Gerhard Rommel, the “Reclining Woman” by Werner Stötzer and the “Pigeon Stele” by Erich Wurzer.

The sculpture “Mother and Child” by Gerhard Rommel was displayed in 1987 at its present location, Walter-Friedrich-Strasse 1, at the corner of Wiltbergstrasse in Buch, in front of what was then the department store. The bronze cast from 1984 had been stored for a long time and was now placed on an existing artificial stone base on which Astrid Dannegger's ceramic figure "Market woman" had originally stood. The "Marktfrau" was erected at the end of the 1970s to beautify the new building area Book III (WB III). The settlement is dominated by multi-storey prefabricated buildings in a row construction. The ceramic figure had become unstable due to the material used and had to be dismantled (see Prochnow, Horst: (Irr) Weg Bucher Kunst. In: Bucher Bote March 2012). As early as 1968, Rommel created a mother-with-child motif in the form of a small bronze sculpture, which he later converted into a life-size group of figures. It has replaced the dismantled ceramic figure since 1987.

Another cast of Rommel's sculpture exists in the Schlosspark Meiningen, Thuringia

Sources: bildhauerei-in-berlin.de/bildwerk/mutter-mit-kind-7

wikiwand.com/de/Schlosspark_Meiningen#/Kultur_und_Freizeit

The Meiningen Castle Park is a landscape park in the center of the southern Thuringian district town of Meiningen.

(Source: Wikipedia)