Greifensee Castle: A Medieval Lordly Residence and Zurich Bailiff’s Seat in Switzerland
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
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- Country
- Switzerland
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire, Swiss
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page16 sections
History
Greifensee Castle is a medieval castle in Switzerland, beside Lake Greifensee in the municipality of Greifensee. Built for the Counts of Rapperswil around 1250, it secured their northern possessions and became the centre of a castle, town, and lordship whose histories remained closely connected until the beginning of the Helvetic Republic, the French-backed centralized state established in Switzerland in 1798.
Rapperswil origins
A defensive tower may have stood here as early as the twelfth century, probably beside a small settlement. The castle itself emerged around 1250, when the House of Rapperswil, a medieval comital dynasty based around Rapperswil on Lake Zurich, sought to strengthen control of its northern territory. The new stronghold probably housed Rapperswil ministeriales, service nobles who performed military, administrative, or court duties for a ruler. Noble knights associated with Greifensee appear in 1260, while other records refer to Rudolf of Nänikon in 1232 and Dietrich of Nänikon in 1254.
Count Ulrich of Rapperswil had earlier established Greifenberg Castle and adopted its name in 1229. Greifensee was probably built later as part of the same territorial effort. The place was first mentioned in a document dated 29 April 1260, when two noble knights witnessed the settlement of a dispute. Another record places the first documentary reference to the castle in 1261. From this period, Greifensee referred to the castle, the town, and the lake. Around 1300, the lake could still be called Glattsee, after its outflow.
Landenberg lordship
On 7 January 1300, Elisabeth, Countess of Rapperswil and wife of Count Rudolf of Habsburg-Laufenburg, pledged Greifensee to the knight Hermann II of Landenberg. The agreement covered the castle, town, and lake, together with farms, fields, meadows, forests, dependent inhabitants, lower and middle judicial rights, and the right to appoint the priest of Uster. Hermann II thereafter used the name Landenberg-Greifensee. He rose in Habsburg service, becoming secretary and marshal to King Albert I, and died in Bohemia in 1306 as a loyal supporter of Habsburg Austria.
His son Hermann IV, known as the younger marshal, enlarged the town with a defensive belt. Greifensee nevertheless remained economically weak because it lacked market rights and had poor connections to transport routes. Financial pressure eventually led the Landenberg family to sell the castle and lordship in 1369 to Counts Friedrich, Donat, and Diethelm of Toggenburg for 7,219 Rhenish guilders.
Zurich rule and the 1444 siege
In 1402, Friedrich VII, the last Count of Toggenburg, pledged Greifensee to the city of Zurich for 6,000 guilders. Zurich acquired the lordship permanently in 1419, making Greifensee the city’s first rural bailiwick. A land bailiff was an official who administered a territorial lordship for a higher authority. Heinrich Biberli had already served as bailiff from 1403.
The castle and town were attacked during the Old Zurich War, a fifteenth-century conflict involving Zurich, the Swiss Confederates, and their allies. The siege began in May 1444. Women, children, and older people were evacuated to Zurich before 1 May, while further refugees were sent to Uster in mid-May. The roughly seventy-man Zurich garrison, composed mainly of farmers from the surrounding district and commanded by Captain Wildhans of Breitenlandenberg, burned the town for tactical reasons and withdrew into the castle after twelve days of siege.
After another two weeks and heavy losses among the attackers, the defenders capitulated on 27 May. Around 25 May, undermining had probably brought down parts of the southern and western facades, making continued defence impossible. On 28 May, probably sixty-two surviving defenders were beheaded at the Blutmatte in Nänikon under the leadership of Schwyz Landammann Ital Reding the Elder. Remembered as the Greifensee Massacre, the killing was considered exceptionally harsh and unjust even by the standards of the period. Before leaving on 1 June, the attackers plundered the castle and probably partly demolished the small outer bailey, ring wall, and town wall.
Rebuilding and the bailiffs
After the destruction, Greifensee served as a stone quarry for seventy-six years. The material was reused for several purposes, including the later chapel erected at the Blutmatte in memory of the massacre. In 1520, Zurich’s council ordered the ruined castle to be rebuilt as a comparatively modest residence. The Zurich chronicler and former Greifensee bailiff Gerold Edlibach played an important part in the project. The outer bailey and town wall were not reconstructed, and the bailiffs and their staff lived in the parish house until the castle was occupied around 1530.
Greifensee Castle remained the residence of a Zurich bailiff until the French invasion of the Old Swiss Confederacy in 1798 and the establishment of the Helvetic Republic. Salomon Landolt, the best-known of the Zurich bailiffs and the model for Gottfried Keller’s novella The Bailiff of Greifensee, lived at the castle from 1781 to 1786.
Administrative and private residence
From 1803 to 1814, the castle was the administrative seat of the district governor, and a small prison was built on its lakeside side. From 1814 to 1830 it housed the senior district administration. The constitution of 1831 abolished the senior districts and made Uster the capital of the new Uster District, ending Greifensee’s political importance.
