Wenkenhof
Wenkenhof or Wenken for short is the name of two villas located on the eastern outskirts of Riehen near Basel , the "old" and the "new" Wenken, including the large surrounding parks ( Wenkenpark ).
history
Old Wenkenhof
The old Wenkenhof was built as a Dinghof in the early Middle Ages on a slope above the floodplain of the river Wiese . It is first documented as "Wahinhofen" in 751, i.e. at the time of Charlemagne , over 300 years before the town of Riehen was first mentioned. In 1113, Riehen and the court ("Wahinkofen") are mentioned in a donation from the noble Walcho von Waldeck to the St. Blasien monastery . After Riehen belonged to the city of Basel from 1522, the farm became the private property of Johann Jacob Beck (1563–1639) and became an estate . Structural changes are documented after 1600. From the time of his son-in-law, Onophrion Merian (1593–1665), who took over the estate in 1639, a paneled room has been preserved.
In 1657 the Alte Wenkenhof became the property of Balthasar Graf (* 1605), who was banished to a galley as punishment for adultery in 1658 . Several changes of ownership followed, until Christoph Burckhardt-Merian acquired the estate in 1714 and enlarged the area.
Johann Jakob Merian had the utility building of the old Wenken rebuilt and a small wood that still exists today was built on Bettingerstrasse. In the late 18th century, the tenant house (it was at times an independent farm) and other economic buildings were built.
Historian and state archivist Rudolf Wackernagel (1855–1925) lived in Alten Wenken from 1903 until his death . He also researched the history of the Wenkenhof. After the death of Wackernagel's wife in 1931, Clavel bought the Alte Wenken and was able to expand the park to the east.
In 1932, the Clavel couple donated the Alten Wenkenhof to the municipality of Basel, which renovated it and the tenant house in 1934 and placed it as a listed building .
New Wenkenhof
In 1735 Johannes Zäslin (1697–1752) acquired the area upstream of the Wenkenhof . He had a one-storey baroque villa (the New Wenken) built there in 1736, probably by the Karlsruhe master builder Johann Carl Hemeling († 1737), as a summer residence based on the models of French summer houses (above all the “ Trianon de Porcelaine ” in the palace gardens of Versailles ) which belonged to a large, representative baroque garden . The park, whose creator is unknown, was later redesigned several times. In 1801 Jakob Bischof-Merian took over the Wenkenhof. He commissioned the Basel architect Achilles Huber (1776-1860) to transform the baroque garden into an English-style complex. After Zäslin's death, part of the Wenkengut remained in the possession of the Merian, Bischoff and Burckhardt families, who were related to him until 1931.
Since the Neue Wenken was only intended for events, it initially did not have its own kitchen or accommodation. It was not until 1860 that it was built in the Empire style according to plans by the architect Johann Jakob Stehlin the Elder. J. (1826–1894) increased and converted into a fully functional house. In 1870 Martin Burckhardt-Burckhardt inherited the New Wenken and the surrounding parks, it became an independent courtyard, separated from the Old Wenken. The next owner was Eduard Burckhardt .
After Eduard Burckhardt's death in 1916/17 the industrialist Alexander Clavel-Respinger (1881–1973) acquired the Neue Wenken from Eduard Burckhardt's widow. He had the building rebuilt by the Bernese architect Henry Berthold de Fischer (1861–1949) from 1918 to 1921 in neo-baroque style, with the dismantling of Stehlin's additions. At the entrance to the courtyard in 1922 two large deer figures were made of gilded lead - art casting mounted on the pillars of the lattice gate. Clavel then had an extension of the English landscape park built from 1925 to 1930 according to plans by the landscape architect Adolf Vivell (1883–1959) . The Mertens brothers took stock of the facilities on behalf of the Clavels and restored the French-Baroque part of the garden, of which some regular basic structures still existed despite the Anglicisation by Achilles Huber, while maintaining the northeastern Anglicised park area. In 1925 a new riding hall was added. After Clavel had also bought the Alte Wenken in 1931, the park could be expanded to the east. In 1932/33 the pavilion built there as an elevated “box” was converted in the form of a neo-baroque treillage lattice framework, and in 1933 a new entrance gate. Opposite the gate, on the slope on the western side of the street, a viewing terrace with a view of Basel and Alsace was built up to 1957, as well as another landscaped park extension to the west in the 1950s.
