Zum goldenen Adler – Umkirch guest house

Overview

Governor Bartlin Grosshann appeared on trial in ‘the parlour of landlord Jerg Bischilin’ on 5 February 1498. The building erected by the local rulers served as a guest house, an assembly hall and a lower court room. In 1575, the Adlerwirtshaus, literally the Eagle Guest House, was sold complete with ‘everything that was nailed down’ to Oswald Erhard for the sum of 288 guilders. The purchase contract stipulated that it ‘must be kept open and retain space for court proceedings and community assembly as before’. In 1711, Mathis Wirbser was named as the landlord, before Franz Anton Zimmermann bought the ‘Goldener Adler’ in 1826. Previously, the guest house had been closed for 20 years (during the Napoleonic Wars), but it was still used as a community assembly point and ‘fire and light’ were provided. During this time and thereafter, the assemblies took place in the two-storey building (house no. 11) with half-timbering on the top floor, which stands next to the current ‘Eagle Area’. The 17th-century baroque house is now a listed building.

The ‘Metzig’ has always stood between the two buildings. The old Adler building was torn down in 1883 and rebuilt the same year. The ‘Goldener Adler’ was a stop for the stagecoach and the first ‘motor carriage’, which travelled between Freiburg and Umkirch after 1906, operated by landlord Karl Joseph Schmitt himself. The VAG stop was still called ‘Adler’, or eagle, even when it closed its doors forever after serving the ‘Maiwecken’ musicians on 1 May 1988.