Armorial panel of the von Bärenfels family

Description

The opening of the Historisches Museum in the Barfüsserkirche in 1894 gave many Basle families an opportunity to express their support by donating a stained glass panel. More than a hundred armorial panels were made by the Basle glass painters Franz Joseph Merzenich and Heinrich Drenckhahn and the Meyner & Booser glass painting studio in Winterthur between 1893 and 1897. Originally they decorated the choir windows of the Barfüsserkirche, but when the Museum was renovated in 1980 the 107 armorial pictures were placed in the south and west windows of the nave, arranged according to the year in which the donors' families obtained citizenship. The heraldic panel of the von Bärenfels family, who had been settled in Basle since about 1294, opens the series. In composition and in the details of the helmet, it imitates the armorial panel of Adelberg von Bärenfels dated 1533 in the town hall at Rheinfelden.