24   St. Wolfgangshaus (St Wolfgang’s House)

More space for storing grain

The building was erected in 1530 by Ulrich Giger, a master builder from Prismell, to serve as a municipal granary. The new granary was needed because the original one, at 14 Unter Altstadt, was no longer large enough. By the end of the 15^th century, the town’s subject territories had reached their maximum extent, and the bailiwicks of Cham, Hünenberg and Risch, in particular, had become the main providers of grain for the municipality. In 1475, as a means of extracting the greatest possible revenue from its territories, the town authorities built a chapel dedicated to St Wolfgang in the bailiwick of Hünenberg, and associated with the chapel various tithes – church dues in the form of produce, such as grain – which had originally accrued to the parish church in Cham. Responsibility for administering the tithes fell to the so-called Wolfgangs-Pfleger (Wolfgang’s warden). It was not long before Zug’s new granary acquired the name St. Wolfgangshaus. Unlike the granary in the historic town centre, this was not a facility for selling grain, but only for storing it. There was one exception, however: each year between the end of January and the beginning of March every household in the town was allowed to purchase grain at greatly reduced prices. Grain was not the only commodity stored at the St. Wolfgangshaus: wine, another form of tithe from the bailiwicks, was also warehoused here.

A temporary additional use for the St. Wolfgangshaus

Zug’s original schoolhouse was in Unter Altstadt street. By 1611, there was not enough space to teach the growing number of Zug schoolboys, and so additional classrooms were installed in the St. Wolfgangshaus. The pupils were, in fact, only boys. Lessons for girls did not begin until 1657 and were then taught at the Maria Opferung convent. Where exactly classes were held in the St. Wolfgangshaus is unclear. All we know is that the imposing building had rooms that were occasionally used for residential purposes, in addition to the actual grain stores. Just over a hundred years later, the schoolboys moved out of the St. Wolfgangshaus again and instead went to the newly built boys’ schoolhouse across the road at 20 St.-Oswalds-Gasse, erected in 1722. The usual practice at the time was for teachers – then still known as ‘schoolmasters’ – to live on the school premises. Accordingly, the St. Wolfgangshaus also had domestic accommodation. Occasionally, this seems to have been made available, on a temporary basis, to other people too.

The person in charge of the St. Wolfgangshaus was the St. Wolfgangspfleger (St. Wolfgang’s warden). Elected by the citizenry and suitably remunerated, his rights and duties were regulated by statute. His responsibilities included, for example, the structural upkeep of the building.

Operated as a barracks

The invasion of French troops in 1798 and the subsequent era of the Helvetic Republic had repercussions for the St. Wolfgangshaus: it was turned into a barracks. The windows on the south side which had reached down to ground level to facilitate the delivery and extraction of grain, were walled up and a chimney was inserted in the erstwhile window recesses to create living quarters for the French troops. “Unattractive” was posterity’s verdict on an extension added to the east side in 1894.

The Zug barracks were among the smallest in the Swiss Confederation, and they became less important over time. Throughout the 20^th century there were reports of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions. When telegraph engineering recruits were stationed there from 1913 to 1922, the officers had to sleep in a guest house, and in bad weather, the troops’ washing had to be done in the attic of the Burgbach gymnasium. Defective drains were a perpetual problem, frequently leading to overflowing of the inadequate slurry pit onto the street, sickness amongst the troops, and complaints from the neighbourhood, and eventually resulting in a visit from a medical officer.

Unsuitable for army use

Following the brief interlude involving the trainee telegraph engineers between 1913 and 1922, military training schools were no longer billeted in the Zug barracks with any regularity, except during the Second World War. With room for only around 150 soldiers and 30 NCOs, the facilities had become too small for regular use by the 1950s. A few military service refresher courses and courses for specialist troops and high ranking officers were still run, along with the very occasional training school for infantry recruits. Troops were often billeted in Zug for just two to three nights at a time, especially during mobilisation or demobilisation.

In the 1930s and 1960s, the town and government councils made several attempts to upgrade Zug’s military training facilities. A number of projects for a new building at other sites came to nothing. Nevertheless, it soon became clear to the authorities that the existing barracks, with their poor hygiene, overcrowding, both in and around the building, and unsuitable location in the middle of the town, had no future. The idea of using the building for other purposes was already circulating in the 1930s. Even the possibility of a library was mentioned. For the time being, however, it was not pursued. The barracks remained at the disposal of the army until the 1970s.

