Bilgeri tower
The Bilgeriturm is a late medieval residential tower in the City Hall district ( District 1 ) of the Swiss city of Zurich .
The aristocratic tower was built in the 13th century and was the ancestral seat of the Bilgeri council family. After an eventful history, the Bilgeriturm on the corner of Neumarkt- and Synagogengasse has been integrated into the Theater am Neumarkt . The building is one of the numerous cultural monuments in Zurich's old town .
history
middle Ages
The Bilgeriturm was erected in the first half of the 13th century as a representative stone building of a ministerial family or the merchant patriciate. Whether the Bilgeri family was the builder and first owner is disputed: In 1276 Johannes Pilgrin acquired a house called "uffen dem Bache"; it could have been the Bilgeriturm. This stood directly on the Wolfbach, which now runs underground, and was also known as the "Tower on the Bach". This thesis is supported by the fact that the neighboring «Grimmenturm» was owned by the Pilgrin family at that time.
On the other hand, the Bilgeri were feudal bearers of the Counts of Habsburg-Laufenburg and have been recorded in Zurich since 1256 - a document from 1309 shows the residential tower for the first time beyond doubt as the possession of the Bilgeri. At that time, the bilgeri were one of the most influential families in the city of Zurich: before June 1336, their relatives occupied no fewer than seven of the 36 council seats in the three alternating council bodies ( three-part council ), each made up of 12 members of the «Notabel» (merchant patriciate) and ministeriality (knighthood). In the course of the so-called guild revolution of 1336 , the councilors Bilgeri were deposed by Rudolf Brun and, together with other council members, were banished from the merchant patrimony and their families from the city of Zurich . Family members who were not evicted from Zurich are said to have been granted the right to live in the Bilgeriturm until 1380. The majority of those exiled in June 1336 fled to Rapperswil to see Count Johann I von Habsburg-Laufenburg, the liege lord of the Bilgeri family.
The Bilgeri were among Brun's most implacable opponents, and during the night of murder in Zurich on 23/24. February 1350 Rudolf Bilgeri lost his life in a fight, Werner and Klaus Bilgeri were captured and executed. Werner's brother Burkhard became a Johanniter in 1358 at the Ordensburg Alt- Wädenswil , was reconciled with the Council of Zurich in 1374 and in 1383 became the first Commander in the Johanniterhaus Küsnacht . His sister Anna inherited the Bilgeriturm and brought the property into her marriage to Johann Störy. An owner's board discovered during renovation work refers to Jakob Mülner as the subsequent owner , who sold the building to Junker Hans Escher vom Luchs. Anton Schenk von Landegg inherited the property from his daughter, who sold it to Jakob Grebel von Uri in 1508. His son, the merchant and councilor Konrad Grebel (1498–1526), was one of the leading figures in the Zurich Anabaptist movement after the Reformation . Via Grebel's daughter Dorothea, the Bilgeriturm came into the possession of the Escher family again around 1538. Other owners were the respected families of Griessen, Wolf and Holzhalb.
Modern times
On January 26, 1742, the shoemakers' guild acquired the tower and the "Hus uff dem Bach" (Neumarkt 5) and had both rebuilt. The commissioned David Morf was also the builder of the Zunfthaus zur Meisen and the Rechberg house on Hirschengraben. After a year of construction, the guild house was inaugurated on March 14, 1743. With the invasion of the French revolutionary troops and the collapse of the Old Confederation , the guild regime was ended, and the guild of shoemakers sold the guild house to the merchant Johannes Gessner on October 10, 1798.
The property experienced further changes of ownership until 1888 and remained in the private ownership of changing merchant and craftsman families. In 1888 the German workers ' education association "Eintracht" became the new owner of the property, after which it served as a trade union building and meeting point for the international workers' movement until 1922 : before the October Revolution , Leon Trotsky and Lenin also frequented the property . In 1920 the tower room was opened and the hall broke through to the neighboring building, which later became the Theater am Neumarkt . The city of Zurich acquired the property in 1933, and after extensive renovations, the Theater am Neumarkt was opened in the extension in 1948. In 1956 the Hottingen guild moved into its guild room in the attic of the bilger tower; The “Neumarkt Economy” is located on the lower floors.
investment
The residential tower was built in two stages; an increase and expansion took place in the second half of the 13th century. The tower, which was probably free-standing when it was built, has an irregular square shape with sides of eight (Neumarkt) to 12.7 meters (Synagogengasse) and foundation walls up to 0.96 meters thick. The corner connections consist of bosses , the remains of Romanesque arched windows are clearly visible. In the last stage of construction, the building had a tent roof . Whether a palace belonged already in the planning phase for the residential tower, such as the fountain tower is not clear - Attachments have at the back of the residential tower (Synagogue Street) structural similarities.