In 1954 the Alexander Clavel Foundation was set up, to which the Neue Wenkenhof and its baroque garden were transferred, so that the Neue Wenken has been publicly owned since 1969. The baroque garden has been open to the public on several Sundays a year since 1983. The ground floor of the villa is rented out for social events.
The landscape park is now owned by the municipality of Riehen and is open to the public at all times. The park became a venue for concerts by the renowned “Voices” festival . As of 2004, a garden conservation restoration of the landscape park began with the replanting of several trees (including avenues of lime trees, conifers).
The community of Riehen acquired the riding arena. It has served as an event location since 1980, including for the "Wenkenhof Talks" held annually in June, a multi-part event for experts and a wider audience on current social issues. The event is intended to serve as a platform for discussions and the exchange of ideas. The Wenkenhof Talks 2008 are under the main topic of biodiversity, climate change and future scenarios and form part of the exhibition project "Blossom Time". The community organizes this exhibition together with the ProSpecieRara foundation, which is committed to the care and conservation of the biodiversity of animals and plants. In 2006 an opera festival was held there for the first time.
The old man Wenken
The Alte Wenkenhof is the group of houses that is diagonally across from the villa , the Neue Wenken. This building group consists of a historically grown farm complex, as it has been common for rural estates since the Middle Ages. Its foundations probably go back to the Romanesque period.
The assembly consists of buildings of different styles. The entire complex with the four central buildings arranged around an inner courtyard , whose rectangular floor plan was surrounded by a wall, has been preserved.
The Alte Wenkenhof consists of a main building, which is characterized by a striking stepped gable, which was later replaced by a cripple hip. The simpler former tenant house closes the inner courtyard from the east, while the mighty courtyard barn, built before 1807, is in the south.
Today the whole complex is a listed building .
The New Wenken
Structural data
Lusthaus from 1736:
- Length: 24.75 meters
- Width: 12 meters
- Height: 9.75 meters
New Wenkenhof today:
- Length: 24.75 meters
- Width: 12 meters
- Height: 16.4 meters
The construction phases of the New Wenkenhof
| Construction year | object | Client | architect | Architectural style |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1736 | Pleasure house | Johann Heinrich Zaeslin | Johan Carl Hemeling | French baroque |
| 1860 | Conversion into a residential building | Dr. med. Martin Buckhardt-His | Johann Jakob Stehlin the Younger | Second Empire |
| 1917 | 1. Renovation / restoration | Alexander Clavel | Henry Berthold von Fischer | Baroque / Second Empire |
| 1973 | 2. Renovation | Canton of Basel-Stadt | Suter & Suter Architects | Baroque (reconstruction of the original architectural style) |
Architecture
The client, Johann Heinrich Zaeslin , visited Paris at a young age and was very impressed by the Palace of Versailles . Following the example of the French Baroque, he had a summer house built on the area of the old Wenken in 1736 . The house was a one-story building cube with seven axes, which were designed accordingly wide, while there were only three side axes on each side. The entrance, which is placed in the middle of the house, leads to a double flight of stairs with a typical baroque wrought iron railing. A flat triangular gable closes the central axis above the barred semicircular skylight window. Square lenses frame the corners of the building, the portal and the slightly protruding central risers . The windows are provided with flat arches and unadorned keystones and hardly stand out from the wall surface; the same dimensions are maintained throughout the windows. This typically French baroque structure can also be found on the Ramsteinerhof in Baselstadt, which was built at the same time .
A well-proportioned roof with hatches and a central bell tower covers the lower pavilion . In 1860, Martin Burckhardt-Bischoff had the one-story summer pavilion converted into an independent residential building. As a representative of the Second Empire style, the architect used new materials for the construction of the extension, such as cast iron elements and a lot of glass, so that a loggia apartment was created , without matching the wall and window structure of the ground floor. The change can be seen most clearly on the garden front: the triangular gable was not raised, but replaced by a large windowed attic storey on the flat roof.
After taking over the Wenkenhof in 1917, Alexander Clavel considered the “restoration” of the baroque monument to be one of the first tasks. With the help of an architect from Bern, he had the well-proportioned window and wall structure of the original ground floor adapted so that a seamless transition between the floors was achieved again. One of the most important corrections concerned the central projection to the garden. It again received a gable triangle decorated in relief in place of the parapet end, and the roof was also adjusted to the previous dimensions by increasing it.
