Lake Constance

(Local Name: Bodensee) Cantons: Thurgau (TG) and St Gallen (SG)

Lake Constance, (in German the Bodensee), lying below the northern edge of the Alps, with its shoreline shared between Switzerland, Germany and Austria, is by far the largest lake in Germany, the third largest lake in Central Europe (after Lake Balaton and Lake Geneva) and the second largest of the lakes bordering the Alps. From southeast to northwest it is divided into the Obersee, extending from Bregenz Bay to Eichhorn (Constance), and the much narrower, shorter and shallower Überlinger See, between the Bodanrück and Linzgau, and Untersee.

The Untersee is separated from the main lake by a strip of land which is traversed by the Rhine at Konstanz. At its northern end it splits into the Gnadensee, between the island of Reichenau and the Bodanrück, and the Zeller See, between the Höri and Mettnau peninsulas in Radolfzell Bay. The whole of the southern shore of the lake is in Switzerland, much the greater part of it (running southeast to beyond Arbon) belonging to the canton of Thurgau and the rest (from the vicinity of Rorschach to the Old Rhine) to St Gallen.

Evidence of the ancient fauna of the region has been found in the form of animals' bones (mammoths, bison, reindeer, deer, wild horses, bears, etc.), and, in caves in the Thayngen area (canton of Schaffhausen), particularly in the Kesslerloch, works of art dating from the Late Palaeolithic period (ca. 10,000 B.C.) - engravings on reindeer antlers, figures of wild horses, a carving of a musk-ox's head, etc. Many traces of human settlement in the Mesolithic period (ca. 8000-5000 B.C.) have been identified around the lake; and occupation during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (ca. 3000-2000 B.C.) attested by the pile-dwellings - huts occupied by hunters, fishermen and farmers - found, for example, at Ermatingen on the Untersee and between Botighofen and Seedorf on the Obersee. Remains of these houses, built on piles to provide protection from flooding, can be seen at low tide a short distance from the shore of the lake. Since the water level was 2-3 m/7-10ft lower at the time the houses were built they would originally have been on dry land. There are also remains of whole villages of pile-dwellings dating from the Early Iron Age (ca. 800 B.C.).

The land around Lake Constance was originally Celtic territory, into which the Romans penetrated in the first century B.C. Among Roman foundations on the Swiss shore of the lake was "Arbor Felix" (Arbon). In the third C. A.D. the Alemanni, a Germanic tribe from the north, thrust into the western Lake Constance area. The region was Christianized by Iro-Scottish monks including Columban and his disciple Gallus, who preached here about the year 610, and the eighth C. saw the foundation of the abbey of St Gallen, which developed into a major cultural hub whose influence extended far beyond the region. In the Appenzell war (1403-08) the confederation of towns on Lake Constance supported the Abbot of St Gallen against the mountain peasants, who suffered a defeat at Bregenz in 1408.

Constance, a member of the Swabian League, lost all rights of sovereignty in the Thurgau under the Treaty of Basle at the end of the Swabian war (1498-99).