Tschüpru Castle (St. Silvester)

The spelling of Tschüprü varies: Chüpro, Chipron, Tscheprun, Tschupru, Tschouprü... The Fribourg faculty of French language certainly discussed this strange name for the first time in a book by Mgr Eugène Dévaud – who was a professor at the University of Fribourg and former director of the Hauterive school - titled "Pedagogy of the Higher Court", University Bookstore, 1935. The pedagogue Dévaud, who insisted on the necessity of a primary school rooted in a local environment – the starting point of an education that should open children to the world - claimed that the little Fribourgers belonged to precise places: Auboranges, Ferpicloz, Tschouprü, l'Intyamon...

Tschüprü is a small village in the municipality of St. Silvestre. There, one enjoys a magnificent panorama. Besides agricultural buildings in a well-kept garden, one can admire the excellently preserved castle.

In a competition in 1854, a legend concerning the beginning of Tchüprü Castle is reported. In ancient times, an unknown knight came from far away, sitting on a tired warhorse. He was of noble stature and of a known lineage. He looked around and built a castle on the banks of the Aergera (Perhaps the ruin of the old Tinterin Castle?) His children scattered in the area, and they built three castles: Tscherlun, Tscheprun (Tchüprü) and Tscherlan; all three in the territory of St. Silvestre.

The current Tchüprü Castle probably replaced a much older manor house in 1770. In Tscherlan, there is no castle left. The one in Tscherlun, uninhabited for several centuries, served as a dwelling for the farmer, as can be read in the 1854 competition. The places of Tscherlun and Tscherlan remained. Tscherlun became Tscherlu. Under "Pictures", on the website www.stsilvester.ch, Tschüprü Castle and the Tscherlu farm are particularly presented.

The maps contained in the Tchüprü file in the State Archives of Fribourg provide various information about the successive owners of Tschüprü. At the beginning, one finds the Count of Tierstein, who in the 15th century gave large plots of land to Fribourg and also to the Abbey of Hauterive and the Hospital of Fribourg. Some key dates:

• 1770 Construction of the current castle
• 1778 Wife of Colonel Angélique Laurence Uffleger, born Montenach, receives the territory of Tchüprü in division.
• 1824 Redemptorists – who occupied La Valsainte since 1818 - retreat to Tchüprü. They are also called Liguorians, as their founder was St Alphonse of Liguori
• 1825 Francois Maillard, from Hennens in Tschouperon (Tchüprü), sells the castle with the orchard, the oven and the press to the Congregation St-Rédempteur (Redemptorists or Liguorians).
• 1839 Tobie-Nicolas Fivaz, Provost of St. Nicolas, buys Tchüprü from the Liguorians.
• 1897 The municipality of St. Silvestre establishes its primary school in Tchüprü Castle; the municipality buys it in 1906.
• 1959 The castle is the property of the Bernese Massara family
• 1982 The Solothurn Baumgartner family is the owner
• 2000 The Zug Brandenberg family is the owner.

The Fribourg Etennes News of 1924 mentions that the French writer Etienne de Senancour lived for a certain time in Tschüprü Castle during the French Revolution. The famous author of Obermann married Marie-Françoise Daguet on September 13, 1790. The young spouses were temporarily accommodated near Agy near Fribourg by the Spiesser family. Their daughter, Eulalie, born in 1791, and their son Florian-Julien, born in 1793, were cared for by a wet nurse in St. Silvestre. An anecdote: When her father died in 1846, Eulalie returned to Switzerland to see her wet nurse again. The old peasant woman from St. Silvester walked to Fribourg. It was moving, assured a witness to the scene: the grand lady from Paris with frills and lace threw herself into the arms of old Catherine and tried to remember the words of a language she had forgotten for forty years.