Greifensee Castle
| Greifensee Castle | ||
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_-_Schloss_IMG_6552.jpg) Greifensee Castle (2011) |
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| Creation time : | around 1250 | |
| Castle type : | Niederungsburg , conversion to a castle | |
| Conservation status: | Receive | |
| Standing position : | Free nobles | |
| Construction: | Megalithic masonry made of bulging stones and boulders | |
| Place: | Greifensee | |
| Geographical location | 47 ° 21 '54.2 " N , 8 ° 40' 32.1" E | |
| Height: | 439 m above sea level M. | |
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The Greifensee Castle is in the town of Greifensee , Canton Zurich , in the immediate vicinity of the Greifensee on above ground level around three meters high molasse area. The history of dating back to the 13th century small castle - at the beginning of the 16th century to a modest castle rebuilt - and the town of Greifensee up to the beginning of the Helvetic virtually inseparable. One of the governors who once resided here in the palace is the title character of Gottfried Keller's novella Der Landvogt von Greifensee .
Greifensee - Neolithic to 12th century
The area around today's Greifensee municipality has been known to have been settled since the Neolithic Age ( ceramic finds around 4000 BC), and four sites of earlier pile dwellings are known to exist in the municipality . Finds from Roman times were made in neighboring communities, in Riedikon am Greifensee and in Pfäffikon ( Irgenhausen Fort ) around nine kilometers away . Due to the high population density of the region, however, the contiguous sites mentioned at the beginning are , in contrast to random individual finds, rather rare fortunes.
Greifensee Castle in the 12th and 13th centuries
Perhaps as early as the 12th century the Counts of Rapperswil built a defensive tower and thus probably the first fortification at the site of today's Greifensee Castle and probably an already existing small settlement. The beginnings of Greifensee Castle, which was partially destroyed in May 1444, date back to around 1250. At that time, the Counts of Rapperswil, who a few decades earlier had relocated their headquarters in Alt-Rapperswil to the north side of Lake Zurich to Rapperswil SG , sought to secure their goods further north . Count Ulrich built Greifenberg Castle for this purpose and named himself after this fortress from 1229. Presumably he had Greifensee Castle built afterwards, as the seat of servants of the Counts of Rapperswil, probably also of the noble knights of 1260 mentioned below. According to another source, knights Rudolf von Nänikon and 1254 Dietrich von Nänikon were already servants of the Rapperswiler in Greifensee be occupied.
The castle complex consisted of a fortified palace on a three-meter-high Molasse rock , which at that time still stood directly on the lake shore and was protected on the other sides by a four-meter-wide moat and a circular wall ( outer bailey ).
The name Greifensee appears for the first time as " R. et H. minstri de Grifense " in a document dated April 29, 1260, in which two noble knights testify to the settlement of a dispute. According to another source, the castle complex was first mentioned in a document in 1261. Since that time, Greifensee has been used equally for castle, town and the adjacent lake, even if the lake was sometimes still called Glattsee after its drainage around 1300 .
Greifensee castle and town in the early 14th century
On January 7, 1300, Countess Elisabeth von Rapperswil , married to Count Rudolf von Habsburg-Laufenburg, pledged Greifensee to the knight Hermann II von Landenberg: “ We Elizabeth greuenne von Habsburch and happy Raprechtswile announce to everyone ... that we with gray Ruodolfs from Habsburch users Wirtes hant… Gesezzet han ze right phande Grifense the castle and the statute with the sewe, to whom one speaks Glatse ». The pledge not only included the castle, town and the lake, but also a large number of farms and their fields, meadows, forests and even the courtiers themselves. The associated lower and middle court rights and the right ( church rate ) to the pastor were also leased to be appointed in Uster .
The new owner called himself von Landenberg-Greifensee and experienced a remarkable social and political rise in the service of King Albrecht I as secretarius (administrative secretary ) and marshal . His name is mentioned in documents in Duke Albrecht's service in the so-called " Güssing feud " around 1281, before Hermann II died, usually outside his homeland in 1306 in Bohemia, as a loyal follower of Habsburg Austria.
His son, Hermann IV (the younger marshal) - court master of Duke Otto - expanded the town with a fortress belt . The Zwergstädtli was never able to develop properly economically, as it had no market rights and remained poorly developed in terms of traffic. As a result of over-indebtedness, the Landenbergers sold Burg and Herrschaft Greifensee in 1369 for 7,219 Rhenish guilders to Counts Friedrich, Donat and Diethelm von Toggenburg . As early as 1402, Greifensee came from Friedrich VII , the last Count of Toggenburg, for 6,000 guilders as pledge to the city of Zurich. In 1419 Zurich came into permanent possession of the rulership, and so Greifensee - Heinrich Biberli was de facto bailiff from 1403 - became the first bailiff of the city of Zurich .
