Jarl Kremeier, ‘George I and II as patrons of architecture in Hanover’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. XXII, 2014, pp. 1–20 TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2014 GEORGE I AND GEORGE II AS PATRONS OF ARCHITECTURE IN HANOVER ( – ) JARL KREMEIER is the tercentenary of the Hanoverian Succession. eorg Ludwig, Elector and Duke of This specially commissioned article discusses the GBraunschweig-Lüneburg ( – ) was good architectural activities of the first two Georges and at succeeding to thrones and dominions. In he their Courts in their native Germany before and after followed his father Ernst August ( – ) as Duke . Projects in the Electoral capital of Hannover of Braunschweig-Lüneburg in the duchy’s (Hanover), the summer residence and garden at principalities of Calenberg, Göttingen and Herrenhausen, and the hunting lodge at Göhrde, are Grubenhagen, with his residence at Hannover, the examined, and their implications for British major city in the principality of Calenberg. He also architecture in the early Georgian era explored. followed him in rank and office of Elector of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, a position Fig. : Plan of the city of Hannover (Accurata et novissima repraesentatio ichnographica Hannoverae ... / Hannover, die Churfürst. Braunschweig- Lüneburg. Haupt- und Residentz-Stadt an der Leine gelegen ), copperplate print by Matthias Seutter, Augsburg, c. (Hannover, Historisches Museum ) THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXII GEORGE I AND GEORGE II AS PATRONS OF ARCHITECTURE IN HANOVER ( ‒ ) gained by his father after lengthy negotiations in , succeeded his brother Johann Friedrich in . and Georg Ludwig eventually managed to organize They renovated and redecorated the Leineschloss the actual reception into the Electoral College in ( – ) and built, in addition to an already . In he succeeded his uncle Georg Wilhelm existing theatre, a vast new opera house to the south ( – ) in the Lüneburg portion of the duchy, of the palace, which opened in with a patriotic thereby bringing together the second-largest northern opera, Enrico Leone (Henry the Lion), by Agostino German state after Brandenburg-Cleves-Prussia. Steffani ( – ). John Toland commented in And, finally, via his mother Sophie ( – ), a that the apartments were very beautiful and granddaughter of James I of England/VI of Scotland, magnificently furnished and that there is in the he found himself inheriting Great Britain after Queen palace ‘a lovely theatre with beautiful boxes for Anne’s death in , and became King George I. people of quality. Whoever wants to go there does not pay, the Prince alone meets all the cost’. Graf Christoph Wenzel von Nostiz noted in : SETTING THE SCENE : ‘Upstairs on the second floor are the Dowager GEORG LUDWIG ’ S PARENTS Electress’s rooms, well decorated with panelling, paintings, quantities of silver, porcelain and other rare AND UNCLES vessels’. By the time Georg Ludwig succeeded, Hannover had served as residence for just over sixty years after Turning their attention to the summer residence at Georg Ludwig’s grandfather Georg ( – ) had Herrenhausen, the couple first doubled the garden in installed his court there in . Since then his size in to a large square by enveloping the grandfather, his uncles and finally his parents had existing parterre with an U-shaped set of hedge slowly added to the city what was required by way of quarters, including a garden theatre as well as an court buildings. Matthias Seutter’s mid eighteenth- orange and a melon garden. Then in they century plan of Hannover (Fig. ) demonstrates how doubled the size again to the south, creating a very this was done. The Old and New Towns together had large rectangle surrounded by a canal (Fig. ). Various then about , inhabitants. The former Franciscan ideas about building a larger Schloss more in keeping monastery (secularized at the Refomation) became the with the extended garden came to nothing, but an site of the new Schloss (Leineschloss , erected orangery was erected – (Fig. : the long single – ), accommodating duke and administration, range bottom left), combining a large frescoed gallery with the monastery church somewhat shortened but in the centre with end pavilions containing additional kept as court chapel. Most of the other court buildings apartments. The walls of the central gallery, were either built north of the Schloss along the river particularly the windowless north wall, were painted Leine (the arsenal, mint, stables and riding school) or by Tommaso Giusti ( ?