Der alte Garten

"Kaiserkron and red peonies must be enchanted." Thus begins Eichendorff's poem "The Old Garden," and it is this enchantment, this love for flowers, that Gabriele Tergit narrates. Flowers symbolize beauty and gentleness, kindness and the brilliance of tranquility. People adorn themselves and their tables with flowers; hardly any festive occasion is celebrated without them. Flowers can be found on coats of arms and in gun barrels, gentlemen wear a white carnation in their buttonholes, while workers have a red one. The stock exchange was born from the tulip mania in Holland, and paradise was nothing more than a garden. Gabriele Tergit tells the many stories that have always surrounded flowers with great expertise and humor under the motto of a Japanese proverb: "Happy is he who holds flowers in both hands.".