Wädenswil

Rudolf III, the last Baron von Wädenswil (born c. 1233), had no male heir. In 1287, he sold his castle Alt-Wädenswil and the entire Herrschaft (lordship) to the Johanniter Commandery at Bubikon (Knights Hospitaller) for 650 Mark Silber (roughly 152.75 kg of silver), retaining the right to live in the castle and an annual pension of 20 marks silver until his death. Rudolf III died around 1300, and the Order ruled the Herrschaft for over 250 years.

Hermann Müller-Thurgau (1850–1927), a Swiss botanist and oenologist, bred the world’s most widely planted new grape variety — a Riesling x Madeleine Royale cross formally named Müller-Thurgau in 1913. In 1891, 150 plants were shipped to Wädenswil where trials continued. Müller-Thurgau served as director of the Experimental Station for Fruit, Wine and Horticulture in Wädenswil from 1891 to 1924. The variety he created is now cultivated on over 22,000 hectares worldwide.

In 1763, the community of Wädenswil commissioned Hans Ulrich Grubenmann (1709–1783), the famous master carpenter from Teufen in Appenzell, to design a new Reformed Church. Completed between 1764 and 1767, his creation is considered his masterwork: a late-Baroque cross church spanning 36 metres in length and 20 metres in width with a roof supported by no interior columns. According to legend, Grubenmann convinced the sceptical church council by building a wooden scale model and standing on it to demonstrate the load-bearing capacity.

During the Stäfner Handel of 1794–1795, communities along Lake Zurich demanded legal equality with the city of Zurich, inspired by the French Revolution. In Zurich’s suppression, over sixty people received fines. On 5 February 1798, Zurich finally proclaimed legal equality between city and countryside. Wädenswil erected a liberty tree at the Eidmatt meadow during Carnival 1798, pointedly at the same spot where rural representatives had suffered humiliation in 1646.

Wädenswil was an important centre of Anabaptism from the early 1500s. Elder Hans Landis of Horgerberg refused to recant or emigrate, declaring that the earth was the Lord’s. After multiple imprisonments and escapes, he was beheaded on 30 September 1614 in the Wellenberg tower in Zurich — the last Anabaptist martyr executed in Switzerland. His execution is commemorated in hymn No. 132 of the Ausbund, the oldest hymnbook of the Swiss Brethren, with 46 stanzas.

Gessner AG, founded by August Gessner-Theiler in 1841, became a global silk-weaving company headquartered in Wädenswil. At its peak before World War I, Gessner employed 2,200 workers and exported silk fabrics throughout Europe and to America, with factory branches in Waldshut, Rovereto, Villeurbanne, and Dunfermline, Scotland. Its tie fabrics supplied fashion houses including Dior, Karl Lagerfeld, Versace, and Yves Saint Laurent. Gessner AG closed in 2012 as the last silk-weaving operation in Canton Zurich.

Paul Wild (1925–2014) was born in Wädenswil. He studied mathematics and physics at ETH Zurich (1944–1950) and worked with Fritz Zwicky at Caltech. As astronomer and director of the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern, he discovered 94 asteroids (including near-Earth objects Sisyphus, Beltrovata, and Don Quixote), multiple comets, and numerous supernovae during his career at the Zimmerwald Observatory near Bern.

Wädenswil-Vorder Au is one of the 111 serial sites of the UNESCO World Heritage Site ‘Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps’, inscribed in 2011. Because Lake Zurich has risen over millennia, the original wooden pilings now lie 4 to 7 metres below the water surface. The site has yielded special pottery from the transitional period between the Pfyn and Horgen cultures (late Neolithic, c. 3900–2800 BC).