The city of Zurich was able to purchase paneling , coffered ceilings , two cupboards and two brightly painted tower stoves (Zurich Baroque around 1725) from the demolished “Neuegg” building on Talacker . The "Bilgeristube" on the first floor of the residential tower was equipped with some of these pieces of furniture, although various additions to the ceiling and wall panels were necessary under the direction of the preservation authority.
Jupiter fountain
A fountain with a fountain figure can already be seen on the Murer map from 1576 at the intersection of Neumarkt and Spiegelgasse . Nothing is known about its appearance, but this figure was probably painted around 1550. The Jupiter statue can be dated to around 1750 ; it was destroyed in December 1987 by a nightly bomb attack. Because it was difficult to restore the fountain figure true to the original, a project competition took place. The sculptor Barbara Roth was commissioned to create a new fountain figure: Her implementation of “l'étranger” helped the fountain to a new figure of a god - this is how the god Jupiter became the goddess of victory Nike . The sculptor Thomas Ehrler worked on the fountain trough. The inauguration took place in June 1992.
Picture gallery
Wall details, in the middle of the picture on the right the Bruns house. The medieval synagogue was located at today's Froschau- / Synagogengasse 4 .
View from the north (Synagogengasse)
View from the west, with an annex to the rear
Walls and towers (yellow) as well as aristocratic towers (orange) of the second city fortifications on the Murer map from 1576; the bilgeriturm is marked with VII .
literature
- Dölf Wild (concept and content): city walls. A new picture of Zurich's city fortifications . Document for the exhibition in the Haus zum Rech (urban history and urban development in Zurich; publications on archeology, monument preservation and urban planning, 5). Published by the Office for Urban Development, Archeology and Monument Preservation, Zurich 2004. ISBN 3-905384-05-1
- Christine Barraud Wiener, Peter Jetzler: The art monuments of the canton of Zurich . New edition I. The city of Zurich I: City in front of the wall, medieval fortifications and the Limmatraum. Basel 1999. ISBN 3-909164-70-6
- Heinrich Wipf: Bilgeriturm and guild house on Neumarkt 1267-1967 . Zurich 1967.
- Emil Stauber: The castles and noble families of the districts of Zurich, Affoltern and Horgen . Basel 1955.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Grimmenturm on dickemauern.de ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : In a document from 1324, three cousins of the Bilgeri family divided the previously joint ownership of the tower and house. After the division, these were owned by Johannes Bilgeri the Younger, known as the "Grimme". The Grimmenturm got its current name from him.
- ↑ The tripartite council of the city of Zurich with a total of 36 councilors was divided up to June 1336 into the «fasting council», which met from Ash Wednesday , whose 12 councilors were each replaced by «summer» - and these in turn were replaced by «autumn council». In this context, “Notabel” defines the merchants and noble artisans represented on the council (goldsmiths, silk manufacturers, money changers). According to the German legal dictionary , the definition of the word notabel is elegant, honorable, outstanding .
- ↑ Zunft zur Letzi: Zurich Guilds , accessed on November 1, 2008
- ^ «... On July 18, Brun went to settle accounts with the members of the old council. 22 of them were declared incapable of counseling, of which twelve were temporarily banished from the city. " The table of contents of the city book of Zurich, created in 1636, speaks of the " twelve bandits of 1336 " who had to leave the city at that time. State Archives of the Canton of Zurich (ed.): Small Zurich Constitutional History 1218 - 2000 , Zurich 2000.
- ↑ a b Bilgeritrum on dickemauern.de, accessed on November 1, 2008
- ↑ Zunft Hottingen: Zunfthaus am Neumarkt ( Memento of the original from March 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 1, 2008
- ↑ Zurich Monument Preservation: 2nd report 1960/61 . Directorate of Public Buildings of the Canton of Zurich, Building Authority II of the City of Zurich (Ed.), Zurich 1964.
- ↑ Economy Neumarkt: Interior views ( Memento of the original from December 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Gang dur Alt-Züri : The Neumarkt encompasses the area of the new suburb with the new market that was created in the 12th century . The previous old market was located on Marktgasse and perhaps on Stüssihofstatt until this point in time .
- ↑ Spiegelgasse is named after house number 2 «zum Spiegel».
- ↑ Zurich old town: Jupiterbrunnen, Neumarkt / Spiegelgasse ( Memento of the original dated February 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 1, 2008
- ^ City of Zurich, media release of August 8, 2002: On the trail of the medieval synagogue in Zurich. Archaeological investigations in house Froschaugasse 4 ( Memento of the original from December 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 1, 2008
Coordinates: 47 ° 22 '17.4 " N , 8 ° 32' 39.5" E ; CH1903: 683509 / 247329