334 – Fire House from Mühledorf BE, 1834
The fire house from Mühledorf was used to fight fires.
Fire fright
Wars and acts of God are the main horrors, now as then, catastrophic town and village fires among them. Once a building caught fire the whole settlement was in danger – the possibilities for mastering the flames were few. No wonder the communities of the time made every conceivable effort to avoid total loss of property. There were preventative laws concerning open hearth fires, candlelight and chimney sweeping as well as measures for fire-fighting.
Modest equipment
One such measure for fire-fighting was this fire depot from Mühledorf. In 1833 the community voted to buy a hand-pumper. A year later they bought a piece of land to build the “little fire house” as it was then called: a garage for the portable pumper. When the endangered building was transported to the Ballenberg Open-Air Museum in 1998 it was empty. In place of the original equipment there is a 1902 hand-pumper from Bernese Rüeggisberg with some accessories such as a leathern water bucket for bucket brigades and fire hooks for tearing burning timbers out of the fire. These objects demonstrate the limited means that the people then had for combatting the racing fury of the flames.
Ballenberg
Swiss Open-Air Museum
Museumsstrasse 100
CH-3858 Hofstetten bei Brienz
Opening hours
10 April to 2 November 2025
10 am to 5 pm daily
