Super rich in Switzerland
Tina Turner, Roger Federer and Co.: The illustrious neighborhood on the Gold Coast
Tina Turner has lived on Lake Zurich for a long time. Now she has bought a property there.
© Marechal Aurore/abaca / Picture Alliance
Tina Turner has bought a property on Lake Zurich: a country estate that is more than 100 years old. The singer is in an illustrious neighborhood here on the Gold Coast.
What some see as a dacha with peeling plaster in the Uckermark, others see as a country estate with ten historic buildings, a swimming pool and a jetty on Lake Zurich. “With this property we have found a new weekend retreat in the immediate vicinity,” said Erwin Bach of the “Handelzeitung”. “We” are Bach and his superstar wife Tina Turner.
For many years, the couple has lived in Küsnacht am Zürichsee in a rented house, around 20 kilometers north of the property they have now bought and where they are likely to spend one or two weekends in the future. The “Handelzeitung” estimates the value of this property at around 67 million euros (stern reported). A proud price for a proud location.
There is a reason why the lower right bank of Lake Zurich bears the enigmatic name Gold Coast. Here the evening sun shines particularly beautifully on the private access to the lake and competes with luxury limousines. Good location and a lot of money come together here. The lake is clear, the mountains are close, the taxes are low, the behavior is discreet and the big city is very close. Many of the super-rich from abroad also feel at home on Lake Zurich – alongside Swiss national saints such as Roger Federer.
In addition to stars like Tina Turner, well-known personalities from business and politics also live here
The tennis player is said to have had a look at the country estate that Tina Turner and her husband bought. Federer is now pursuing his own, very big plans a few kilometers further south in Rapperswil-Jona. He acquired the last large parcel with direct access to the lake in the Kempratner Bay. An “extremely rare good”, as the Zurich “Tagesanzeiger” wrote at the time. The Federers are now building on 16,000 square meters.
July 2021: View of the construction site of tennis player Roger Federer’s 16,000 square meter property on Lake Zurich
© Ennio Leanza / Picture Alliance
Well-known personalities from politics and business also live here on the right bank of Lake Zurich. Among them Christoph Blocher, big businessman, billionaire and doyen of the SVP, the party that repeatedly stirs up anti-foreigner sentiment and is on the right of the Swiss party spectrum. The same goes for SVP national councilor Roger Köppel, who is not only a politician, but also the journalistic mouthpiece of his party as the publisher and editor-in-chief of the right-wing conservative weekly “Weltwoche”. Köppel lives with his family in a renovated villa from 1920 in Küsnacht – the municipality where Tina Turner and her husband have lived up to now. Franz Humer, the former head of pharmaceutical giant Roche, also lives on the Gold Coast.
The railway line brought rapid growth
In the mid-1970s, Fritz Zorn wrote about the fact that not everything that glitters on the Gold Coast is gold. That was the name of the millionaire’s son and high school teacher, who fell ill with cancer at a young age and wrote a ruthless account of the bourgeois milieu in this area, which was published after his death under the title “Mars”. “I’m young and rich and educated; and I’m unhappy, neurotic and alone. I come from one of the very best families on the right bank of Lake Zurich, also known as the Gold Coast.” This is how “Mars” begins. And so it goes on and caused a scandal at the time.
“In reality, there are all sorts of different types on the Gold Coast,” wrote Till Rippmann in 2016 in an article for “Vice” about his childhood and youth in Küsnacht in the 1990s. “The spectrum ranges from the glue-sniffing amateur gay porn actor to the single-parent secretary, the thong Nazi with the wolf children, to the nouveau riche broker in the yellow Ferrari. Yes, I met them all there.”
The history of the municipality of Küsnacht begins in a time long before these living environments with lakeside settlements in the Neolithic Age 4500 to 2300 BC. The community on Lake Zurich, which is prominent today, eventually became a winegrowing village, afflicted by the devastating floods of the Dorfbach in 1778 and 1878. With the construction of the Seestrasse and the right-bank railway line in the 19th century, unstoppable development began, according to the website of the community: “Küsnacht, once the largest wine-growing community in the canton of Zurich, became the wealthy suburb of the city of Zurich as we know it today.”
Incidentally, opposite the Gold Coast is the Pfnüsel Coast – the cold coast – as it is jokingly called in the local dialect. Because while the Gold Coast with its southern slope gets a lot of sun, the opposite bank has to make do with more shade. Pfnüselkueste is nice Swiss understatement though. A name like Silver Coast would be a lot better.
Sources: “St. Galler Tagblatt”, “Mars”, Municipality of Küsnacht, “Daily Gazette”, “Swiss Magazine”, “Vice”