The interior design
The French law of symmetry also determines the arrangement of the interiors. The original vestibule in the middle by the entrance is flanked on both sides by two small separate rooms. At that time, the narrow hall at the entrance had no stairs because there was no upper floor at the time of Zaeslin. On the city side, the outermost room is designed as an intimate boudoir . A particularly neat stucco ceiling decorated with gold covers the entire surface of the ceiling ; the ornamentation is closer to the Regency style than to the Baroque. On the garden side are the three large ballrooms, with three French doors in the middle and two windows on each side. These halls are connected to each other by doors that are on a straight line. Delicate stucco decorations adorn the ceilings of the halls. A kitchen and bedrooms were missing in this house. The food was brought across the forecourt, generations of residents had set up living and sleeping in the old building to their liking.
Today's furnishings on the ground floor, which is open for social events, have been supplemented by Clavel by purchasing art objects, mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries. In the so-called summer house, the middle, large garden room, the copies of the portraits of the French kings Louis XIV and Louis XV deserve to be mentioned . , the two Beauvais tapestries , marble chminée with mirror and the water basin from Paris.
In 1973 the inside of the villa was completely renovated for the second time. The client was Dr. Matter, who was responsible for finances, and Mr. Lauber from the cantonal monument preservation department. A kitchen and cloakrooms have now also been built into the ground floor. The goal of the canton was that the villa should be available for concerts and private parties. During the construction work, the entire interior was housed in the equestrian hall, but this meant that there were several break-ins and some smaller, valuable objects were stolen.
The garden
Basically, the Wenkenhof garden can be divided into two areas: the French garden and the new, large Wenkenpark.
The French garden was built in 1736 immediately after the summer house was completed. This garden is to be understood as a continuation of the interior, which is an important feature of the baroque gardens. The strictly geometrical order of the garden, related to the axis, was designed by André Le Nôtre (1613–1700). In the middle there was a fountain , the corners of which were marked by an ancient statue of a god. Below the basin there were two carpet beds before the slightly lower bosket field closes the garden. The upper Broderieparterre, on the other hand, shows these typical baroque textile patterns, which were designed with book discounts .
Around 1805 the landscape architect Achilles Huber redesigned the garden in the "English style" that was very popular at the time. The strictly geometric arrangements have now been replaced by colorful and loose flower beds and the final piece of garden in the north was given a lawn landscape with loosely distributed groups of trees and bushes.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Claver reconstructed the English garden to some extent back to its original state.
The Wenkenpark was a large collection of fruit crops until the early 20th century. Clavel had a large park planted on the vacant property with around 8,000 different shrubs and trees. He also had an open equestrian track , an equestrian hall , a pond and next to it a slatted pavilion built. Today the two lead-cast and gold-painted stags by the Parisian sculptor Plumet, modeled on Jean Goujon (mid-16th century), guard the monumental baroque entrance gate. These stags were replaced by two casts made of aluminum in 2000, in collaboration with the Basel Monument Preservation Office and by the sculptor Josef Ineichen.
literature
- Alexander and Fanny Clavel-Respinger: The book from Wenkenhof. Commission publisher Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1957.
- Gabriele Detterer: Diverse park landscape in front of a former refuge for the senses: the Neue Wenkenhof in Riehen: a prime example of baroque horticulture. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . No. 16, January 20, 2000, p. 63.
- Dominik Heitz: Upscale table culture in the Wenkenhof. In: Yearbook z'Rieche . 2015 ( online ).
- Dominik Heitz: Bloom time in the Wenkenhof. In: Yearbook z'Rieche. 2008 ( online ).
- Hermann Hesse : Wenkenhof. In: Yearbook z'Rieche. 1996 ( online ).
- Silvia Hofmann: The Wenkenhof. In: Yearbook z'Rieche. 1984 ( online ).
- Gerhard Kaufmann: The French Garden of the New Wenken and its statues. In: Yearbook z'Rieche. 1995, pp. 73-81 ( online ).
- Gerhard Kaufmann: Alexander Clavel and the Wenkenhof. In: Yearbook z'Rieche. 2017 ( online ).
- Ernst Murbach (author), Society for Swiss Art History in collaboration with the Alexander Clavel Foundation Riehen (publisher): The Wenkenhof in Riehen BS. (= Swiss Art Guide. Series 46; 458). Society for Swiss Art History, Bern 1989, ISBN 3-85782-458-1 .
