Waldegg Castle
The Waldegg country estate is a castle in the municipality of Feldbrunnen-St. Niklaus near Solothurn .
history
The building was built between 1682 and 1690 as the summer residence of the mayor Johann Viktor I von Besenval . He was the son of Martin von Besenval, who immigrated from the Aosta Valley in 1628 as a "silver merchant" . He came from the village of Valleil in the parish of Torgnon . Father Martin rose within a short time to the Solothurn upper class. Since Solothurn housed the French embassy in the Old Confederation from 1530 to 1792 , careers in the French kingdom were open to the sons of the Solothurn patriciate . Waldegg was followed by Peter Viktor von Besenval , born in 1721 , who during the French Revolution held the post of commander of the armed forces sent to Paris to put down the unrest under the command of War Minister Victor-François de Broglie . His memoirs paint an atmospheric picture of the events.
In 1865 the manor came to the Solothurn patrician family von Sury-Büssy through marriage and purchase. The palace building underwent a spatial redesign in the late 19th century when two separate apartments were set up. The castle was inhabited all year round from the early 20th century. In the absence of descendants, the castle was donated to the Canton of Solothurn in 1963 . Today the castle serves as a residential museum and as a venue for exhibitions, concerts and private events.
architecture
Waldegg Castle is an exaggeration of the Türmlihaus , a typical Solothurn building type that was particularly popular in the 17th century (cf. e.g. the Wylihof summer house ). The Waldegg has a baroque garden ground floor, an orangery garden and a "potager" (French kitchen garden). At the end of Ostallee there is also an ice cellar that is no longer accessible today. The property includes the St. Michael chapel, a house chapel and several economic buildings on the farm. With its garden facade over 70 meters wide, the palace is a stage-like representative building designed for effect; the building depth is around twelve meters.
After the death of the last owner, the canton of Solothurn began to reconstruct the baroque ensemble in 1989. In order to make the building usable as a meeting center, the theater hall on the upper floor was reconstructed and the infrastructure was renewed. Historical wall and ceiling paintings were also found and exposed again. Today the rooms are largely furnished with the original furniture from the 17th to 19th centuries. The original baroque garden was archaeologically processed and reconstructed.
This practice of reconstruction is not without controversy today, since the building history of the 19th century including the garden from this era was sacrificed for it. The avenue leading south to the property is being replanted as part of extensive reconstruction work, but its historical existence is unclear.
Appreciation
Waldegg Castle is now the most prominent country residence of the Ancien Régime in the area around Solothurn. Most of the country estates of the former Solothurn summer houses lost the surrounding urban open spaces as early as the 20th century due to settlement development. When the Wakker Prize was awarded to the city of Solothurn in 1981 , the Swiss Homeland Security called for the remaining open spaces to be protected as witnesses to the Solothurn park landscape , but the rezoning and liquidation of cantonal land reserves at the beginning of the 21st century led to the almost complete loss of the last inner-city open spaces.
The fact that Waldegg Castle was able to retain its historical urban appearance is thanks to its last owners. In the donation agreement of 1963, the elderly siblings stipulated that the associated lands may not be built on, so that the overall effect of the property can also serve as historical evidence for future generations. Waldegg Castle bears witness to the aristocratic and diplomatic past of the canton (then a city-state ), when around ten noble families dominated political and economic life in the style of absolutism . On a small scale, the model of the French "Sun King" Louis XIV was emulated, both politically and architecturally. The Solothurn aristocracy was not overthrown until 1798 by Napoleon's troops , after the Restoration it was definitely overthrown by a popular uprising in 1830.
literature
in alphabetical order
- Georg Carlen, André Schluchter: Waldegg Castle (= Swiss Art Guide , Series 98, No. 977). Bern 2015, ISBN 978-3-03797-231-1 .
- Georg Carlen: Waldegg Castle near Solothurn - bridge between times and cultures . Aare Verlag, Solothurn 1991, ISBN 3-726003673
- Gabrielle Claerr tribe: De Soleure à Paris. La saga de la famille de Besenval, seigneurs de Brunstatt . Riedisheim et Didenheim, Sundgau 2015.
- Jean-Jacques Fiechter: Baron Peter Victor von Besenval (1721–1791) - A Solothurn man at the court of Versailles . Rothus Verlag, Solothurn 1994.
- Habegger AG Printing and Publishing (Ed.): Encounter Center Schloss Waldegg . Special print Jura leaves . Contributions from Dr. Franz Jeger, Dr. Peter André Bloch, Alessandra Wiggli-Ricca, Dr. Jürg Witmer, Dr. Max Egger, Dr. Georg Carlen, Markus Hochstrasser, Oskar Emmenegger, Hermann von Fischer, Editor: Dr. Max Banholzer. Derendingen 1980.
- Fabian Scherrer: Shining days - forgotten everyday life at Waldegg Castle 1890–1990 . Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2010.
- Swiss Association of Engineers and Architects (Ed.): The community center in Switzerland - Canton Solothurn. Volume XXI. Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich 1929.
- Hanspeter Spycher: Garden archaeological research at Waldegg Castle . In: Die Gartenkunst 7 (1/1995), pp. 120-133.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Oswald Schmid: The Baron von Besenval (1721-1791) . Leemann, Zurich 1913, p. 11 (Diss. Phil. University of Basel).
Coordinates: 47 ° 13 '24.2 " N , 7 ° 32' 55.3" E ; CH1903: six hundred and eight thousand three hundred and thirty-seven / 230280
