Hilfikon Castle

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Hilfikon Castle
Hilfikon Castle, seen from the east

Hilfikon Castle, seen from the east

Creation time : 1290
Conservation status: receive
Place: Hilfikon
Geographical location 47 ° 19 '50.6 "  N , 8 ° 14' 48.9"  O Coordinates: 47 ° 19 '50.6 "  N , 8 ° 14' 48.9"  E ; CH1903:  six hundred sixty-one thousand and ninety-six  /  242519
Height: 502  m above sea level M.
Hilfikon Castle (Canton Aargau)
Hilfikon Castle

The Hilfikon Castle is a castle in Hilfikon in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland . It is located on the southern edge of the village on the outermost hill spur of a northwestern foothill of the Lindenberg , above the main road between the Bünztal and the Seetal . The castle got its current baroque appearance in the middle of the 17th century after the reconstruction and expansion of the medieval castle. The castle chapel with rococo interior dates from 1750.

history

The castle was first mentioned in a document in the Habsburg land register from 1303/07. According to this, in 1290 Arnoldus and Marchwardus von Hilfikon were the owners of the castle as well as the associated land and lower court rule over the village of the same name. The Lords of Hilfikon were a ministerial family in the service of the Habsburgs and administered the small domain in their name.

After the conquest of Aargau by the Confederates in 1415, the mayor of Zurich was given the right to confer the rule of Hilfikon. It is not known who replaced the gentlemen from Hilfikon in the first few decades. In 1472 the Meiss family from Zurich is named as the castle owner. In 1498, Hans von Seengen, the Vogt of Kaiserstuhl, followed . Melchior zur Gilgen, a knight of the Holy Sepulcher from Lucerne , acquired the castle and the lordship between 1506 and 1510 and united them with the Bailiwick of Sarmenstorf in 1514 . In 1547 the federal towns wanted to acquire the castle and make it the residence of the bailiff , but the negotiations failed because of the purchase price.

Aurelian zur Gilgen sold the rulership of the castle in 1628 to Johann Lussi, the governor of Nidwalden . 16 years later the brothers Sebastian and Johann Zwyer von Evibach from Silenen acquired the property and had the castle converted into a palace. In 1712, before the decisive battle of the Second Villmerger War in nearby Villmergen, Hilfikon Castle served as the headquarters of the General Staff of the ultimately defeated Catholic towns. The last male descendant of the Zwyer died in 1723, twenty years later the property passed to Joseph Tschudi from Glarus through marriage .

In 1749 Baron Franz Viktor Augustin von Roll, Knight of the Holy Sepulcher from Solothurn , acquired the rule of the castle. Ludwig von Roll sold it to Louis de Domgermain from Metz in 1832 in order to finance the expansion of the ironworks in Gerlafingen (later the Von Roll steelworks ). In the following decades there were numerous changes of ownership, while the associated properties and forests were gradually sold and the domain thus only includes the surrounding castle park today. In 1879 the Polish-Swiss entrepreneur Ludwig Michalski bought the castle for 70,000 francs. From the inheritance of the widow, the property passed to the silk manufacturer and aviation pioneer Hermann Nabholz in 1907.

Nabholz lost during the Great Depression a large part of his fortune and had to move out 1939th The Swiss Refugee Aid used the castle in 1944/45 as a vocational school for over three dozen refugees. The young women, who came from Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, trained as seamstresses, decorators and kitchen managers during this time. The castle stood empty for several years until the entrepreneur Louise Schellenberg bought it in 1961 and then had it renovated. The castle is rarely open to the public. In the summer of 2012, the open-air play “With Chrüüz and Flag” was performed on the site, which was reminiscent of the Second Villmerger War and attracted a total of over 9,500 spectators.

building

View from the south

The way up to the attic covered the later castle building have been preserved from the medieval castle keep , the round towers on the east and south, and little remains of the city walls. Four matching vedutas in the Hilfiker Urbar from 1571 result in the following floor plan: The square keep rose on the highest point of the hill. Attached to it were the palas in the northwest and two other buildings in the southeast, which were included in the curtain wall. A wall led from the hall to the curtain wall and formed a kennel . Three round towers protected the open north-east flank, a forework the north-west flank. The castle gate was in the south, the castle chapel, built in the late Gothic style in 1510, in the west.

After the First Villmerger War of 1656, the Zwyer von Evibach had extensive renovations carried out. The hall and the buildings to the south-east of the keep were combined to form a single baroque building wing; the curtain wall was torn down by 1670 at the latest. Major alterations and renovations were carried out in 1907/08. Franz Augustin von Roll had the castle chapel and parts of the economic building demolished in 1750. In its place, master mason Johann Marti built today's enlarged castle chapel. The last renovation took place in 1959/60.

The main front of the trapezoidal complex faces the valley side, with the two round towers and the castle chapel forming three corner points. The keep is approximately a square with a side length of 9 meters. The old masonry made of unhewn quarry stone with a thickness of 2.5 meters is 16 meters high. The four-story castle building with a hipped roof surrounds the keep on three sides. Axially lined up rectangular windows evenly structure the main and secondary facades. The south-eastern wing of the castle widens slightly towards the outside. The front of the castle, together with a barn and a gardener's house, forms the south-west facing forecourt.

At the western corner of the complex, the elongated castle chapel with a gable roof and polygonal choir rises above the steep slope . On the choir ridge there is a six-sided ridge turret with a pointed helmet . A square sacristy with a pent roof is built on the south-east side, at the transition between the chapel aisle and the choir . The interior is characterized by the Rococo style. The wall and ceiling paintings made by Franz Anton Rebsamen were whitewashed in 1901, but partially exposed again in 1954/55 and 1959/60. The high altar consists of a richly carved tabernacle and a life-size depiction of the crucifixion by Johann Baptist Babel . The wooden Louis-Seize- style pulpit in front of the choir arch was installed around 1800. The restored frescoes in the palace chapel and the true-to-scale replica of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem are considered to be cultural and historical treasures.

literature

  • Dieter Kuhn: Hilfikon - history of the village and castle on the Rietenberg . Ed .: Municipality of Hilfikon. Municipal administration, Hilfikon 2010, DNB  1037717333 .
  • Peter Felder: Bremgarten district . In: The art monuments of the Canton of Aargau . Volume IV (=  The Art Monuments of Switzerland ). tape 54 . Birkhäuser , Basel 1967, DNB  457321962 , p. 269-284 .
  • Alois Bucher: History about the castle and owner of Hilfikon and the saga of the Anglo-Saxons . Kasimir Meyer, Wohlen 1910, OCLC 84148788 . -

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kuhn: Hilfikon - history of the village and castle on the Rietenberg. P. 18.
  2. ^ Kuhn: Hilfikon - history of the village and castle on the Rietenberg. Pp. 30-31.
  3. ^ Kuhn: Hilfikon - history of the village and castle on the Rietenberg. Pp. 48, 51-52.
  4. ^ Kuhn: Hilfikon - history of the village and castle on the Rietenberg. Pp. 56-59.
  5. ↑ Landscape theater “With Chrüüz and Flag” was a crowd puller. Aargauer Zeitung , September 3, 2012, accessed on November 3, 2012 .
  6. ↑ Schlosskapelle Hilfikon , Aargauer Kapellen, accessed on August 30, 2012