- Michael Raith : The owners of the Wenkenhof. In: Yearbook z'Rieche. 1984. ( online )
- Michael Raith: 1250-year Elysium: the "Wenken": the Wenkenhof - first attested in 751. In: Basler Stadtbuch , Vol. 122, Basel 2001, pp. 188–189.
- Michael Raith: 1250 years of Wenkenhof. In: Yearbook z'Rieche. 2001, pp. 102-103.
- Kiki Seiler-Michalitsi: People have lived here for 1250 years at Wenkenhof. In: Yearbook z'Rieche. 2001 ( online ).
- Brigitt Sigel: Trees are monuments: to the avenues in Wenkenhof Riehen. In: Basler Magazin. No. 3, January 21, 1995, pp. 12-13.
- Robert Sigl: Episodes of Wenken. In: Yearbook z'Rieche. 1984. ( online )
- Eva Ruoff: Horticulture in Meilen: the history of the Mertens brothers. In: Heimatbuch Meilen. 39, 1999, pp. 48-62.
- Swiss Association of Engineers and Architects: The Wenken. In: The community center in Switzerland. Volume 22: Canton of Basel-Stadt. Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich 1930.
- Municipal administration of Riehen (ed.): Wenkenhof riding hall: multi-purpose hall of the municipality of Riehen for congresses, banquets, events. Riehen, around 1991.
- Office for garden monument maintenance: maintenance and development planning Wenkenhofpark. Zurich 2003.
See also
- Bäumlihof ("Klein Riehen")
- Burckhardt family
- Merian family
- Sarasin Park
Web links
- Website for the Wenkenhof villa and park , Alexander Clavel Foundation
- Wenkenpark. Riehen Online
- More pictures from the Wenkenpark
- Wenkenhof Talks
Remarks
- ↑ A view of the document that has been preserved and is in the archive of the St. Gallen Monastery , which is the first to testify to a church in Rötteln , is available online here .
- ^ Regest of the Margraves of Baden and Hachberg 1050–1515, published by the Baden Historical Commission, edited by Richard Fester , Innsbruck 1892, Volume 1, document number 35
- ↑ Spelling also Johann Jacob Merian (* 1741, Suizid 1799), came from the so-called "older Merian line", he was married to Gertrud De Bary and a great-nephew of Johannes Zäslin (1697-1752), who in 1736 became the Neue Wenken built (see there). Johann Jakob Merian also owned Gut Klein Riehen (Bäumlihof) at that time . He is not to be confused with Johann Jakob Merian (1792-1837) and Johann Jakob Merian-Merian (1768-1841), the co-founder of Frères Merian .
- ↑ Spelling also Johann Heinrich Zäslin or Zaeslin; married to Elisabeth Hagenbach. He was a wealthy businessman, banker and councilor .
- ↑ The architect and engineer Johann Carl (Charles) Hemeling was for the ruling Margrave Karl III. Wilhelm von Baden-Durlach active. Among other things, he was involved in several expansion and redesign projects at Karlsruhe Palace . a. Draft plans made for the Menagerie (1723) and the Orangerie (1724/25) lineamenta.biblhertz.it . From 1728 he worked for the Margrave's buildings in Basel. Hemeling also created the plans for the Ramsteinerhof on Basel's Rittergasse and for what was probably his last work, the baroque garden hall of the Bäumlihof near Riehen.
- ↑ After studying architecture in Zurich, Strasbourg and with Friedrich Weinbrenner in Karlsruhe, Achilles Huber worked in and around Basel from 1803. Among other things, he is also considered the planner of the early classicist villa in Binningen's St. Margarethenpark, which is regarded as his masterpiece. See Dorothee Huber: Achilles Huber. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . November 17, 2006 , accessed July 2, 2019 .
- ↑ a descendant of the silk dye industrialist Alexander Clavel (1805–1873), who had produced the textile dye fuchsin in Basel from 1859 , from which the Ciba-Geigy / Novartis group later developed through a spin-off of today's Ciba Specialty Chemicals AG .
- ↑ Walter Mertens (1885–1943) and Oskar Mertens (1887–1976), the sons of the famous landscape architect Evariste Mertens , took over the business of their father from 1907 to 1944. In 1944 the company was taken over by Hans Nussbaumer .
Coordinates: 47 ° 34 ′ 30 " N , 7 ° 39 ′ 10" E ; CH1903: 616,113 / 269388