M. Norton Wise

Reform in the garden.

English gardens powered by steam engines offer an intriguing view of how technological and scientific progress was naturalized in the landscape of 19th-century Prussia, and in Prussian culture, during the early years of industrial modernization. One such garden is Peacock Island, in the Havel River near Potsdam. A product of the reform era that preceded and followed the Napoleonic Wars, it expressed the goal of Friedrich Wilhelm III and his government to enter into the British system of factory production and world trade. Modern science, as represented especially by Alexander von Humboldt, played a prominent role.