The Gonzenbach-Escher family

A stroll round a cemetery reading the inscriptions on the gravestones can provide much interesting historical information about a place. This is very much the case with the graves in Risch cemetery, too.

The neo-Gothic ones in the photograph, complete with families’ coats-of-arms, lie slightly apart from all the rest and indicate the final resting place of members of the Gonzenbach-Escher family, who once lived at the castle in nearby Buonas.

It was Karl von Gonzenbach (1841-1905), an engineer from Bern, who married Maria Olga Escher, (1844-1891), the granddaughter of Hans Caspar Escher, the co-founder of the Escher-Wyss AG machine factory which operated worldwide. It was through his marriage that von Gonzenbach himself became an industrialist and amassed a great fortune, so great in fact that he was able to buy Schloss Buonas and adjoining properties from Count Mieczyslaw Walerian von Komar. Without delay, von Gonzenbach set about building “a new castle Buonas”, in Tudor-style, unique in Switzerland (but demolished, alas, in 1970), and landscaping the grounds in English style.

Both Karl von Gonzenbach and his wife enjoyed very much living in Risch, with him acquiring Swiss citizenship and even becoming a member of the cantonal parliament. However, tension arose between him and the local council as he felt he was paying too much tax and he subsequently went on to isolate himself both politically and socially. Nevertheless, he stayed there, paying almost as much tax as all the other citizens put together.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century von Gonzenbach sold the castle to his daughter, Vera (1873-1918), who lived in Potsdam. She went on to marry Baron Ewald von Kleist (1868-1938) at Schloss Buonas itself in 1896. After von Gonzenbach died, the baronial couple with their two daughters spent several months at the castle each year. When Vera died in1918, the baron sold the castle and left.

Apart from him, all the members of the Gonzenbach-Escher clan are buried in the family grave, including granddaughter Countess Maria Olga von Pourtalès.