New Castle (Belp)

The widow of Wattenwyl left the small castle, built in the style of Louis XV, to her son Johann Gabriel von Wattenwyl around 1786. He was married to a daughter of the Lord of Kehrsatz. One of his sisters was married to the later Welschseckelmeister Karl von Gingins, Lord of La Sarraz, who, as one of the richest men during the upheaval of 1798, had to pay the highest war contributions.

At the end of 1811, the wealthy Ludwig Zeerleder, who was married to Johann Gabriel's niece, bought the small castle. His ancestor Hans, a coppersmith from Erfurt, was naturalized in Bern in 1542. The new lord of Belp Castle had acquired the Erlacherhof in 1808 from the bankruptcy of his debtor Abraham Rudolf Heggi, formerly lord of Muri Castle. The Erlacherhof was half-owned by David Rudolf Bay. Together with Bay's widow, Ludwig Zeerleder, who had since acquired Amsoldingen Castle, then sold the Erlacherhof to the city of Bern in 1821 for 76,600 francs.

In 1815, Councillor Zeerleder, as Bern's envoy on behalf of Schultheiss Niklaus Friedrich von Mülinen, participated in the Congress of Vienna. There, he emphasized, among other things, that a powerful Canton of Bern offered the best guarantee for peace in the country and its independence. Furthermore, the bonds worth over 200,000 pounds held in the Bank of England had to be returned to Bern and Zurich. Both requests were granted by the great powers, the first by the incorporation of the Diocese of Basel into the Canton of Bern, despite Laharpe's vehement objections. Austria renounced the Fricktal, Geneva, Valais, and Neuchâtel became fully entitled cantons of the Confederation, whose perpetual neutrality and independence were guaranteed.

The esteemed Councillor Ludwig Zeerleder, who had to walk on crutches due to a fall, was arrested in 1836 on an arbitrary charge of embezzlement of state funds and only acquitted two years later. He died in 1840 and did not live to see his acquittal by the High Court.

In the division of Ludwig's widow's estate, Belp Castle fell jointly to her three sons and her daughter, from whom Judge Friedrich Victor Albrecht Theophil von Zeerleder took it over in 1843. From his widow's estate, her son Alfred Eduard Friedrich, the forester of the Egghölzli estate, sold the Belp property to his brother and co-heir Wilhelm Karl Albrecht von Zeerleder. After his death, his wife Emilie Cécile Bertha von Sinner of the Beitenwil estate handed Belp Castle over to her sons Theodor Rudolf Friedrich and Albrecht v. Zeerleder. They sold it in 1916 to master butcher Gottlieb Friedrich Pulver, whose son Max Walter received it eight years later as an early inheritance and left it in 1933 to his widow with their three children Max Werner, Fritz Bernhard Pulver, and Käthy Pulver. Max Walter's widow married a second time in 1941 to the merchant Hermann Rudolf Stuber, whereby her share of the inheritance, after her death in 1959, also fell to her still minor sons Rolf Hermann and Peter Rudolf Stuber.

In 1972, Max Werner Pulver died and left his share of the charming Belp Castle jointly to his widow and his still underage daughters Katharina Elisabeth and Verena Barbara Pulver. Together with their siblings Fritz Bernhard and Käthy Lüthi-Pulver and the Stuber sons, they form today the community of owners of the new Belp Castle. With exemplary foresight and much love, they have faithfully preserved the heritage entrusted to them and have not allowed themselves to be tempted by short-term speculation. Thus, they have also successfully resisted overbuilding and the senseless construction project of a bypass road right through their large Kummenacker, which belongs to the castle estate. Hats off to such a mindset!

Forty years ago, Rolf Bürgi moved into Belp Castle as a tenant, and since his death (1967), his wife Käthi Elisabeth Bürgi lives here, whose remarkable collection of Paul Klee paintings adorns the comfortable rooms.