Siege and destruction of Greifensee in May 1444
The Old Zurich War ended in May 1444 with a catastrophe for the rural population of the small town and castle Greifensee: Even before the advance of the Central Swiss army, which was devastating the Zurich hinterland, women, children and the elderly were able to move to Zurich on May 1, 1444 - more refugees in mid-May to Uster - to be evacuated. The Zurich occupation - around 70 men, mostly farmers from the Greifensee office , under the leadership of Captain Wildhans von Breitenlandenberg - withdrew to the castle complex after twelve days of siege after setting their town on fire for tactical reasons. On May 27, 1444, after a further two weeks of siege, the people of Zurich had to capitulate despite the heavy losses suffered by the attackers: Presumably on May 25, 1444, the south and west facades were partially undermined by the central Swiss , which required further defense made a pointless endeavor. The presumably 62 surviving defenders were beheaded on May 28, 1444 under the leadership of the Schwyzer Landammann Ital Reding the Elder on the "Blood Mat" in Nänikon and thus presumably a large part of the region's population was massacred as a man. The bloody act went down in history under the name Mord von Greifensee and was perceived as extremely harsh and unjustified even in those times of war. Greifensee Castle was "appropriately" looted by the Central Swiss on June 1, 1444, and - presumably the small outer bailey including the curtain wall and the city wall - was partially razed .
Reconstruction as Greifensee Castle - early 16th century until today
Greifensee then served as a quarry for 76 years - among other things for the later stone chapel built on the «Blutmatte» after the massacre. It was not until 1520 that the Zurich council decided to rebuild the ruins in the form of a comparatively modest castle, with the respected Zurich chronicler and bailiff (1504–1506) Gerold Edlibach playing a key role in Anno domi 1520 jar um sant michelstag there were minors of Zurich to ratt dz schloss griffensee again to be built and if you can't catch the hoffstatt for hours on jar like obstat. The former outer bailey and the city wall of Greifensee were not restored. The seat of the bailiffs was originally the castle, they probably also lived in Zurich for a while - the castle, as it was built in 1444, offered little living comfort even for that time, which only improved with the new building from 1520. Until moving into the castle around 1530, the governors and their staff lived in the rectory mentioned above.
Until the French invaded the Old Confederation - the beginning of the Helvetic Republic - in 1798, Greifensee Castle remained the seat of a Zurich bailiff. The most famous of a long line of bailiffs from the city of Zurich, Salomon Landolt - Gottfried Keller's " bailiff of Greifensee " - resided at Greifensee Castle from 1781 to 1786. From 1803 to 1814 the castle was the official seat of the district governor. During this time a small prison was built seaward. From 1814 to 1830 the castle served as the seat of the upper office, comparable to today's governor's office . In 1831, with the new constitution, the upper offices were abolished and converted into districts . Uster became the capital of the new Uster district , and with it the castle and town of Greifensee lost their political importance.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Greifensee Castle belonged to respected Zurich families for 102 years: in 1833 the canton sold the castle to Kaspar Schulthess-Escher from Zurich as a private residence, in 1858 the castle became the property of the spinning mill owner, Colonel Heinrich Kunz from Oetwil , in 1861 The Escher-Hotz family inherited the castle and built a neo-Gothic porch, which was removed again during the exterior renovation in 1948–1953. From 1881 to 1935 it was owned by the Spöndlin family, who inherited the building. In 1935, the Canton of Zurich bought Greifensee Castle and rented it to the Bernoulli family until 1991.
In 1993/1995 a gentle interior renovation was carried out by the canton of Zurich, and in 1995 Greifensee Castle went to the Greifensee Castle Foundation as a place of cultural encounters, further training and information in a commercial loan agreement .
Greifensee Castle as a building
Hall
The external appearance and the floor plan of today's castle - 14.8 meters wide, 21.3 meters long, 14.5 meters eaves height - is largely identical to the original castle from the 13th century. The up to 4.5 meter thick foundation walls from the original period and the eight meter deep sod well on the ground floor and basement are impressive . Before it was partially destroyed, the castle probably had a cantilevered upper floor made of wood with a hipped roof , which was replaced by a gable roof with stepped gables during the reconstruction in 1520 .
Even today, the parts of the wall that were added during the reconstruction - during the siege in May 1444, the south and west façades partially collapsed - are clearly recognizable through the smooth plaster and clearly differ from the medieval , coarse megalithic masonry made of bulging stones or boulders . The window layout, the gable of the stairs and the interior layout (except for the stairwell) and probably the chapel window also date from around 1520 .
