Lindaw im Bodensee.

Title

Lindaw im Bodensee.

Description

General view of Lindau on Lake Constance from a bird's eye view, with surrounding ships, the coat of arms of Lindau and an index.

ca. 1640

Artist

Merian (1593-1650)

Matthäus Merian (1593 – 1650) , born in Basel, learned the art of copperplate engraving in Zurich and subsequently worked and studied in Strasbourg, Nancy, and Paris, before returning to Basel in 1615. The following year he moved to Frankfurt, Germany where he worked for the publisher Johann Theodor de Bry. He married his daughter, Maria Magdalena 1617. In 1620 they moved back to Basel, only to return three years later to Frankfurt, where Merian took over the publishing house of his father-in-law after de Bry's death in 1623. In 1626 he became a citizen of Frankfurt and could henceforth work as an independent publisher. He is the father of Maria Sibylla Merian, who later published her the famous and wellknown studies of flowers, insects and butterflies.

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.