Thelemann, Carl Friedrich

garden architect

born: 04.09.1811 in Aschaffenburg

died: 04.04.1889 in Karlsruhe

After attending school and serving in the army, Thelemann was actually supposed to become a lawyer, but he opted for horticulture. Nothing is known about his educational background. From 1839, he worked in St. Petersburg as head gardener at the botanical garden.

Duke Adolph zu Nassau appointed him Nassau garden inspector in 1846 and garden director in 1853. The Duke himself was an enthusiastic amateur botanist. For his plant collection of around 20,000 exotic plants, he had large greenhouses built in the kitchen garden on the eastern edge of Biebrich Palace Park between 1844-48. Thelemann enriched the variety of plants in the palace park with numerous exotic trees and shrubs and used them to create flower borders. None of this plant splendor remains today.

Three horticultural exhibitions in 1850, 1854 and 1861 attracted attention. When Duke Adolph had to abdicate as a result of the Prussian annexation in 1866, he sold the collection and many plants from the park to the Palm Garden Society in Frankfurt am Main.

Thelemann was generally responsible for public green planning in Nassau, including the beautification of Wiesbaden. The spa gardens designed by court gardener Johann Valentin Theobald Schweitzer in 1810 were altered and extended by Thelemann in the English style in 1855/56. The pond was given a large fountain. Artificial rock formations and staffage buildings enriched the park. Thelemann planned the Warmen Damm in 1857.

He also worked as a town planner. In 1862, he drafted the "General Plan of the City and Surroundings", a development plan which, among other things, designed the villa district to the east of the Warmer Damm (a garden city in the style of English landscape design).

A street on Warme Damm bears his name.