The Rose Whisperer: Rudolf Geschwind’s Legacy of Frost-Resistant Blooms
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
August 29, 1829
Dearest rose-whisperers and garden confidantes, today marks the birth anniversary of the German-Austrian rosarian Rudolf Geschwind, who graced this earth with his presence in 1829.
As a child, our horticultural hero Geschwind harbored an ardent love for gardening. His youthful studies led him to Forestry, and his first professional endeavor was with the Austro-Hungarian Department of Forestry. Though he exhibited exceptional prowess in forestry matters, Geschwind's heart truly blossomed for roses.
At the tender age of 30, this passionate plantsman began his experimental journey in rose breeding—a pursuit he would refine with loving dedication over five magnificent decades. My darling dirt-diggers, Geschwind's particular genius lay in breeding roses of exceptional frost resistance. His creative touch brought forth nearly 150 rose cultivars. His crowning collection of climbing roses earned their rightful admiration at the 1889 World's Fair in Paris.
When Geschwind departed this earthly garden in 1910, the extraordinary Countess Maria-Henrieta Chotek—affectionately known as "The Countess of Roses" or "The Pink Countess"—acquired his entire collection, including specimens never before revealed to public eyes. As a distinguished member of the Czech nobility, Chotek possessed both the means and the passion to undertake this impressive transfer.
Can you imagine, my devoted dahlia dabblers?
The Countess was so fiercely determined to preserve Geschwind's botanical legacy that she dispatched two of her gardeners to personally oversee the collection's relocation. This was no trifling matter—it involved the meticulous packing and transportation of over 2,000 roses to her magnificent estate, the Manor House or Castle known as Dolna Krupa.
Now, pour yourself a warm cup of tea, sweet gardening souls, and let me tell you that over a century earlier, this very Dolna Krupa is where Beethoven presumably composed his enchanting Moonlight Sonata!
Maria-Henrieta's great-grandfather, Jozef, shared a friendship with Beethoven and generously permitted the composer to reside at Dolna Krupa for nearly a decade.
Maria-Henrieta Chotek entered this world almost 60 years after Beethoven's sojourn at Dolna Krupa in 1863. As an unmarried woman of independent means, her inheritance allowed her to pursue her rose passion with glorious abandon—and pursue she did! In her 30s, upon inheriting Dolna Krupa in its entirety, she set about creating one of Europe's three most magnificent rosaria. During its splendid zenith, my precious petal-fanciers, the rosaria at Dolna Krupa stood shoulder to shoulder with the finest in France and the revered Rosarium of Sangerhausen in Germany.
Chotek was a woman of delicious action, darlings—never merely directing from afar but plunging her hands directly into the soil of creation. As a rosarian of considerable talent, Chotek developed new cultivars and conducted her own experimental work. During one exhibition visit, Chotek observed a German horticulturist named Johannes Böttner presenting a rambling rose called the Fragezeichen—meaning "Question Mark."
(What an utterly divine name, wouldn't you agree?)
This rose so captivated our Henrieta that she immediately departed for Frankfurt to personally witness the Fragezeichen trials.
The year 1914 marked a pivotal turning point in Chotek's life and sealed the fate of many of Geschwind's roses. That June, the Rose Congress convened at Zweibrücken, where Chotek's work and rosaria received their well-deserved honors. But in the days that followed, my dear she-shed besties, Maria-Henrieta's cousin, Sophie Chotek Ferdinand, wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was brutally murdered alongside her husband in Sarajevo—and thus began the terrible conflagration of World War I. Chotek redirected her energies with characteristic determination, this time as a nurse tending wounded soldiers. When the war finally ceased, she returned to find her beloved rosarium destroyed.
Without missing a beat, Chotek immediately commenced rebuilding her rosarium. She even established a rose breeding school right on the hallowed grounds of Dolna Krupa. But lacking the resources and youthful vigor of earlier days, Chotek never fully restored Dolna Krupa to its former magnificence. During the Second World War, Dolna Krupa suffered the indignity of being ransacked by the Russian Army. In February 1946, our rose heroine—destitute and ailing—passed away while under the gentle care of nuns. She had reached the venerable age of 83.
Today, my faithful flora enthusiasts, the Music Museum at Dolna Krupa holds a Rose Celebration honoring Chotek's extraordinary legacy. Tourists visit Dolna Krupa primarily to glimpse the chambers where Beethoven once resided. Visitors arrive with baskets in hand to gather leaves of the wild garlic that now grows in riotous abundance throughout the once-manicured grounds of this storied estate.
