La ville Insulaie de Lindaw, enuironnée de toutz costez d´eaues du lac

Title

La ville Insulaie de Lindaw, enuironnée de toutz costez d´eaues du lac

General view of Lindau on Lake Constance from the half-bird show with town coat of arms and index.

ca. 1550

Artist

Münster (1489-1552)

Sebastian Münster (1489–1552) was a leading Renaissance cosmographer. His most famous work, the Cosmographia (1544), was a comprehensive description of the world with 24 maps, based on research dating back to 1528. Continuously revised, the 1550 edition already included many new maps. It was the first scientific yet accessible world description published in German, illustrated with numerous woodcuts by artists such as Hans Holbein the Younger. Between 1544 and 1650, the Cosmographia appeared in 46 editions (27 in German) and was translated into several languages. Münster’s work combined the knowledge of scholars, artists, and travelers and remained influential long after his death.

Historical Description

Early traces of settlement in the urban area were found on the ridges at the former Catholic cemetery in Aeschach, on the mainland opposite the island. Traces of Roman settlement were discovered here in 1878 and the foundations of a former villa suburbana were uncovered in 1888. Lindau was first mentioned as "Lindoua or" Lintoua "in 882 in a St. Gallen gift certificate: A Cunzo or Kunzo gave goods in Tettnang and Haslach" ad Lintouam ". The parish church of St. Stephan was built around 1180, and in 1224 Franciscans founded a monastery. In 1274/1275, King Rudolf I confirmed the city rights previously acquired. Lindau now appears as an imperial city. Under King Rudolf von Habsburg (reign 1273–1291), the noblewoman Guta von Triesen was elected abbess of the noble convent of Lindau and ruled it with great fame until 1340. From the 15th century to 1826, the so-called Milanese messenger, also known as the Lindau messenger, operated on the Viamala between Lindau and Milan. The citizens, who had become rich in grain and salt through trade and transport (their own Lake Constance fleet), could always use and enforce the rights of a free imperial city acquired in the 13th century. From 1500, Lindau was in the Swabian Empire. In the course of the Reformation, Lindau became Protestant in 1528, in the early years under the influence of the Constance reformer Ambrosius Blarer. It was only later that Luther turned to him, and in 1529 the city was one of the representatives of the Protestant minority at the Reichstag in Speyer. During the Thirty Years' War, Lindau was besieged by the Swedes in 1646/47. The Lindau, under the military leadership of Count Max Willibald von Waldburg-Wolfegg, destroyed parts of the siege machinery at night and in fog and fought off the Swedes. Due to the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss 1803, Lindau lost its status as a free imperial city. The millennial Lindau women's pencil was secularized. Prince Karl August von Bretzenheim, who had received the city and the women's monastery, gave the imperial city of Lindau to Austria for a short time in 1804 on the basis of an exchange contract concluded in 1803. In the Peace of Bratislava, Austria ceded to Vorarlberg on 1805 and thus also Lindau to Bavaria. In 1806 it was incorporated into the newly proclaimed Kingdom of Bavaria.