Konstanz
(Constance)
French Constance,
city, Baden-Württemberg Land (state), southwestern Germany, where the Rhine flows out of Lake Constance (Bodensee), adjacent to (south of) Kreuzlingen, Switz. The site of a Roman fort, it was captured in the 3rd century by the Alemanni, who established a bishopric there in the 6th century. In 1183 Emperor Friedrich I. Barbarossa (1123-1190) made peace with the Lombard states at Konstanz, which became a free imperial city in 1192. It prospered with the linen trade in the 13th century, freed itself from episcopal rule in the 14th, and became the head of a powerful confederacy of towns. During the Council of Constance, Jan Hus, the Bohemian religious Reformer, was tried and burned there (1415). The bishop transferred his see to Meersburg on the lake's north shore after Konstanz accepted the Reformation and joined the Protestant Schmalkaldic League (1531). With the defeat of the Protestants (1547), the city lost its free imperial status, became Roman Catholic again, and fell under Austrian rule until it was assigned to the duchy of Baden in 1805. Although many treasures and archives were removed, churches and monasteries suppressed, and most of the fortifications pulled down in the 19th century, the city remained the cultural and economic centre of the district.
Notable buildings include the Konzilium, or Kaufhaus (1388; originally a merchants' hall), the Renaissance Town Hall, and the Gothic Rosgarten Museum (once the butchers' guild-house). The 11th-century Romanesque-Gothic Münster was the cathedral until the bishopric was suppressed in 1821. The Insel Hotel, a former medieval Dominican monastery, was the birthplace (1838) of Ferdinand, Graf von Zeppelin, the builder of dirigibles. The city has an art museum and a university.
The modern residential and industrial areas are mostly situated north of the Rhine (there bridged) in the district of Petershausen and adjacent suburbs. Industries include textile, engineering, electrical, and chemical works. Konstanz, which lies at the end of the Black Forest and Upper Rhine railways, is connected to the Swiss railway network. It is the most popular tourist resort on the lake. Pop. (1989 est.) 72,862.
Copyright © 1994-2002 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Sources
- Encylopedia Britannica 2002, Expanded Edition DVD
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