Waldegg Castle
Waldegg Castle, or Schloss Waldegg, is a castle near Solothurn, in the municipality of Feldbrunnen-St. Niklaus of the Canton of Solothurn in Switzerland. It is a Swiss heritage site of national significance.
History
The Baroque castle was built between 1682 and 1686 as a summer house for the Schultheiss Johann Viktor P. Joseph von Besenval and his wife Maria Margaritha, née von Sury. Over time, the Waldegg Castle, together with the Palais Besenval, developed into one of the main residences of the family von Besenval.House of Besenval: The rise of a family
The family Besenval was originally from Torgnon in the Aosta Valley. They had risen socially in the service of King Louis XIV and had received a title of baron of the Holy Roman Empire from Emperor Leopold I in 1695. Furthermore, already in February 1655, Martin von Besenval, Johann Viktor P. Joseph's father, was ennobled by King Louis XIV and raised to the knighthood in 1658 in gratitude for his merit for the French crown. And on 11 August 1726, King Louis XV erected the von Besenval's possession of Brunstatt in the Alsace into a French barony. The climax of the family's ennoblement was the elevation of Martin Louis de Besenval to the rank of a comte by King Charles X on 18 March 1830. The letters of nobility also applied to the descendants. Some members of the family also adopted the French spelling of the family name, de Besenval.However, the Besenvals' loyalty to the French crown was also financially rewarded. The quote from the French ambassador in Solothurn from 1709 is legendary:
The French money was a welcome financial boost for the construction of the Waldegg Castle.
The Besenvals became rich through the salt trade and the mercenary business with France. A mechanism that was common among mercenary patricians soon set in: Because the Besenvals had influence in their own town, they became important for foreign powers – and because they were valued abroad, their power in turn grew in their own town.
Johann Viktor von Besenval
Johann Viktor P. Joseph's son Johann Viktor, Baron von Besenval von Brunstatt, was a diplomat and colonel in the regiment of the Swiss Guards of France. After he inherited the Waldegg Castle in 1713, he had it renovated. Furthermore, he added a theater, commissioned in 1722 and completed in 1736, and a chapel, the Chapel of Saint Michael, commissioned in 1729 and decorated in the current French style, to the castle. He brought numerous works of art back with him from France.Palais Besenval
Johann Viktor von Besenval and his brother Peter Joseph commissioned the construction of the Palais Besenval in Solothurn in 1703.A wedding with royal congratulations
On 18 September 1716, Johann Viktor married Katarzyna Bielińska, daughter of Kazimierz Ludwik Bieliński, a Polish noble, politician and diplomat. She was also the sister of Maria Magdalena Bielińska, div. Gräfin von Dönhoff, who was the Maîtresse-en-titre of King Augustus II the Strong. A marriage warmly welcomed by Philippe II de Bourbon, Duc d'Orléans, who was Régent de France between 1715 and 1723, since Johann Viktor was the French ambassador to Poland at that time.Death in Paris and a funerary monument by Jacques Caffieri
Johann Viktor von Besenval died on 11 March 1736 in his hôtel particulier on the Rue de Varenne in Paris. His funeral took place in the church of Saint-Sulpice, where his grave was also located. His funerary monument in the church showed a bust relief of him made by Jacques Caffieri in 1737. In the course of the French Revolution, the funerary monument of Johann Viktor, as well as those of other representatives of the Ancien Régime, were destroyed. However, an engraving of the funerary monument survives in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.Peter Viktor von Besenval and his heirs
Johann Viktor's son Peter Viktor, Baron von Besenval von Brunstatt, a Swiss military officer in French service, was born at the Waldegg Castle in 1721. When his father died in 1736, he inherited the Waldegg Castle. However, he lived most of his life in France, where he was known as Pierre Victor, Baron de Besenval de Brunstatt, and where, in 1767, he bought the Hôtel Chanac de Pompaodur and made it his residence in Paris. Today the hôtel particulier is known as Hôtel de Besenval. It has housed the Embassy of the Swiss Confederation and the residence of the Swiss ambassador to France since 1938.Peter Viktor rarely stayed in Switzerland anymore. The center of his life was in Paris. Due to his absence, he left the use of the Waldegg Castle to his cousin Johann Viktor Peter Joseph von Besenval and his wife Maria Anna Margrit, née von Roll. Although he wasn't often in Switzerland, Peter Viktor did add an orangery, the Pomeranzen-Hause, to the castle in 1780.
