Reinhard von Werneck

Reinhard Freiherr von Werneck (28 June 1757 – 27 July 1842) was the successor of Benjamin Thompson in the management of the English Garden in Munich, Germany. During the six years that he held this office he was responsible for the creation of the Kleinhesseloher See and the addition of the Hirschau to the garden.

Life

He was born in Ludwigsburg, the son of Franz Friedrich Freiherr von Werneck and his wife Marianne Dorothea, born von Mentzingen. He served briefly in the Austrian army, then turned to farming, before joining the Bavarian army as a colonel (Oberst) in the infantry in 1797. In November 1798, he was given the direction of the English Garden in Munich "to fill out his free hours" (German: "zur Ausfüllung seiner Mußestunden"); and this responsibility was made his main duty in March 1799, with the guidance of Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell, who had general responsibility for garden construction in Bavaria and Rheinland Pfalz. At his own cost Werneck travelled to Bohemia and Saxony to prepare himself for his duties. He hoped to make the English Garden self-supporting or even profitable by means of farming and mills (a sawmill and a grainmill were built in 1798), almost doubling the area of the garden for the purpose, through the addition of a stretch of ground to the north of the original garden. One improvement of the garden was not inspired by business considerations: around 1800 a new lake was created at the northern end of the original garden, the Kleinhesseloher See. Kleinhesselohe, after which it was named, was a small collection of buildings at the original northern entrance to the park, where beer, milk and cold food was served. Werneck's lake was smaller than the modern one; his successor Sckell increased its area considerably in 1812.