The Oberhaus in Feldbach was built in 1743 and has been inhabited by the Bühler family ever since. Over the course of more than two centuries, numerous traces of life accumulated in the house. They document the history of the family, but they also show the development of farm life and the whole lake Zurich region since pre-industrial times.
Objects from the farm’s history
Tools, household goods, leisure activities and clothing styles went through a constant process of evolution since the farm was founded more than 250 years ago. Old items were discarded and new ones acquired.
Work on the farm was increasingly mechanised, and fewer haymakers, farmhands and maids were needed. Discarded items were stored in the rooms that were no longer used by personnel to have them available if people would ever need them again.
Over the years, books, clothes, furniture, toys, tools and much more accumulated on three floors. Since the upper floors were only used for storage, they were hardly ever rearranged or refurbished.
An exhibition comes to life
For a long time, the old stuff lay unsorted and almost forgotten on the upper floors of the Oberhaus. Rosmarie Bühler-Wildberger, who came to the farm as Albert Bühler-Wildberger’s wife in 1961, was the first to take on the legacy.
In the seventies, she began to sort and document the various objects and create an exhibition. Over the next thirty years, she took care of the exhibition and offered guided tours to groups and individuals. In this, she was assisted by her husband Albert and her children Annemarie and Stefan.
Preserving the exhibition
After the passing of Rosmarie Bühler-Wildberger in 2016, her descendants established the foundation “Stiftung Lebensspuren Oberhaushof” with the aim of preserving the exhibition and opening it to the public and researchers.
In 2020, they launched a project to reach these goals. A team led by cultural anthropologist Edith Werffeli has since condensed and re-curated the exhibition. The objects were distributed thematically across the rooms of the Oberhaus, and a depot was created for objects that are not part of the exhibition. These objects will be available via a simple lending system in the future. Various other objects have been removed. At the same time, guided tours on various topics were developed. These started in summer 2024.
In addition, the inventory of the exhibition and the family trees of the families associated with the farm were digitised so they can be made available for research. Various written records were transferred to the state archives of the Canton of Zurich, where they can be viewed by the public and researchers soon.
The history of the Oberhaushof farm in a book
Historians Elisabeth Joris and Martin Widmer have written a book about the story of Rosmarie Bühler-Wildberger and the rural upper class on the Oberhaushof farm. It was published in 2021. For more information on the book, you can visit the website of the publishing house.