Chinesischer Turm e.V.A European fashion
Why a pagoda stands here
The Chinese Tower is nothing Chinese. It is the Bavarian execution of a European fashion that did not want to depict China but to invent it. And it stands exactly where the garden theory of its time required it.
What chinoiserie was
Chinoiserie describes the European enthusiasm for East Asian forms in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It reached porcelain, wallpaper, furniture, lacquerwork and garden pavilions. Its relationship to the original was free: China was known from travel accounts, trade goods and engravings, not from personal observation. What emerged was a European image of China, built with European means for European purposes.
The question of whether the tower resembles a real Chinese pagoda is therefore wrongly posed. It was never meant to. It was meant to look foreign, in a particular, cultivated way.
The model: Kew near London
The direct template stands in England: the Great Pagoda in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, built in 1762 to a design by William Chambers, one of the few European architects who had actually been to China. Kew became the most copied garden building of its age.
When Munich began laying out its English Garden from 1789, the choice of model was therefore already made. The Chinese Tower was built 1789 to 1790 to plans by the military architect Joseph Frey, executed by the master carpenter Johann Baptist Lechner: five storeys, 25 metres, entirely in timber.
Why a landscape garden needs such buildings
The English landscape garden does not work with axes and symmetry but with scenes. The walker is led along curving paths and should, at intervals, come upon something that catches the eye and gives the place a mood. In garden theory these buildings are called follies or staffage.
- The classical rotunda
- stands for clarity and order. In the English Garden the Monopteros plays that part.
- The Chinese pagoda
- stands for the distant, the cheerful, the sociable. It marks the place of company in the garden.
- The ruin or hermitage
- stands for transience and retreat.
That a tavern opened at the foot of the pagoda two years later, and grew into Munich's second largest beer garden, is therefore not a break with the building's intention. It is its literal fulfilment.
The tower as an instrument
The Munich tower has one feature its models lack: it was a music building from the start. The gallery running around the first floor is not ornament but a stage. Brass bands still play from up there in summer. The folly became a working device.
What 1944 and 1952 made of it
In July 1944 the tower was destroyed by bombing. In 1952 it was rebuilt faithfully in timber. The structure visible today is 1952 fabric in the form of 1790. For chinoiserie that is consistent: an architecture that never wanted to be original loses nothing through reconstruction.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Chinese Tower a Chinese building?
No. It is a work of European chinoiserie, a European fashion for East Asian forms. The model was the Great Pagoda at Kew near London, built in 1762.
What does chinoiserie mean?
The enthusiasm for East Asian forms in European art and garden design of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The works do not depict China but interpret it in European terms.
Who designed the Chinese Tower in Munich?
The military architect Joseph Frey supplied the plans; the master carpenter Johann Baptist Lechner built it between 1789 and 1790.
Why does a landscape garden contain a pagoda?
Because the English landscape garden works with scenes. Follies such as a pagoda, a rotunda or a ruin catch the eye and give a place its mood. The pagoda stands for sociability.
Can you climb the Chinese Tower?
No. The tower is not open to the public. The first floor is reserved for the brass bands.