Institutions Witzwil

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Witzwil 1895

The institutions Witzwil , also casually Witz for short , are an action center in the area of ​​the municipalities of Erlach , Gampelen and Ins in the canton of Bern and the municipality of Mont-Vully in the canton of Friborg , Switzerland . They consist of a penal institution for men, the Lindenhof, Eschenhof and Nusshof labor education institutions , several settlements for employees and a large farm.

In 1860 the notary Friedrich Emanuel Witz from Erlach (the domain is named after him ) bought land in the western Grosse Moos in order to redevelop it in the wake of the correction of the Jura waters , and later sold it to the Agricultural Society Witzwil (also Simple Society Grosses Moos ), which was founded in 1870 , in which, among others, the politician Jakob Stämpfli was involved with all his fortune. The company's original goal was to give released convicts a new home. In 1879, however, it went bankrupt , whereupon the canton of Bern acquired the domain from the bankruptcy estate and in 1894 built the first barracks for a hundred prisoners. The institution, which was separated from St. Johannsen in 1895 , was headed from then until 1937 by Otto Kellerhals and from 1937 to 1963 by his son Hans Kellerhals. The "Witzwillied", which was sung by the inmates at the time, gives an insight into life in the institution.

Friedrich Glauser spent a year in Witzwil as an “administrative inmate” from 1925 to 1926 , during which time he attempted suicide . Shortly after the end of the Second World War , Witzwil reached the highest number of prisoners to date with 600 inmates. A new prison building was built from 1980 to 1985 and a closed residential group was opened in 1995. In 1998 the deportation detention department was opened with 36 places.

The institutions in Witzwil have been part of the Concordat for planning the penal system in north-west and central Switzerland since 1959 . Today Witzwil offers 200 inmate places and employs 118 people. With a total area of ​​825 hectares (including 110 hectares of alpine pastures), the institute is the largest farm in Switzerland with an annual turnover of 17 million francs. The farm includes 20 tractors, 500 cattle, 120 horses, 600 free-range pigs, 100 chickens and 30 colonies of bees; arable, vegetable and sugar beet cultivation as well as livestock farming are operated.

Literature and web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Schweizerisches Idiotikon , Volume XVI, Column 2382, comment on the word article Witz I ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ Emanuel Friedli: Ins (Zealand, Part I). Francke, Bern 1914 (Bärndütsch as a mirror of Bernese folklore, vol. 4) p. 176.
  3. ^ Institutions Witzwil - history
  4. ↑ Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz , Volume XIII, p. 550 f.

Coordinates: 46 ° 59 '17 "  N , 7 ° 3' 33"  E ; CH1903:  571133  /  204181