A new site for a new library

The origins of the library in Zug go back to the 15^th century. In 1481, when the nearby St. Oswald’s church was being erected, a library for religious and liturgical books was installed above the sacristy. Its holdings of books grew over the centuries and in 1806 were handed over to the town. In 1833, the Zug town council decided to divide the library into two parts: a parish library, reserved for the clergy and not accessible to the public, and a publicly accessible citizens’ library. The latter was opened in 1836 in the Pfrundhaus St. Konrad (St Conrad’s benefice house) at 5 St.-Oswalds-Gasse. In 1910, what was now known as the Stadtbibliothek (municipal library) moved into the building of the former town arsenal at 7 Ägeristrasse, where, in 1941, it took on the additional function of the cantonal library. At the new site, both the library holdings and the number of users continued to increase steadily. Space became tight, and after the collections became open-access in September 1974, and charges were abolished in 1978, the popular library was once again in need of new premises.

The government and town councils found what they required in the former St. Wolfgangshaus building. After occupying it as a barracks for a long time, the army had moved out, and the building had been put to all manner of uses since then. The ground floor had been occupied by the first brigade of the volunteer fire service. The upper floors had been used by Zug’s Casino Theatre for storing props and by the Spanish Association for meetings. A carnival marching band had been rehearsing on the premises, and the Daheim kindergarten had even moved into the top of the building for a few months in 1978 while their regular premises were being renovated. Now, however, in the 1980s, it was standing empty.

Culture barracks

Around 1980, as in other Swiss towns, Zug’s young people began to call for their own autonomous youth centre. The present youth culture centre, industrie45, did not open until 1982, and the young people demanded the use of the barracks as an interim solution. Following a three-day hunger strike in early 1981 and an occupation of the barracks in March 1981, the town council gave permission for a temporary youth centre in the autumn of that year. The young adults administered the venture themselves and offered a varied programme of food, concerts, plays, films and parties. When the facility closed at the end of April 1983, an illegal occupation of the building took place a week later, and the occupiers were forcibly ejected by the police. In the medium term, however, the young people’s demands resulted in a proper youth policy becoming part of the institutional framework.

An expensive conversion

After the site of the new library had been decided on, the town and the canton agreed that the future library building should not only house their historic collections but also retain its historic façade. The Zug architects Bernath + Frei + Krähenbühl were given the task of combining a purpose-built, modern architectural design with the 450-year-old building. Their solution was to strip back the façades to their original state and restore them at considerable expense, while completely gutting the interior. To create sufficient space for both an open-access library and a safe room for cultural heritage, an extension was added to the east side, with a discreet exterior and an additional floor below ground. The prestigious conversion cost over 11 million Swiss francs. Zug’s municipal and cantonal library was formally opened at its new site on 1 October 1986. Although officially renamed “Bibliothek Zug” (Zug Library) in 2011, many local residents still refer to it as the “Stadtbibliothek” (municipal library). In 2017, the town council finally reached a decision on the long-standing question of where to house the town’s archives, which have since also been kept in this building.  

Information all in one place

Unlike the question of the new Bibliothek Zug, the question of where to house the Zug archives took a long time to solve. Since at least the 16^th century, the town had kept its archives in the so-called Schatzturm (treasure tower) at 18 Grabenstrasse. After 1874, when Zug’s different communal entities acquired separate administrations, the “altes Stadtarchiv” (old town archive) was also split up, and various new places to accommodate it were found over the years. The Bürgergemeinde (Burgher Commune) archive remains to this day on the ground floor of the Schatzturm, while a new “Stadtarchiv Zug” (Zug town archive) was created on the first floor for the Einwohnergemeinde (municipality). When the municipal and cantonal libraries moved into the new building at 21 St.-Oswalds-Gasse in 1986, the Stadtarchiv Zug followed suit – but this was only meant to be a temporary solution. In the medium term, the plan was to find another site, since both the library and the archive had a large and continually growing need for suitable storage, a situation which led to the holdings of the Stadtarchiv being divided up between an increasing number of different storage rooms in the various buildings occupied by the municipal administration at the time. In some cases, the climatic conditions and security arrangements of these external depositories were parlous. The storeroom in the Schatzturm, for example, had to be abandoned for climatic reasons. It was an unsatisfactory situation not only for the staff and users of the town archive, but also for the archival holdings themselves.

When the Stadtarchiv’s storage options were finally exhausted in 2015, the possibility arose of converting a former civil defence shelter in the nearby underground carpark into a shelter for the protection of cultural property. Adopting this solution would cater for the foreseeable space requirements of both the library and the archive until the end of the 21^st century. In 2017, the municipal council of Zug approved the conversion plan and in the same year decided that, in light of this decision, the Stadtarchiv would now definitely remain at 21 St.-Oswalds-Gasse.