Zunzgen History [the following extracted from various sources and translated from German – Charles Scholer, 2002]	Home
Zunzgen Zunzgen is the lowest of the four villages of the Diegt River valley, easily reached from the district capital of Sissach by pretty walking paths or the provincial road. The nearby extensive resort area between the Frenken, Ergolz, and Diegt valleys is to be especially recommended to the traveler. The Registrar Daniel Bruckner relates in 1757 in his ‘Interesting items from the region of Basel’: "The forested areas found hereabouts consist mostly of the so-called Zunzger Hard, which is a beautiful, large, forest covered with firs." The earlier farm village has become in the last decades a residential settlement with 1600 residents. This development was fostered by good transportation and by several industrial companies, of which the Basler Iron Furniture Factory, founded in 1899 as the first such company in all Switzerland, is to be especially mentioned. Today there are only 5 farming operations left in the village. The agriculturally useful region thus is tending almost exclusively by the 15 individual farms in the region around the village. Historically the village of ‘Zunzkon’ goes back to the year 1323, where it was first mentioned in documents. Village and fort in the unique ‘little book’ were the property of the Lordship of Homburg. Later the ownership went by inheritance to the Counts von Habsburg-Laufenburg. These enfoeffed the nobles von Frick with the village and surrounding region. The Eptingers were the owners of the fiefdom since 1406. In 1461 Basel obtained the bailiwick of Zunzgen, 1464 also the village. The village used to belong to the parish of St. Jakob in Sissach, but had its own chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist, which still stood in 1530. In 1830 the two villages Zunzgen and Tenniken were unified into one church parish. Zunzgen, as the larger community, did not have its own church building. Zunzgen, 1681 G.F. Meyer's settlement plan from 1681 shows the limited extent to which Zunzgen had developed. But by 1805 the village had expanded noticeably: "At the place where the valley of the Diegter river widens out, just before it flows into the beautiful plains around Sissach, that is where you will find the friendly village of Zunzgen, with its approximately 84 households. The valley floor is used for farming but it is not noted for its fertility. The ridges are largely covered in evergreens and beech trees, and would have contained a good supply of wood if they had been spared and only the mature logs had been removed." Zunzgen 1749 The symbol of the town is the "Zunzger Büchel' or 'Heidenbüchel'. At the southern exit from the village, on the side of the hill and clearly visible from the highway, there is a spherical earth mound about 15 meters high with a volume of 6000 cubic meters. From the names of fields and meadows that were recorded in the past and are partially still used, such as 'burgmatten' (fort meadows), 'burchhalten' or 'hinter der burg' (behind the fort) one can deduce that there must at one stage have been a fort on this noticeable hill located in the middle of the valley. A careful investigation in 1950 found evidence of fortifications from the early Middle ages, an early type of castle similar to Austrian house-forts or Norman earth-castles. - Sketch by Emanuel Büchel. The Woman with the Golden Comb If you go south from the schoolhouse in Zunzgen, you come to a hill with the shape of a blunt cone. The hill is covered in grass, from the hill you can see all of Zunzgen and down as far as the village Sissach in its beautiful setting. It is said that in the old days there was a chapel on the hill with stone stairs leading up to it. But the chapel and steps are gone many years ago, there is now no trace of them. Every year, on Good Friday, at the twelfth hour, a woman dressed in white comes down the hill to the brook, she washes herself, combs her hair with a golden comb, and then runs back to the hill. (1874) The Inn ‘Zum Rössli (at the Stately Horse)’ around 1890 Around the turn of the last Century, the 'Rössli' belonged to Wilhelm Thommen who was from the well-known innkeeper-dynasty Thommen of Epting. The inn, which had wine vats with volumes around 1000 litters, was particularly well run - the boss personally did the weekly shopping at the market in Basel. It was also popular because of the dances at which the talented family of the innkeeper supplied the music. – Photo Lüdin AG
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