Germany's most beautiful mosque is not in Cologne or Berlin, but in Baden Schwetzingen. 37 meters, the two minarets of the dome tower into the sky. Sculpted Koransuren on the facades tell of the Unity of Allah, an inner courtyard framed by arcades reminiscent of famous models such as in Cordoba or Cairo.

The oriental dream in soft pink has just a tiny snag: The "Red Mosque" in the castle garden, it is not.

That does not apply to Schwetzingen alone. Germany's first real mosque for true Muslims was built in 1915 in Wünsdorf near Berlin - one of the German attempts to unleash jihad against England and France. Long before that, there were many other oriental-looking buildings in Germany and Europe. If you look behind the facades, it quickly becomes clear: Of all the most magnificent have never experienced a praying Muslim. While today's few representative mosques are bursting at the seams, between the late 18th and early 20th centuries kings, princes, and industrialists built only seemingly Islamic buildings without any Muslim ever asking.

In Vienna and Dresden emerged factories in the Orient look. In Dusseldorf and Wiesbaden coffeemakers drank their mocha in style under minaret imitations. In Prague, Budapest and Berlin Jews built their synagogues in the Moorish style. In Bavaria, in the Palatinate and London rulers embellished their estate with "garden mosques".

Were there Arab first graders at work?

One of them: Karl Philipp Theodor, Elector Palatinate-Bavaria. One of his hobbies: multicultural castle park design. In 1778 he instructed his court architect Nicolas de Pigage to expand the Schwetzingen Palace Park with a "Turkish garden" and a "mosque". However, the architect had little idea of ​​authentic Islamic architecture and preferred to take his inspiration from London, in the royal parks. A few years earlier, the first pseudo-Islamic building in Western Europe had been erected there: "The Alhambra at Kew Gardens", meanwhile demolished.

In order to recognize that something can not be right with the "Red Mosque", there is no need for a doctorate in architectural history. Arabic native speakers or Muslims see immediately: Many inscriptions seem as if they had carved a first-year Arab in the stone. There is no fountain needed for the ritual ablution of the faithful - and even the prayer niche compulsory in every backyard mosque.

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False mosques: They are not quite real

For real Muslims, the mosque was never planned anyway, as were many other European buildings in the "Turkish" or "Moorish" style. At that time, the terms were not so precise: in the case of doubt, anything "Turkish" went through what a minaret had - even if the model was in India or Morocco. The real architectural inspirations were as diverse as the later use of fake mosques. But one thing all the buildings had in common: the enthusiasm of their builders for the "Orient".

When stonemasons chiseled the last Arabic spelling mistakes into the walls of the Schwetzingen Mosque in 1795, they waited eagerly for news of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt. In Vienna, Turkish military drums roared to Mozart's "Abduction from the Seraglio", in Berlin Lessing's "Nathan the Wise" provided the soundtrack to the idea of ​​tolerance of the Enlightenment.

Stoned ring parabola in pink

During this time the memory of the threats of the Ottoman Empire ("The Turks before Vienna!") Faded; Tales from Thousand and One Nights and poems from Goethe's "West-Eastern Divan" were popular. The "Orient" became the symbol of horror and a place of longing. The own commitment to the "Turkish" lifestyle, it was an expression of worldliness, sensuality, tolerance. Evidence of this is impressive buildings:

  • In 1867, a mosque was not only Prussia's contribution to the Paris World's Fair. The "Moorish Kiosk" Ludwig II liked so well that he bought the building without further ado; in a sultans' robe, the Bavarian King allowed himself to be handed waterpipes and tarts from servants disguised as Muslims.
  • When King Wilhelm IV of Prussia did not want to look at his potty pump house in the middle of the 19th century, he demanded a building "like a Turkish mosque with a minaret as a chimney". The result is still standing on Potsdam's Havel shore.
  • In 1859, Berlin's growing Jewish community sought forms for their "New Synagogue" in order to give architectural expression to their self-confidence - drawing on elements from the Andalusian Alhambra as well as the Indian Mughal period.
  • When the Dresden building authorities feared in 1907 that the construction of a tobacco factory could damage the character of the city center, cigarette maker Hugo Zietz upgraded his "Yenidze" with Islamic elements: the chimney became a minaret. On the roof came a glass dome. From the facade was written in large letters "Salem Aleikum".

There are rumors about the planning of Karl Theodor's "Red Mosque" that the Elector also thought of the possible entry of a true Muslim princess. More likely, however, is that the Schwetzingen mosque was intended as a symbol of enlightenment and religious understanding.

What seems like a jumbled mix of architectural styles throughout the castle park can also be read as a deliberate dialogue between cultures: Baroque kitsch meets Masonic symbolism, German lime trees encounter Japanese cherry trees, "Roman" temples meet a "Turkish" mosque. Their minarets, in turn, are reminiscent of Roman columns, the façade resembles the Vienna Karlskirche, and the halls in the mosque courtyard could also be used as cloisters in a medieval monastery.

Conclusions on real political conditions, as some guides do until today, should not be drawn from the buildings. Behind the pink tolerance facade, Elector Karl Theodor behaved as a determined propagator of Catholicism.

When the turkish fashion went, the excavators came

Appearance is not deceptive alone in Schwetzingen Palace Park. In many places, the trend towards "Turkish fashion" was as fast as it had come. At the beginning of the 20th century, numerous former magnificent buildings were forgotten.

Under domes and minarets served in 1895 in Düsseldorf as Bedouin disguised waiters mocha to the hookah; soon after, the "Arab Café" had to give way to a cinema. Until 1964, the "Café Orient" survived in Wiesbaden. Then the excavators came and destroyed the city's once-popular coffeehouse in favor of an eight-story bunker. The impressive "oriental" domes of the Yenidze in Dresden and the "New Synagogue" in Berlin suffered first under World War II bombs, then under socialist renovation.

In Schwetzingen, it was precisely Muslims and other foreigners who helped to extend the life of the "mosque" a bit. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, French prisoners of war of Muslim faith were said to have been accommodated there. And after the Second World War, American GIs turned the mosque into a jazz club for a short time.

After the withdrawal of the US soldiers, it went downhill with the "Red Mosque". A brochure from the eighties describes the once so pompous construction as "completely rotten", weathered the sandstone walkways, the wooden construction of the dome rotten.

But then the state of Baden-Württemberg remembered its "oriental" heritage. For around ten million euros, the mosque was completely restored in the early 1990s. And then the multi-cultural park still had real praying Muslims - when the successor of Elector Karl Theodor, Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann, invited Muslims to the traditional fast break in Schwetzingen Castle.