– ) with a rich moved into the New Town to the west of the river (the architectural and sculptural framework enclosing archive-cum-library, consistory, workshops of the scenes after Virgil’s Aeneid . This type of Italianate Office of Works and abattoir). This New Town interior decoration was carried out in England by (Calenberger Neustadt ) was fortified from artists such as Antonio Verrio (the Banqueting House onwards, and remained its own legal entity apart from at Hampton Court is a good example of his work), the Old Town until . and it was also commissioned by George I for the Georg Ludwig’s parents Ernst August and staircase in Kensington Palace, with its paintings by Sophie settled in Hannover after Ernst August had William Kent ( – ). Lady Mary Wortley THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXII GEORGE I AND GEORGE II AS PATRONS OF ARCHITECTURE IN HANOVER ( ‒ ) Fig. : Herrenhausen, Aerial view from the north ( Maison ... de S. A. Electorale de Brunswick Luneburg ; text French-Dutch), anonymous copperplate print before (Hannover, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek – Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, Mappe XIX, C, Nr. ) Montagu summed up the situation in Hannover with ELECTOR GEORG LUDWIG a courtier’s eye in . The town, she observed OF BRAUNSCHWEIG - LÜNEBURG ( ‒ ) ‘is neither large nor handsome; but the palace is capable of holding a greater court than that of Georg Ludwig seems to have been happy with his St. James’s. [...] The opera-house, which was built by parents’ arrangements for domestic accommodation. the late Elector, is much finer than that of Vienna. I But in the first years of his reign a number of was very sorry that the ill weather did not permit me to religious buildings went up which were loosely see Hernhausen in all its beauty; but, in spite of the snow, I thought the gardens very fine.’ connected to the Court. As in the Old Town only Lutheran churches were allowed, other This assessment was echoed by Bishop Joseph denominations settled in the New Town, resulting in Wilcox (Wilcocks) during his stay in : ‘The an unusual array of different churches in close Palace at Hannover is better than St. James’s & the proximity. Like most other Protestant princes, the Gardens at Herrenhausen larger than those at Elector had invited certain numbers of persecuted Kensington.’ French Huguenots to settle in Hannover after the THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXII GEORGE I AND GEORGE II AS PATRONS OF ARCHITECTURE IN HANOVER ( ‒ ) of the New Town, and a Syngogue in / in its northern part. There was no Anglican church as such, but in the course of presenting the Act of Settlement in Lord Macclesfield’s chaplain, Dr Sandys, held an Anglican service for the Dowager Electress in her antechamber: ‘This Princess herself gave the responses and did all the ceremonies as practised in our churches, and with the same exactitude as if she had been used to it all her life.’ The final, and architecturally most ambitious, addition was for the Roman Catholics in the north- west of the New Town. A Catholic church in Lutheran Hannover had been one of the Emperor’s conditions when creating the ninth electorate in for Duke Ernst August. The first Elector agreed to allow a Catholic church to be built once formally confirmed by the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire. This finally had happened in , but, with the Protestant succession in place since , Georg Ludwig had to be careful not to be seen to further Catholic causes. However, donations – and in the beginning architects – were provided by the Catholic world and the Prince- Fig. : Hannover, Catholic church of St Clemens Archbishop-Elector of Mainz, Lothar Franz von ( ‒ , Tommaso Giusti), wooden model to a design Schönborn, took an interest. Planning started in , by Tommaso Giusti, (Hannover, Historisches and the project was given additional prominence by Museum ) the fact that Hannover was the seat of the Apostolic Vicar for Upper- and Lower Saxony, the vicar being revocation of the Edict of Nantes in , and in no other than the former composer Agostino Steffani, / the French-Reformed congregation was who had meanwhile made a career in the church, had given its own church and vicarage in the south-west spent time in the Vatican and had returned to end of the New Town. According to John Toland the Hannover as titular Bishop of Spiga ( i.p.i ). By cost was not only partly met by the Dowager the Hanoverian librarian, polymath and courtier Electress Sophie, but also enjoyed a contribution by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz knew already that the King William III – an interesting glimpse on church would be built ‘in the Italian way with a religious cooperation in the years leading up to the beautiful dome, it would not only serve the spiritual Act of Settlement: ‘Madame l’Electrice had a needs but will also be an ornament to the city.’ After pleasant church built in the New Town for the a complicated planning process, the foundation stone French refugees, and King William of Glorious for St Clemens was laid in by the Franconian Memory has contributed to the cost of that building. architect Johann Dientzenhofer (on loan from Lothar Even so, Her Electoral Highness is Calvinist.’ Franz von Schönborn), but the actual church was then A Reformed (Calvinist) Church with vicarage designed and built – by the Hannover-based and school was built in / in the southern end painter and theatre-engineer Tommaso Giusti.