Herrngarten Park

Caroline of Zweibrücken, the Great Landgravine, is buried on the island of the park she had redesigned. Frederick the Great, who rated her judgement above that of most rulers he dealt with, gave the Latin line cut into her monument: Femina sexu, ingenio vir, a woman by sex, a man by spirit. It was the highest compliment his century knew how to pay a woman, which says almost as much about the era as it does about her. The circle she gathered in Darmstadt pulled writers to the town, the young Goethe among them, and his monument stands a few steps from her island.