In the centuries that followed, the building underwent minor changes to the fabric of the building, which were well documented by the bailiffs' accounts, which had been preserved from 1544. Necessary renovations or renewals of the coat of arms , the fountain, the access bridge, the ovens, the panels and the clock were repeatedly mentioned in these documents. At the end of the bailiff's time in 1798, most of the interior furnishings fell victim to looting. Externally, the palace was given a neo-Gothic portico in 1862 . However, this was removed again during a comprehensive exterior renovation in the years 1948–1953 and the moat was restored in its current form. The aim of this renovation work was to reconstruct the castle from 1520. During the renovations, therefore, later non-stylistic elements were removed: the glued roofs were restored to their original position, the high entrance was closed with a pointed arch and at the same time the coat of arms was renewed, Heinrich Zeiner's “Zurich Empire” from 1535/1536 and the sundial .
Fortification and economic buildings
For his salvation and that of his wife, Hermann IV. (The younger Marshal) von Landenberg donated the " Gallus Chapel", which was largely preserved in the original structure from around 1330–1340 and integrated into the former city wall . In the castle a little, which was St. Catherine consecrated chapel built. The “Landenberghaus” probably dates back to the founding time of Greifensee. It is one of the rare secular buildings in the Romanesque style in the canton of Zurich ; only 10 meters away from the castle, it served as a residential or hall building for the castle rulers as early as 1250. The parsonage built with the Landenberghaus - the core of the building could also go back to the time the town was founded - with its lakeside facade formed part of the circular wall that was destroyed in 1444.
During the time as the official seat of the District Governor Schwerzenbach (1803-1814), a small prison was built on the ground floor seaward. Since the dry moat was no longer needed, they built u. a. a wash house. During the renovation works from 1948–1953, a wooden bridge was built to access the moat.
Interior work
A five-meter-wide central aisle runs from eaves to eaves, and the living rooms and chambers are on both sides. Along the western wall of the corridor, a mighty, two- room chimney for the room stoves was raised through all three upper floors . Most of the rooms on the three upper floors as well as the stairwell have mainly classicist features from around 1815.
- Ground floor: On the southwest wall there is a painted sequence of coats of arms of the Landvögte von Greifensee. The skeleton of a young man from the time of the siege in May 1444 was found in a grave in the basement, which is stepped from the ground floor. In the back basement area on the right is the water well .
- 1st floor: Towards the sea is the so-called Landvogtstube, whose massive window pillar dates from the time of the reconstruction in 1520. The wall paneling in late Gothic forms, the beamed ceiling and the stove were installed in 1917. Next to it is the dining room with a tendril painting, presumably in the late 17th century, and built-in cupboards. The kitchen is partly original, a tunnel in the four meter thick masonry served as a pantry.
- Second floor: In the first room there is a stove designed by H. Michel from 1818. Behind it is the Sekelmeister room with an alcove from 1818. The St. Catherine Chapel (around 1330/40) is oriented towards the town of Greifensee ) with a tunnel-shaped Gothic window built into the thick outer wall ; the paintings date from the early 17th century.
- 3rd floor: A furnace from 1776 is built into the first chamber seaward, created by Heinrich Bleuler, with views of the castle and landscapes in Rococo style . In the back is a hall with paintings in the historical style from 1917.
The public tour of the renovated and bright interior of Greifensee Castle is only possible to a limited extent, so advance booking is recommended.
literature
- Werner Meyer : Castles of Switzerland . Volume 5. Cantons of Zurich and Schaffhausen. Zurich 1982.
- Werner Meyer, Eduard Widmer: The great castle book of Switzerland . Ex-Libris-Verlag, Zurich 1977.
- Thomas Bitterli-Waldvogel: Swiss Castle Guide . Basel / Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-7245-0865-4 .
- H. Zeller-Werdmüller: Zurich castles . In: Antiquarian Society in Zurich . Communications 48/49, 1894–1895.
- Annegret Diethelm, Attilio d'Andrea: Greifensee Castle ZH. (Swiss Art Guide, No. 596). Ed. Society for Swiss Art History GSK. Bern 1996, ISBN 978-3-85782-596-5 .
Web links
- Burgenwelt: Greifensee Castle
- Greifensee Castle Foundation with pictures of the castle and all interior rooms
- Official website of the Greifensee community
Individual evidence
- ↑ Official website of the Greifensee community
- ↑ Gallus Chapel
- ↑ Landenberghaus
- ^ Rectory
- ↑ Pre-registration for castle tours at the Greifensee Castle Foundation ( Memento from June 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
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