Deweerth'scher Garten

The Deweerth’scher Garten is a two-hundred-year-old urban park covering 1.8 hectares in Wuppertal’s Elberfeld district. It sits at the foot of the Nützenberg hill, where Briller Street begins and Luisen Street ends near Robert-Daum-Platz. The garden once formed a single landscaped park with the adjacent Luisenpark, but the Luisenstraße now divides them. Across Luisenstraße rises a wooded slope called the Luisenpark, from which steps lead up to the Ölberg quarter. The garden is bordered on the east by residential buildings next to the Neuer reformierte Kirche, also known as Sophienkirche. The park’s origins lie in 1802, when Peter de Weerth created a pleasure garden here. In 1937 a bronze equestrian statue of Wilhelm I stood in the garden before being melted down in 1943. The surviving pedestal now supports a memorial to the victims of National Socialism. A modern water sculpture by Carlernst Kürten plays in the centre, and visitors can play boules or table tennis. Children have a playground, while nearby cafés extend seating into the garden. Paths wind past the memorial and the sculpture, offering glimpses of the surrounding villas. Villa Schmits, Wuppertal’s thousandth protected monument, overlooks the garden from above and houses the Herder School. At the western edge stands Villa Frowein, built in 1870–71 for the textile entrepreneur Rudolf Frowein and his wife Elisabeth de Weerth. South of the garden, beneath the pavement, archaeologists found fragments of Iron-Age pottery dating from 600 to 400 BC.