ANCESTORS – DESCENDANTS
PEOPLE IN AND AROUND WERDENBERG CASTLE
Shown on this page are portraits of some people who have returned to the Werdenberg region, even if only for a short visit. In the past their ancestors lived in the area, either just for a few years as administrative officials from Glarus, or for many generations as farmers who finally had to emigrate, mostly to escape poverty.
Come and visit the castle yourselves and tell us your family history!
HEINZ FLÜCK, DESCENDANT OF TWO GLARUS ADMINISTRATORS
Heinz Flück (1947), who now lives in Zollikofen near Bern, is a 13th generation descendant of no fewer than two administrators of Werdenberg. This came about because of his great-grandmother Anna Luchsinger (1866–1960), who Flück still remembers very well. Her father was of course a Luchsinger, while her mother was a Blumer – both of them came from the village of Engi in Glarus. And both families, ten generations earlier, had supplied one administrator for Werdenberg: Wolfgang Blumer (1540–1612) in 1578 and David Luchsinger (1540 Engi) in 1605.
The Luchsingers moved from Engi to Toggenburg in 1879. Much later, Heinz’s mother married a Flück from Brienz. On his 75th birthday Heinz Flück promised his grandchildren that he would trace his ancestry. The retired electrical engineer paid his third visit to the castle on 11 August 2022 and brought his family tree with him.
FRIDOLIN, NEIL AND OSKAR SIGRIST, DESCENDANTS OF FRITZ AND CLARA SIGRIST-HILTY
In 1915, shortly after Clara Hilty, a cousin of the castle’s final occupant Frida Hilty, married the son of Kaspar Rudolf and Katharina Sigrist-Weber of Glarus, the newly weds left the palatial former brewer’s villa above the castle and moved to the surroundings of Aleppo in present-day Syria. There Clara’s husband Fridolin (Fritz) was employed in the construction of the Baghdad–Istanbul railway. Clara Sigrist-Hilty witnessed the Armenian genocide and left a journal which has recently been edited and published as Man treibt sie in die Wüste (“They are driven into the desert”). The couple’s first son Karl Fritz was born in Syria and triplets followed – Kaspar, Hans and Rudolf – in 1918 when the family was back in Switzerland.
Hans Sigrist’s son, Fridolin (Frie), emigrated to Canada in 1977, bought farmland and started a family. Now he is already a grandfather and in spring 2017 he paid a repeat visit to the castle with his wife, his son with spouse and his grandson.
ALFRED JENNY, DESCENDANT OF THE GLARUS ADMINISTRATOR HEINRICH JENNY
Alfred Jenny from Thun is a descendant of Heinrich Jenny from Ennenda, Glarus, who was the administrator of Werdenberg from 1548 bis 1551. Chief magistrate and councillor Heinrich Jenny, who played an important role in the introduction of the Reformation in Glarus in 1525, left Bern in the 15thcentury and moved to Glarus.
In the 20th century Alfred Jenny’s parents moved to the canton of Bern, where their son still lives. The retired businessman and software developer and his wife Elisabeth have come to Werdenberg several times. He is pictured here at the Schlossmediale in June 2017.
OLIVER BERGGÖTZ, DESCENDANT OF THOMAS BURGÄZZI
A room in the Schlangenhaus Museum explores the theme of migration. There are various brief accounts of the lives of both immigrants and emigrants. For instance, we read of Thomas Burgäzzi, who around 1650 at the age of 53, left Sevelen mountain with his wife and children and their belongings. He found work near Stuttgart as a carpenter.
A direct descendant of Thomas Burgäzzi is Oliver Berggötz, librarian for Classical Philology and Ancient Studies at the Berlin State Library (Staatsbibliothek). He visited the Schlangenhaus in summer 2016 as part of his research into the origins of his ancestors.