The French Revolution: The beginning of the end of an era
The French Revolution of 1789 was disastrous to the family's influence, business interests and wealth. Although all the family members survived the terror of the French Revolution, their close ties to the French royal family and other high-ranking members of the Ancien Régime made life more and more difficult for them in France.Peter Viktor von Besenval, who was part of the highest circle of power in France, saw the dark clouds looming over the Ancien Régime in the course of 1789. After the Storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, he wanted to escape to Switzerland, to his country estate, the Waldegg Castle, but he was no longer able to do so. On 26 July 1789, he was recognised while fleeing revolutionary troops in Villegruis. He was immediately arrested and sent to prison. In October 1789 he was charged with the crime of lèse-nation. The baron was never to see the Waldegg Castle again. Only with good luck and good friends did he survive the terror of the revolution. He was acquitted on 1 March 1790. Peter Viktor von Besenval died on 2 June 1791 at his residence in Paris, the Hôtel de Besenval.
Death in Paris without a legitimate heir
After the death of Peter Viktor von Besenval in 1791, who was in fact not childless but had no legitimate heir, the Waldegg Castle, which was a Fidéicommis and could therefore only be passed on in the immediate family, went to the firstborn son of his cousin Johann Viktor Peter Joseph, the minor Ours Joseph Augustin von Besenval.It would later fall to Ours Joseph Augustin von Besenval to handle the increasingly precarious financial circumstances of the family von Besenval after the French Revolution, which led to the loss of their once considerable French income. Years later, on 18 October 1830, the precarious financial situation
led to Ours Joseph von Besenval marrying his only daughter and universal heir Marie Louise Emélie to her first cousin Amédée de Besenval. Amédée was the eldest son of Ours Joseph von Besenval's brother Martin Louis de Besenval, first Comte de Besenval, and Anne Caroline, née von Roll.
In order to avoid dispersal of the family heritage, marriages between cousins often occurred within the family von Besenval, but these led to a weakening of the line of descent due to excessive consanguinity. The result was increasing signs of degeneration.
The biological child and heir of the Hôtel de Besenval
Peter Viktor von Besenval's only child was his biological son Joseph-Alexandre Pierre, Vicomte de Ségur. After the death of his father in 1791, he inherited the bare ownership of the Hôtel de Besenval in Paris.The sale of the baron's furniture to the Swiss Confederation
On 19 May 1938, the Swiss Confederation purchased the Hôtel de Besenval in Paris as the country's new legation building. In the same year, the Swiss Government bought from the patrician family von Sury, the then owners of the Waldegg Castle, a sofa and six chairs, covered in beige fabric and embroidered with scenes from the fables of Jean de La Fontaine, except for the sofa, which is covered with a pattern of flowers and birds.According to oral tradition, the sofa and the six chairs once belonged to Peter Viktor von Besenval and were part of the furnishings of the Hôtel de Besenval. It is said that the baron sent these pieces of furniture, along with other pieces of furniture and works of art, to Switzerland shortly before the French Revolution. In a photo from the 1920s, the six chairs are placed in the Salon de Besenval at the Waldegg Castle. Today the furniture ensemble is on display at the Hôtel de Besenval in the Salon de la tapisserie.
The entire furnishings that remained at the Hôtel de Besenval after the baron's death in 1791 were auctioned in Paris on 10 August 1795. Therefore only the pieces that the baron had sent to Switzerland, to the Waldegg Castle, before the French Revolution, or pieces that he left to his family in Solothurn in his will, such as family portraits, remained in the family's possession. However, these were only a few pieces, mostly with a family connection. His son Joseph-Alexandre Pierre, Vicomte de Ségur, also kept some pieces of furniture in memory of his father, as well as his father's portrait, painted by Henri-Pierre Danloux in 1791.
In his will dated 18 May 1804, the Vicomte de Ségur bequeathed the remaining furniture of the Baron de Besenval to his partner and mother of his son, Alexandre Joseph de Ségur, Reine Claude de Mesmes d'Avaux, Comtesse d'Avaux, née Chartraire de Bourbonne, Dame de Bourbonne-les-Bains.
The Federal Council's plans for the field fortifications at the Waldegg Castle
In the 1850s, the Swiss Federal Council, especially Federal Councillor Ulrich Ochsenbein, was seriously concerned about the defense capability of the Solothurn region, because the city set about demolishing its old 18th-century fortifications. This prompted Ulrich Ochsenbein to reprimand the city authorities, which, however, did not impress them at all. The demolition of the old fortifications continued.This in turn prompted Federal Councillor Ulrich Ochsenbein, after consulting General Guillaume Henri Dufour, to demand the restoration of the old fortifications or to build new field fortifications, including in the area of the Waldegg Castle. Accordingly, the corresponding plans were drawn up on behalf of the Federal Council.