Samuel Werenfels (architect)

This article is about the architect Samuel Werenfels. For the theologian of the same name, see Samuel Werenfels .

Ebenrain Castle

Samuel Werenfels (born August 4, 1720 in Basel ; † September 11, 1800 there ) was a Swiss Baroque architect . Among other things, Werenfels drafted the plans for Ebenrain Castle in Sissach .

Life

Werenfels was born in Basel in 1720 as the son of businessman Peter Werenfels (businessman and leather glove manufacturer) and Catharina Socin. Werenfels was the godchild of the theologian Samuel Werenfels , who was also his great-uncle. In 1743 he joined the journeyman's brotherhood of the Basel spinning weather guild and became a master in 1748. In 1788 he became mill inspector and from 1794 foreman in Basel.

As an architect he was a representative of the Basel late baroque. The town and country houses in Basel and the surrounding area, built according to his plans, testify to his stylistic proximity to contemporary Alsatian architecture. Along with Johann Jacob Fechter (1717–1797) and Ulrich Büchel (1753–1792), he is considered to be one of the most important architects in the city of Basel in the 18th century.

Werenfels was married to Maria Magdalena Strübin.

buildings

• 

  Blue house

• 

  White House

Basel

House Zum Delphin (Basel)

Bruckgut Münchenstein

• Werenfels built the Blue and White House (on the Rheinsprung ) between 1763 and 1775 as a residential and commercial building for the silk ribbon manufacturer Lukas and Jakob Sarasin . The facade facing the Rhine, with its division into blue and white, was aligned with the number three. Each of the two houses has three axes with three windows each. The tenth axis of the Blue House, at Archivgässlein, is an unscheduled extension at the client's request. A special feature that is clearly visible at the Rheinsprung is the lead masks over the windows on the ground floor. The masks represent the four seasons. Facing Martinsgasse, the building appeared as two buildings with three wings. Both with an impressive deep courtyard that were joined together to form a long complex. The white house belonged to Lukas (1730–1802), the older of the brothers, the blue one belonged to Jakob (1742–1802). Note, the name "Blue and White House" only appears after 1820. Today, the Blue and White House are the headquarters of the Department for Economic, Social and Environmental Affairs.
• Landhaus Ryhiner-Blech (1751)
• House of the Dolphin (1760)
• House Zum Dolder (1761)
• Posthaus (1773, today town house): The town house is one of the most important Basel buildings of the 18th century. Today the town hall is the seat of the community. The building was constructed as a post office. It was also used as the seat of the directorate of the business community, the influential interest group of the Basel wholesale trade.
• Falkensteinerhof (1779)

Basel surroundings

• Landhaus Bruckgut in Münchenstein (1758–1761)
• Ebenrain Castle in Sissach (1776).

France

In 1786 he built the parish church of Saint-Rémy in Hegenheim (Alsace).

literature

• E. Blum, Th. Nüesch: Basel then and now. A local culture and history . Verlag Hermann Krüsi, 1913, p. 61
• Dorothee Huber: Architecture Guide Basel . Edited by the Architekturmuseum in Basel. 2nd edition 1996, ISBN 3-905065-22-3 , pp. 74-75
• Emil Major: Buildings and pictures from Basel's cultural history . Peter Heman, Basel 1986, ISBN 3-85702-010-5 , p. 136 u. 139
• Maya Müller: Samuel Werenfels. A Basel architect of the 18th century , in: Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde , Volume 71 (1971), pp. 9–160 ( full text )
• The Bürgerhaus in Switzerland, Volume XXIII - Canton Basel-Stadt, Part 3, and Canton Basel-Land . Orell Füssli, 1931, pp. 24-26 and panels 4-13

Web links

• Marie-Claire Berkemeier: Samuel Werenfels. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .