Island of Geneva in Lake Constance

At first glance, the island hotel Konstanz, General Dufour, named the airship after its designer Zeppelin and the use of French playing cards in stately communities on Lake Thurgau, such as Steckborn or Ermatingen, have nothing to do with each other. At second glance, yes.

The Macaire de L’Or family, who emigrated from Geneva to Constance in 1785, ran a cotton printing shop in the rooms of the monastery on the Dominican Island, which was abolished in the wake of Josephinism until 1870; The Geneva cartographer, cantonal engineer and general in the Sonderbund War Guillaume Henri Dufour was born in Konstanz as a child of the Geneva manufacturers and entrepreneurs colony; Amélie von Zeppelin, née Macaire, mother of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin, who was also born on the island of Geneva.

On the other hand, the indirect link between the use of French playing cards in parts of Thurgau and the Geneva colony in Constance is clear, but not fully elucidated. After all: in 1817, David Macaire, Amélie von Zeppelin’s father, donated Arenenberg Castle in the Thurgau community of Salenstein, half an hour’s drive from Konstanz, to Hortense de Beauharnais, Louis-Napoléon’s mother. And in Thurgau, as the saying goes, a day’s ride around the Arenenberg is used to hunt with French cards.

A Geneva colony on Lake Constance? – Yes, in the pre-revolutionary year 1785, a group of financially strong Genevan merchants and manufacturers of luxury goods such as cotton prints with exotic Indian motifs (Indiennes) and clocks settled in the council city, which was already attractive to tourists, but economically depressed. In view of the political unrest in the Rhône city, after careful clarification and negotiations with Emperor Joseph II, they moved with many privileges to the safe production location in Konstanz and then to Upper Austria.

A few years later, “the people of Geneva” made up more than ten percent of the approximately four thousand people! The Göttingen educational traveler Christoph Meiners, who passed through Konstanz during his two trips to Switzerland, said in 1788 that he did not recognize the city. While he was working on the interior design Golden Eagle Inn On his first trip in 1782, the market seemed to date from the time of the Council, but on his second visit he found everything up to date. The Eagle was the first house on the site. Like the Crown on Vordergasse in Schaffhausen or something like that sword on the Weinplatz in Zurich.

He hears French everywhere, the streets seem “noticeably more lively than before”, the houses are new or renovated. But today’s traveler also describes with sharp eyes the not only problem-free relationship between the local population and the newcomers. However, the initial euphoria among the Genevans did not last long. After the turn of the century, a large number of emigrants had already returned to Geneva.

Not so with the Macaire family. The banker and entrepreneur Jean-Jacques Louis Macaire de L’Or was the guiding light and first enrolled member of the Geneva colony in Constance. In 1785, he founded the first Indian production factory in the monastery buildings on the Dominican Island. Cotton printing became one of the most important industries in Constance in the 19th century. A year later he founded the city’s first bank, whose customers soon included Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s stepson, and his sister Hortense de Beauharnais, Queen of Holland and mother of Louis-Napoléon.

David Macaire, one of the sons of Jean-Jacques Louis, was one of the founders and first president of the Konstanz steamship company for Lake Constance and the Rhine in 1830. Naturally, he intended to improve the transportation facilities for the products of the Indine factory Macaire frères – whether this pleased the shipping guilds of the lake or not.

His daughter Amélie married Count Friedrich (Fritz) von Zeppelin at the age of 17. It was a love marriage. The marriage between the daughter of the humorous factory owner and the affectionate count was happy, as was the exceptionally well-documented childhood of her daughter Eugenie and her two sons Ferdinand and Eberhard at Girsberg Castle in neighboring Emmishofen (TG).

However, the family’s happiness lasted only 18 years. Amélie von Zeppelin died of tuberculosis at the age of 36. Fritz von Zeppelin and the three children had difficulty recovering from the blow. Eugenie subsequently developed into the soul of the family, two decades later Eberhard converted the former Inselkoster with the indine factory into a luxury hotel and Ferdinand developed airships. Two decades later, he would become one of the most popular figures in Germany at the time.

In short: the inhabitants of Geneva, especially the Macaire family, provided important economic and social impetus to the development of the former episcopal city. They founded their Calvinist church in the refectory of the former island monastery. This was the first time that a Protestant community had been active in Constance since the forced return to the old faith in 1548.

The first child in the colony of Geneva, born in Constance, was baptized in the said church on April 16, 1786. The name Constance. The Württemberg historical painter Carl von Häberlin painted the baptism in 1895 on a large mural in the former cloister of the monastery, which has now been converted into a luxury hotel.

Ditto that one «Time of the KK privilege. Indian factory Macaire frères around 1800», the third to last of 18 large-format landscape images depicting the history of the island from the stilt inhabitants to the time of the hotel, which opened in 1874. The scene, painted with Keim mineral paint that came on the market in 1878, shows bales of fabric being loaded onto a Lädine or a Segner, the then freight ships on Lake Constance, on the pier in front of the factory. under the supervision of the cleverly staged manufacturer. The imposing figure of the factory owner, dressed in a gray coat and black top hat, stands in front of red-colored cotton cloths hanging out to dry and exchanges papers with the ship’s captain.

Because he is depicted as a young man, it is reasonable to assume that he is David Macaire (1774–1849), the grandfather of the client, hotel owner and historian Eberhard Graf von Zeppelin. The three laborers behind Macaire are remarkably active and well-fed fellows; You cannot see the starvation wages for which they work 14 hours a day or even longer. The scene with three working-class children also seems almost idyllic.

The reality was different. Not to mention the children from the orphanage who had to work in the factory at the age of six. It goes without saying that history paintings say more about the time in which they were made and the self-image of their clients than about the historical reality of the chosen themes and motifs. This also applies to historiography. Nevertheless, they are remarkable as an artistic staging of an early industrial activity in the context of the hotelier’s family history before the eyes of the numerous wealthy hotel guests from the Belle Époque in the cloister of the former convent, which has been converted into a comfortable foyer.

And Guillaume Henri Dufour? – He came to the late Gothic house on September 15, 1787 as the son of the watchmaker Bénédict Dufour and his wife Pernette Valentin To the falcon on the current Wessenbergstrasse. The parents, who had already left Geneva in 1782 due to political unrest, returned, like many other emigrants, to Geneva in 1789.

Henri Dufour remained connected to the region through his friendship with Prince Louis-Napoléon, who grew up at Arenenberg Castle for a long time. Dufour had taught Napoleon from 1830 to 1836 in his role as a genius instructor at the Federal Military School in Thun. The aforementioned Louis-Napoléon, who knew Constance and the Untersee area like the back of his hand, took – in the uniform of a Bernese artillery captain.