20

Homesickness

The golden girl feeds her equally golden parrot on a five meter high glass pillar. Thew fluted pillar was produced in Silesia. The colours of its glass tubes, blue and white, as well as the colours of Charlottenhof Palace were chosen to alleviate the longing of Queen Elisabeth Luise for her Bavarian homeland. The sculpture was set up in the Marly gardens.
Long before the garden architect Peter Joseph Lenné – whom king Friedrich Wilhelm IV. affectionately called “garden general” – took the design of this piece of nature into his hands, it was the pleasure and kitchen garden of the “Soldier King”. Under his reign these gardens were shifted from the front of the Potsdam city palace to the outskirts of the city; just like in Berlin, he obviously prefered the sight of his exercising soldiers to that of cabbage and turnips.