The Canton of Zurich sold the castle in 1833 to Kaspar Schulthess-Escher of Zurich for use as a private residence. It passed to Colonel Heinrich Kunz, owner of a spinning mill in Oetwil, in 1858, was inherited by the Escher-Hotz family in 1861, and belonged to the Spöndlin family from 1881 to 1935. The canton repurchased it in 1935 and rented it to the Bernoulli family until 1991. A careful interior renovation followed in 1993 to 1995. In 1995, the castle was placed under a loan-for-use agreement with the Greifensee Castle Foundation, which uses it for cultural exchange, continuing education, and information. Greifensee Castle is a Swiss heritage site of national significance.
Remains
Greifensee Castle is a preserved lowland castle later adapted into a small residence. It stands on a Molasse outcrop about three metres above the surrounding ground near Lake Greifensee. Molasse is sedimentary rock formed from erosion of rising mountain ranges. The original complex placed a fortified residential building, or palas, on the rock, while a ring wall, a moat about four metres wide, and an outer bailey protected the remaining sides. The current external form and ground plan remain largely those of the thirteenth-century castle.
Castle structure and interior
Walls, moat, and roof
The castle measures approximately 14.8 metres in width, 21.3 metres in length, and 14.5 metres from ground level to the eaves. Its original foundations reach up to 4.5 metres in thickness. They are built of coarse megalithic masonry, using rounded stones and glacial erratics. Sections rebuilt after the 1444 siege can be distinguished by their smooth plaster, which contrasts with the rough medieval masonry.
Before the partial destruction, the building probably had a projecting wooden upper storey and a hipped roof. The rebuilding ordered in 1520 replaced these elements with a gabled roof and stepped gables. The arrangement of the windows, the stepped gable, and the internal division of rooms, apart from the stairwell, also belong mainly to this period. The chapel window probably dates from the same rebuilding. A dry moat later supported a washhouse and other service buildings, while a wooden bridge was installed during the renewal works of 1948 to 1953.
Rooms, well, and surviving furnishings
Each storey has a central corridor about five metres wide, extending from one gable end to the other, with rooms and chambers arranged on both sides. A large double-flue chimney for the room stoves rises along the western corridor wall through all three upper storeys. Most rooms on the upper floors and the stairwell retain mainly Neoclassical features from around 1815.
The ground floor has a painted sequence of the coats of arms of Greifensee’s bailiffs on the south-west wall. In the lakeside basement, a grave contained the skeleton of a young man who died during the May 1444 siege. The eight-metre-deep well occupies the rear right-hand part of the basement and provided an internal water supply. Records from 1544 mention repeated repairs or renewals to the coats of arms, well, access bridge, stoves, wood panelling, and clock.
The first upper storey contains the lakeside bailiff’s room, whose massive window column belongs to the 1520 rebuilding. Its late Gothic wall panelling, beamed ceiling, and stove were installed in 1917. The adjoining dining room has a vine-patterned ceiling probably painted in the late seventeenth century, together with cupboards added later. The partly original kitchen includes a tunnel through the approximately four-metre-thick masonry that served as a storeroom.
On the second upper storey, a stove made by H. Michel in 1818 stands near the treasurer’s room, which has an alcove dating from the same year. The first lakeside chamber on the third upper storey contains a stove made by Heinrich Bleuler in 1776. Its decoration includes views of the castle and landscapes in the Rococo manner. A rear hall has historically styled paintings from 1917.
Restoration and later alterations
Most interior furnishings were lost when the castle was looted at the end of the bailiff period in 1798. A Neo-Gothic portico added in 1862 was removed during the exterior renovation of 1948 to 1953. That work restored the moat to its present form and aimed to recover the appearance created in 1520. Later stylistic additions were removed, the projecting lean-to roofs were returned to an earlier position, and the high entrance received a pointed arch. The cantonal coat of arms, Heinrich Zeiner’s Zurich-Reich dated 1535 to 1536, and the sundial were renewed.
Chapels and associated buildings
Gallus Chapel
The Gallus Chapel is incorporated into the former town wall and retains much of its original fabric from around 1330 to 1340. Hermann IV of Landenberg founded it for the salvation of himself and his wife. Its position preserves a direct architectural connection with the town’s earlier defensive enclosure.
Saint Catherine Chapel
A small chapel dedicated to Saint Catherine occupies part of the castle. It faces the town on the second upper storey and has a Gothic window set within a tunnel-like opening through the thick outer wall. The chapel’s paintings date from the early seventeenth century.
Landenberghaus and parish house
The Landenberghaus stands about ten metres from the castle. It probably dates in part from the foundation period around 1250 and may have served as a residence or hall building for the castle lords. It is a rare Romanesque secular building in Canton Zurich. The adjoining parish house may also preserve a core from the town’s foundation period. Its lakeside facade formed part of the ring wall that was destroyed in 1444.
Former prison
A small prison was built at ground-floor level on the lakeside side of the castle when it served as the district governor’s administrative seat from 1803 to 1814. Its construction reflects the building’s later administrative use within the surviving medieval complex.
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