Aegerten Castle Ruins: A Medieval Hill Castle in Switzerland
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 3.3
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Switzerland
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page5 sections
History
Aegerten Castle Ruins are the remains of a thirteenth-century medieval hill castle in Switzerland, built on the Gurten near Bern by the Egerdon family. The castle stood within the family’s sphere of influence as the Egerdons became one of Bern’s leading lineages between about 1250 and 1320.
The Egerdon family and the castle
The Knights of Egerdon, whose name also appears in the forms Egerten and Aegerten, were first recorded in 1214 as ministerials of the Counts of Neuchâtel. Ministerials were members of the medieval service nobility who held property and offices while serving a higher lord. Several Egerdon family members later became Schultheissen, the chief magistrates of medieval Swiss towns, and others sat on Bern’s council.
Burkhard II, the son of Burkhard I, appears in the records from 1250. He served as Bern’s Schultheiss from 1255 to 1257. In 1270, he granted the patronage of the church at Krauchthal to the Hospitaller commandery at Münchenbuchsee. The Hospitallers, also called the Order of St John, were a religious and military order that maintained religious houses and estates.
The family’s connections also extended into Bern itself. In 1271, the councillor Heinrich von Egerten acquired a stone estate or manor, known as a Hof, on Bern’s Herren-von-Egerten-Gasse. The street later became known in its shortened form as Herrengasse. In 1276 and 1277, Ulrich and Peter, the sons of the deceased Johannes von Egerdon, transferred properties and imperial fiefs to the Teutonic house at Köniz. An imperial fief was land or a legal right held from the Holy Roman Emperor.
Ulrich von Egerdon served on Bern’s Council of Sixteen in 1294 and became a councillor in 1303. Peter von Egerdon was Bern’s Schultheiss in 1322 and 1323, and joined the council in 1327. These offices placed the family within the political administration of Bern during the period when the Egerdons were most prominent.
Transfer to the Teutonic Order
In 1312, the underage brothers Werner and Peter, sons of the nobleman Burkhard III von Egerdon, sold their inherited castle and its associated estate to Brother Engelhard of the Teutonic Order at Köniz. The property extended from the Gurten and Köniz to the Forst and cost 600 pounds of Bernese currency. The sale included imperial fiefs, church patronage rights, and the legal rights connected with them. Their mother, Elisabeth von Bremgarten, approved the transaction in the presence of witnesses.
The Teutonic Order was a religious-military institution that operated commanderies, local administrative and economic houses such as the one at Köniz. After acquiring Aegerten, the order allowed the castle to fall into disuse, and it was probably no longer inhabited after 1312. In 1356, the order sold the castle to the nun Ita Bernerin to settle its debts. Ita had already named the commanderies of Bern and Köniz as heirs to her wealth in 1346. She retained the Hof for life in exchange for an annual rent of one chicken.
The family’s later memory
Peter von Egerdon’s death in 1335 marked the end of the family’s male line. The Egerdons had supported the convent of Kappelen im Forst, now known as the Frauenkappelen convent, as well as the Teutonic commandery at Köniz and the Hospitallers at Münchenbuchsee. Agnes von Egerdon served as prioress of the Augustinian nunnery of Kappelen im Forst from 1345 to 1360. An Augustinian nunnery followed the religious rule associated with Saint Augustine, while a prioress was the female superior of the convent.
The family continued to be remembered in Bern through Aegertenstrasse, whose course points toward the castle ruins on the Gurten. A late-medieval Bernese chronicle tradition also tells of a knight of Egerden who was summoned by the King of Bohemia to command a campaign against the King of France. According to the story, the knight lacked the money to equip himself and struck his spurs against the castle wall to show that he had no horse. The Bohemian king supplied him with a horse and money, after which the knight led the campaign successfully. When a soldier mocked his trembling foot, the knight replied that the foot knew he did not intend to flee. G. Studer published a readable version of the episode in 1871.
Remains
Aegerten Castle stood at an elevation of 812 metres on a wooded hilltop of the Gurten, south of the East Signal and near Gurtendörfli in the municipality of Köniz, Canton Bern. The surviving layout is formed by ramparts and castle ditches surrounding a tower mound. The site is a Burgstall, an archaeological castle site without standing buildings. Stone fragments and a small quantity of rubble from the former masonry remain in the ditches. The surviving earthworks define the former fortified position, while a nineteenth-century lithograph by Daniel Lafond depicts the ruins on the Gurten near Bern.
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