Freudenberg (building)

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The Schader 2008 school complex. The Enge canton school building

The Freudenberg schoolhouse in Zurich in the Enge district is one of the most important works of Swiss architecture in the second half of the 20th century and was built by the architect Jacques Schader between 1954 and 1960. Today the canton schools Enge and Freudenberg are located in the complex .

history

Villa Freudenberg and its surroundings on a panorama of the city of Zurich by Paul Julius Arter , 1837
The old Villa Freudenberg before 1887

The name "Freudenberg" for the moraine hill, which was still overgrown with vines and fruit trees in the 19th century, just outside the old city of Zurich is derived from the "Freudenbergli", a small house of the Landolt family on the top of the hill. It was given this name in 1806 by the Zürcher Künstlergesellschaft , which held its summer meetings there between 1805 and 1807, at which the song " Freut dich des Lebens " by Johann Martin Usteri , set to music by Hans Georg Nägeli , played an important role. In 1817/1818 the Zurich Junker captain Emil Meiss acquired the property and had a new house built, which he named "zur Luftburg" or "zum Luftberg". He sold it to Heinrich Bodmer zur Arch on March 1, 1820 , who had the building converted into a country house by his brother-in-law Hans Kaspar Escher from 1822 to 1825 in the classicism style. He named his estate “Freudenberg” based on the “Freudenbergli”.

Bodmer and his heirs, his son Henri Bodmer-Pestalozzi , who inherited the estate in 1874, and his grandson Hans Conrad Bodmer-Zölly expanded the plot of land by buying them and turned it into a park. Between 1887 and 1889 , the city master builder Gustav Gull expanded the villa on behalf of Hans Conrad Bodmer-Zölly and changed its original shape significantly. The last owner, Martin Bodmer-Naville , had the building rebuilt again by Johann Albert Freytag in 1931–1933 so that it regained its classicistic appearance.

The last resident of the villa was the collector and patron Martin Bodmer. During the Second World War, numerous famous journalists and writers stayed in Freudenberg, such as Rudolf Borchardt , Selma Lagerlöf , Rudolf Alexander Schröder and Paul Valéry . Valéry is said to have once called the Bodmer property an “earthly paradise”. Bodmer founded his well-known “Library of World Literature” (→ Bibliotheca Bodmeriana ) in Freudenberg , which he relocated in 1928 due to lack of space to the former school building on Bederstrasse, which he acquired and adjacent to the park. In 1935, the architect Freytag also converted this building for Bodmer's purposes. After Bodmer had moved to a property in Cologny near Geneva as Vice President of the Red Cross , on July 24, 1948, he sold the entire area of ​​approx. 5 hectares with all buildings for 5.8 million francs to the canton of Zurich.

A short time later, the decision was made to erect new buildings for the Zurich Cantonal School on the extensive site. The Villa Freudenberg with all its ancillary buildings (Kleiner Freudenberg, Parkring 33, winter garden house or orangery, greenhouse, Villa Belvédère, Parkring 37, gardener's residence, Steinetischstrasse 14) was demolished in the summer of 1956. Only the former school building Bederstrasse and a small pavilion on Parkring remained. In 1951 Martin Bodmer finally moved his library from Zurich to Cologny, where it has been managed by the Martin Bodmer Foundation in specially constructed buildings since 1971 and made accessible to the public in a museum.

Stairway to the Enge Cantonal School
The building of the Freudenberg Cantonal School

The current Freudenberg school complex was built by the architect Jacques Schader between 1956 and 1961. The canton then moved the cantonal commercial school, since 1979 the Enge Cantonal School , and part of the Realgymnasium, now the Freudenberg Cantonal School , into the building. The facility has been a listed building since 1987. From 1993 to 2000 it was completely renovated for the first time. The architectural features of the school building are the flooding of light - the light penetrates every room from at least two sides - and the size of the rooms. These are relatively high and have large windows. Thanks to the preservation of parts of the old park, the entire building complex is surrounded by trees.

See also

literature

  • Chronicle of the city and the district of Zurich. Zurich 1964.
  • Marianne Burkhalter, Michael Koch, Claude Lichtenstein, Tomaso Zanoni: Freudenberg. The architect Jacques Schader and the canton school in Zurich-Enge. A monograph on buildings with a list of selected works. Museum of Design Zurich, Schweizerischer Werkbund (ed.). Zurich 1992.
  • Hans Hoffmann, Paul Klaeui (preliminary work by Konrad Escher): Die Kunstdenkmaeler des Kantons Zürich. Volume V. The City of Zurich: Part Two . Basel: Birkhaeuser 1949.
  • Irma Noseda : Freudenberg Cantonal School. In: Irma Noseda / arge baukunst, Zurich: Building an Zurich . Building Authority II of the City of Zurich (ed.). Zurich 1992, pp. 121-123.

Web links

Commons : Schulhaus Freudenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Chronicle of the City and the District of Zurich, p. 85.
  2. ↑ Chronicle of the City and the District of Zurich, p. 86.
  3. ↑ Chronicle of the City and the District of Zurich, p. 86.

Coordinates: 47 ° 21 '54.6 "  N , 8 ° 31' 42.5"  E ; CH1903:  682322  /  246609