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This website & contents ©1987-2009 Olivier Burckhardt

The calligraphy on the banner, adapted from a Chinese ink rubbing,
is by Mi Fu (1051-1107), one of the great Song dynasty masters.
The two characters read fu floating & chai (zhai in pin-yin) which means studio or retreat.

The calligraphy on the banner, adapted from a Chinese ink rubbing, is by Mi Fu (1051-1107), one of the great Song dynasty masters. The two characters read fu floating & chai which means studio or retreat.
Hence: Floating Studio.

Burckhardt Family Crest
Family crest designed by Carl Roschet for the
Basler Wappenkalender 1917
(Basel Crests Calendar)

The Burckhardt coat-of-arms:
Shield: yellow background with a black S intertwined with a cross (the “S” is perhaps for Seidenkrämer - silk-merchant); surmounted by a crowned helmet with a fluttering black & yellow flag. The original crest was simpler and consisted only of a shield with the S intertwined with the cross. It was modified between 1558 and 1578.


Front cover: The Burckhardt Family Book

 

Burckhardt Family Background

 

A patrician family of Basel, Switzerland. The progenitor of the Basel family was Christoph Burckhardt (nicknamed “Stoffel”) a silk merchant born in 1490 in Britznach near St. Trudpert's Abbey in Münstertal in the southern Black Forest, in 1523 he became a citizen of Basel and died there on 6th October 1578.

In 1518 Christoph Burckhardt married Ottilia von Mechler and in 1539 Gertrud Brand (1516-1600), daughter of Basel mayor Theodor Brand and Christina Kösin. Of the 13 children born of his second marriage, six sons and five daughters survived. The descendents of their six sons form the various branches of the Burckhardt family, whose name in Basel is often abbreviated to the sobriquet ckdt.

Among the more eminent members of the family are:
The traveler and explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784-1817), aka Scheik Ibrahim.
see portrait below.
and
Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1898), professor of Art History at Basel University, whose The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy continues to be a watershed work.
Read the essay Jacob Burckhardt: Historian Of Civilization on this website.

The Burckhardt Family Book 1490-1890

Released shortly after the 400th anniversary of Christoph Burckhardt’s birth in 1890, the Burckhardt Family Book includes 34 plates of portraits of family members from Christoph and Gertrud Burckhardt to a photograph of the 1890 family reunion that took place in Basel on 14th September that year.

A pdf (7.6 MB) of the family book is freely available for viewing: CLICK HERE or the image to the right.
To download the pdf Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the link or image.

Title-page of the Burckhardt Family Book
A 1632 miniature by the Basel painter Hans Heinrich Glaser (born circa 1585-1673).

Plate 12 of the Burckhardt Family Book
The traveler and explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784-1817), aka Scheik Ibrahim.
(copy of an oil painting by Gutzwiller)