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The people of Cassel and surrounding area are not the only ones who know that the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe with its impressive Waterfeatures is unique of its kind. The appeal of the park landscape designed along a steep slope with its monumental Waterfeatures has lured intrigued visitors here from all over Europe in the past and today, from all around the world. Experts in the fields of gardening and Waterfeatures have long recognised the exceptional status of the enormous grounds in Cassel, which they have referred to time and again.
As a result, the next logical step was to submit an application to UNESCO petitioning the inclusion of the Bergpark in the ranks of the world's most precious cultural sites. To evaluate the chances of success for such an application, which entails considerable personal and financial expense, the State of Hesse first organised and held a conference attended by international experts in early 2009, where it presented the project and opened it for discussion. The protectors of cultural heritage expressed a unanimously positive response. This was a clear indication for the team from the Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel (MHK), the Hesse State Office for the Preservation of Monuments and representatives of the city of Cassel to proceed full steam ahead in complying with the complex application specifications. Experts from the state have since sought competent consultations from their international colleagues at regular work group meetings, an unprecedented procedure in preparation for the registration of a World Heritage Site.
In a concerted effort, they successfully formulated the core ideas for the application by May 2010. While fundamental decisions were made as to which key themes would be most successful in convincing the world heritage committee, scholars of the Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel researched the wide range of details prescribed by the 'manual' of application UNESCO guidelines.
It has now been determined that the Bergpark and its Waterfeatures are unparalleled in the world. Nowhere else has any builder dared, let alone succeeded in designing a park on a mountain slope with Waterfeatures of the kind present in Cassel, which are regularly brought to life with a water volume of 750,000 litres that courses through five central stations. The landgraves of Cassel, with their unprecedented vision of monumental waterfeatures situated on a mountain, set themselves apart from their social contemporaries. A common model of courtly representation in the Baroque Period was the court of the French Sun King. With Versailles, Louis XIV embodied his triumph over nature, a central theme of the time, in the form of a vast park landscape on a level plain. With the Bergpark, Landgrave Carl (1654–1730) realised an entirely different model that combined a large-scale representative work of the Baroque Period with ideas of Italian Renaissance garden architecture. He also triumphed mightily over nature by unleashing immense water masses that appear to originate from the mountain summit and are then channelled aesthetically along waterways.
No other park in the world embodies a monumental water theatre of these dimensions spanning a distance of more than two kilometres and five main stations, each of which features an entirely unique 'stage design': The Baroque cascades, the Steinhöfer Waterfall, the Teufelsbrücke (Devil's Bridge), the Aqueduct with the Peneus Cascades and finally the fountain pond containing the Grand Fountain with its 50 m high water plume – all the while the enormous Hercules, the large-scale sculpture wrought of copper over 300 years ago considered to exhibit the highest quality of its kind in the world, towers above.
The fact that the Waterfeatures in the Bergpark were not only realised by a single builder is also remarkable. Landgrave Carl began the construction of the Waterfeatures at the end of the 17th century, however, it was not until 130 years later, under Prince Elector Wilhelm II, that they were completed with the construction of the New Waterfall. The Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe and its Waterfeatures are therefore a central representative project spanning multiple generations of the princely House of Hesse in Cassel, affirming its extensive claim to power. The result was a complete artwork combining different movements in garden architecture, art history and technical history whose origins can still be traced today. Large portions of the grounds reached us in their original substance as a result of continual, elaborate upkeep. Wherever a natural element was supplemented, architecture repaired or technical elements replaced, the original 'spirit' of the ensemble was preserved so that it can still be experienced in its authentic form. Yet another reason why the Cassel Bergpark is so unique!
The will of the builder to dominate water as a 'force of nature' had a substantial impact on the technical standard in Cassel at the time of Landgrave Carl. For example, the Landgrave called the engineer Denis Papin to his court in order to develop a machine capable of hoisting large volumes of water. Papin built a steam-powered pump, however, no pipe of the time was able to withstand the pressure it generated. Though this machine was not deployed in Cassel, it was the direct predecessor of the steam engine, which revolutionised the world only a short time later. Technical innovations in the Cassel's princely court motivated by the Waterfeatures therefore decisively shaped the world's technical history. The need to build pressure-resistant pipes for the waterfeatures led to groundbreaking advances in the foundries of the landgraves. Some of the 300 year-old pipes are still in use today, in contrast to all other park grounds of the time.