Ebenrain Château: A Late-Baroque Country Residence in Switzerland
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Switzerland
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Swiss
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Manor House
On this page9 sections
History
Ebenrain Château is a late-Baroque country residence in Sissach, Switzerland, built between 1774 and 1776 for Martin Bachofen, a wealthy Basel silk-ribbon manufacturer and merchant. Designed by the Basel architect Samuel Werenfels, it began as a modest country retreat but was completed as a luxurious estate. The residence is regarded as the most significant late-Baroque country residence in northwestern Switzerland and is listed as a Swiss cultural property of national significance.
The Bachofen Estate
Bachofen and his family used Ebenrain as a summer residence, although he regularly stayed there beyond the usual country season from May to September. His visits often continued until the end of the hunting season in January or February. After his death in 1814, his widow, Margaretha, sold the estate in 1817 to the Basel merchant Johann Rudolf Ryhiner-Streckeisen.
Ryhiner-Streckeisen died at Ebenrain in 1824 by suicide while facing accusations of bigamy. His widow sold the property in 1836 to the businessman Ludwig Vest of Liestal, who transferred it in 1838 to the Basel art collector Lukas Vischer. Vischer died at Ebenrain in December 1840.
Changing Ownership in the Nineteenth Century
The Vischer family sold Ebenrain in 1849 to the Prussian officer Major Leopold von Orlich. He sold it the following year to Ernst Wilhelm Wilding, Prince Radali of Sicily. Johannes David-Sickeler of Basel acquired the estate in 1857, followed by Charles Philibert Gobat, formerly minister of Tramelan in the Canton of Bern, in 1860.
In March 1872, Gobat sold Ebenrain to Albert Hübner-Allan, a Moscow textile merchant from Mühlhausen who had settled in Alsace. After the Franco-Prussian War transferred Alsace to Germany, Hübner-Allan decided to leave the region and expanded his new estate in Switzerland.
Hübner-Allan’s Expansion
Hübner-Allan enlarged the agricultural operation, extended the park, and added outbuildings under plans by the Parisian landscape architect Édouard André. He also expanded the main building and remodelled its interior in the Second Empire style, a nineteenth-century French style associated with grand and heavily altered residences under Napoleon III. The exterior was painted beige, and most of the additional outbuildings were later dismantled.
Hübner died in 1890. After his widow’s death in 1911, the estate passed to their eldest daughter, Marie Eugénie Catherine, who was married to the French vice admiral and diplomat Charles Philippe Touchard. Touchard died at Ebenrain in 1930. His heirs then sold the property to the Basel merchant Rudolf Staechelin-Finkbeiner.
Restoration and Cantonal Ownership
Staechelin-Finkbeiner displayed his collection of modern French paintings in the residence while living in an outbuilding. He carried out a comprehensive nine-year renovation without making structural changes to the house. In cooperation with the Touchard family, he also helped remove elements of Hübner’s remodelling and restore the château’s Baroque character.
After Staechelin suffered a stroke in 1946, his son Peter Gregor Staechelin offered the estate to the Canton of Basel-Country. The sale was completed in 1951, and the canton has owned the château and estate since then. From that year, the château and park served for art exhibitions, concerts, lectures, and other public functions. The associated farm was separated from the estate and administered as the Ebenrain Agricultural Centre, an agricultural school.
Cantonal restoration first focused on furnishing the interior appropriately. Between 1986 and 1989, the interior and exterior were restored to their Baroque character. The roof-level floor became a large exhibition room, the cellar was enlarged, and the entire building was made accessible to wheelchair users.
Remains
The Château
Ebenrain Château is a former manor house set within a garden estate. Its main building was designed by Samuel Werenfels and constructed between 1774 and 1776 in the late-Baroque style, the later eighteenth-century phase of Baroque architecture associated with elaborate planning, ornament, and formal relationships between buildings and gardens. The building was expanded and internally remodelled after 1872, then returned toward its earlier character during the twentieth-century restoration.
The restoration changed the roof-level floor into a large exhibition room and enlarged the cellar. The exterior walls, which had been painted beige under Hübner-Allan, were returned to blue-gray. These interventions formed part of the 1986 to 1989 work that restored the building’s Baroque appearance and made it fully accessible to wheelchair users.
The Formal Gardens and Avenue
Niklaus Sprüngli, a Bernese architect, designed the original late-Baroque gardens north and south of the residence. Before 1805, the southern garden was transformed into an English landscape garden, an intentionally informal style using lawns, curving paths, grouped trees, and scenery resembling a natural landscape. The northern garden underwent a similar conversion between 1817 and 1821.
Parallel rows of linden trees form an avenue along the central axis of the drive to the house. This avenue has remained essentially unchanged. After 1872, Édouard André enlarged the park and redesigned its surroundings as part of Hübner-Allan’s expansion of the estate.
Agricultural Estate
The estate included an agricultural operation that Hübner-Allan enlarged in the late nineteenth century. After the Canton of Basel-Country acquired Ebenrain, the farm was separated from the château grounds and administered as the Ebenrain Agricultural Centre, an agricultural school.
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