Swiss Castle Archives

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Under the name of the Swiss Castle Archives , the Association of Castle Friends of both Basel ran a documentation center with materials on the subject of castles . The holdings of the archive, which were completed in the mid-1990s, were transferred to the Basel-Landschaft State Archives as a deposit . The castle history library is located in the Baselland Cantonal Library .

Goals and direction

The Swiss Castle Archive is equipped with a plan archive, newspaper article documentation and collections of images, e.g. Partly from the previous possession of well-known castle historians, a documentation center for castle history. Responsibility for all activities of the Swiss Castle Archives was incumbent on the archives commission of the Castle Friends of both Basel.

Stocks

Castle library

By the mid-1990s, over 2,800 books on castle history had been collected. They have been housed in the Baselland Cantonal Library in Liestal since 1999 .

Dietschi-Kunz collection

Eugen Dietschi-Kunz's collecting activities focused primarily on castle lore and castle movement in Switzerland, but the Middle Ages in general, folklore and regional history are also taken into account. His collection is contained in 34 archive boxes and consists of articles from magazines, newspapers and other sources. The documents cover a period from 1890 to 1951.

Baer Collection

Casimir Hermann Baer (November 2, 1870 to December 29, 1942) trained as an architect and doctor of art history, signed his many publications in the field of architecture and art history - probably because of the length of the name - mostly with CH Baer. During his travels through southern Germany and Switzerland, he filled six sketchbooks (around 40 pages each) with pictures of castles and palaces, but also sacred and other historically valuable buildings. Overall views are supplemented by detailed drawings of interesting objects on these buildings.

Collection Probst

The father of the Swiss Castle Association, Eugen Probst (December 14, 1873 to August 15, 1970) bequeathed his private collection of over 5000 objects to the Swiss Castle Archives in 1960. Photos, plans, drawings, newspaper and magazine articles represent the main part of the collection, which documents the work of this castle researcher and reconstructor (e.g. Rotberg Castle , Reichenstein ).

Alioth Collection

The estate of the architect, architectural draftsman and painter Max Alioth (August 6, 1883 to September 30, 1968) only exists in distributed form in the Upper Engadine cultural archive in Samedan , the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, the Swiss Castle Association and the Swiss Castle Archive. The latter houses castle plans in the form of heliographies, pencil, red chalk and ink drawings of a number of castles in Switzerland.

Meyer Collection

Since his youth, castles and palaces fascinated Professor Werner Meyer - also affectionately called Burgen-Meyer by his students . The Swiss Castle Archives keep around ninety plans and drawings by Meyers from his early days (1950s) in Switzerland and the neighboring regions of South Baden and Alsace .

Oegger Collection

By Colonel (died 1925) Friedrich Merz-Oegger a Switzerland-wide collection of old castle images, including a brief description of the castles has been gathered. Some of the original drawings come from himself.

Castle models

The following castle models by Alfred Peter, who made them based on drawings by Emanuel Büchel , are in the Swiss Castle Archives :

  • Angenstein Castle , scale 1: 200, condition in 1730, built in 1951
  • Münchenstein Castle , scale 1: 200, condition in 1740, built 1952
  • Pfeffingen Castle , scale 1: 200, condition approx. 1700, built 1949
  • Pratteln Castle , as it was in 1735, built in 1951

history

At the 1943 annual meeting of the Castle Friends of both Basel, the Olten printer Eugen Dietschi-Kunz presented the idea of ​​a Swiss castle archive and offered his own castle documentation as a basis. The castle friends tried in vain to store the donation in the Basel-Stadt State Archives or Basel University Library . The collection was therefore initially housed in the Kleiner Klingental and later in a private apartment.

At the beginning of 1951, the year he died, Eugen Dietschi-Kunz took up the initiative again and called on the castle friends of both Basels to push ahead with the development of the Swiss Castle Archives. The collection of Eugen Dietschi-Kunz was supplemented by materials from other castle historians and by the library of the castle friends. The state property management company was able to rent premises at Stapfelberg 4 in Basel for the storage, development and brokering - with a lot of hard labor .

The collecting activity stopped in the mid-1990s. Demand decreased in the age of the Internet, and the inventory had grown so much that professional solutions had to be found. Following a decision by the general meeting of the Castle Friends, the archive was handed over as a deposit to the State Archives of the Canton of Basel-Landschaft in Liestal at the end of 2011 . This guarantees long-term, appropriate storage and easy use for the general public.

Development

Since the foundation of the Swiss Castle Archives, the media have been filed in simple systematics according to type of material. In the first years of the 21st century, the then Vice President Christoph Matt made digital inventories of the most important parts of the collection. These directories are now available online. In the longer term, it is planned to link them with thumbnails.

use

  • The castle history library is accessed via the electronic catalog of the Baselland Cantonal Library.
  • The archive is used in the State Archive in Liestal under PA Privatarchive , signature PA 6371.

literature

  • Christoph Philipp Matt: The archive at a glance . In: From the Swiss Castle Archives. 75 years of friends of castles in Basel . Castle friends of both Basel, Basel 2006, ISBN 3-03300627-2 ( online [accessed May 30, 2019]).
  • Emil A. Erdin: The Swiss Castle Archives in Basel . In: News from the Swiss Castle Association . Vol. 54 (1981/82), 1981, pp. 13-15 .
  • Emil A. Erdin: 25 years of the Swiss Castle Archives in Basel . In: Jura leaves . Vol. 39, no. 11 , 1977, pp. 177-183 .
  • Schweizerisches Burgenarchiv [Basel] (Ed.): Directory of books and archive materials . Castle friends of both Basel, Basel 1962.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Swiss Castle Archives . Castle friends of both Basel. Retrieved May 30, 2019.