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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The Hartmann Orangery is part of a landscape set created in the early 19th century by the Hartmann family, an industrial dynasty of Munsterois. Located at 16 rue Alfred-Hartmann and Place de la Tuilerie, it is part of a park crossing the Fecht River, decorated with a lake, hot greenhouses and architectural factories such as a rotunda or bridges decorated with griffons and sphinges. The park, initially private, was partially ceded to the city in 1926 and 1958, becoming the public parks of the Fecht and Albert Schweitzer.

The core of the park dates back to 1795, when industrialist André Hartmann acquired a property of Ancien Régime, former garden of the royal provost of Barth. His son Jacques Hartmann (1774–39) began to expand in 1811, adding mythological statues, conifers, and a rotunda for concerts. After his death, his brother Frédéric (1772–61) enriched the decoration with sculptures acquired in 1815, including works by Charles Schulmeister, and arranged greenhouses for exotic plants. The statue of Neptune (by Landolin Ohmacht) and the bridges to the Sphinx and Griffons, still visible, date from this period.

In the 19th century, the park reflected the prestige of Hartmann, mayors and local industrialists. The Hammer cotton mill, built in 1818 by Jacques Hartmann, marked its eastern limit. The paintings of Charles Rohn (1838–40) and the layers of Henri Lebert (1815) document his extinct decoration: alignments of poplars, aisles of tulip trees, and lion statues surrounding the rotunda. After 1880, Albert Hartmann built his home and communes there, before the park was divided and loti in the 20th century.

Orangery and its remains (Neptune statue, bridges, Louis XVI fountain) were listed as historical monuments by order of 7 December 1990. Today, the site combines industrial heritage, art of romantic gardens, and public uses (retreat house, nautical center). The protected elements recall the Hartmann Golden Age, when Munster was an Alsatian textile pole, and their park, a place of bourgeois sociability.

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