Gerzensee

Geschichte

Gerzensee is a municipality in the Bern-Mittelland administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland.The town is named after its lake: Gerzensee.HistoryGerzensee is first mentioned in 1228 as Gercentse.The oldest trace of a settlement in the area comes from scattered neolithic artifacts found around the municipality. La Tène and Roman era artifacts indicate that the area remained settled. By the Middle Ages the Freiherr von Kramburg had built his Festi Castle above the village and ruled over part of the valley. After about 1300 the Kramburg lands were acquired by another noble. Over the following centuries, the land was traded and sold multiple times. At the end of the 17th century Gerzensee was divided in half and each half was sold to a different noble family.The Festi Castle or Old Castle was damaged in a fire in 1518. Jakob von Wattenwyl had the old building rebuilt in a late-Gothic style under the direction of the master builder Balthasar Ambühl. The Old Castle passed through several owners until the Stuker family bought it in 1947.In 1700 Samuel Morlot decided to build a country manor house, known as the New Castle, on the one-third of the estate that he owned. In 1755 Franz Emanuel Anton von Graffenried bought the scattered pieces of the estate and combined the manor house, village, lake and other farm land back into a single estate. The 1798 French invasion and creation of the Helvetic Republic eliminated the medieval court rights and other powers of the powerful landowners. In 1813 the von Graffenrieds sold the manor house and lake to the von Erlach family. They, in turn sold it to the Lindemann and Losinger families in 1918. In 1980 the Swiss National Bank acquired the New Castle and turned it into a research center.