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city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany
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Überlingen (German pronunciation: [ˈyːbɐˌlɪŋən] ⓘ; Low Alemannic: Iberlinge) is a German city on the northern shore of Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Baden-Württemberg near the border with Switzerland. After the city of Friedrichshafen, it is the second-largest city in the Bodenseekreis (district), and a central point for the outlying communities. Since 1 January 1993, Überlingen has been categorized as a large district city (Große Kreisstadt).
The history of Überlingen dates back to Roman times, but a variety of settlements antedated Roman occupation. Stone Age settlements, discovered along the shoreline of Lake Constance, document that the lake supported several dozen thriving communities of 50–100 individuals. These settlements fall under the category of the Hallstatt culture, and their habits, dress, and diet have been illuminated through the excavation of archaeological sites, such as a major site in Hallstatt, Austria, excavated in the mid- to late 19th century.
Similar sites, although smaller, have been found in vicinity of Überlingen - a site near Hödingen, another near Dettingen, by Constance, and a major site near the village of Unteruhldingen, where there is now an open air archaeological museum.
The dead were either burned, or buried in mounds or flat graves; women wore jewelry made of bronze or gold, especially earrings. Tools uncovered in archeological excavation suggest that these communities engaged in a combination of hunting, fishing, and agriculture.
The Alpine lands and the eastern Swiss Plateau were overrun by the troops of the emperor Augustus (31 BCE to 14 CE), who established the Roman writ from the Alps to the Danube, through the efforts of Augustus' stepsons Drusus and Tiberius. According to some interpretations of the Roman records, one of the Bodensee islands, probably Mainau, was the operations base for the military operations in 15 BCE.
The necessities of troop transport and ship building and maintenance required the Romans to possess the entire Swiss shore of the lake, and from these points along the lake, the Romans could mount a double-pointed excursion to the eastern Tyrol and present-day Bavaria, or to the West, in the Rhine valley. The Bodensee region, as a Roman province administered from Augusta Vindelicorum, present-day Augsburg, was governed by a finance official (procurator) under Tiberius's command. The road from Stockach to Überlingen, and then along the lake's shore to Uhldingen and on to Friedrichshafen, and the east–west train tracks, generally follow the path of the old Roman road.
Evidence of conflicts between the Romans, their power waning, and the Alemannic and other Germanic groups, their power rising, appears throughout the region. New settlements appeared on top of burned settlements and old villages and farmsteads were reclaimed first by forests and meadows and then again reclaimed by men. By the latter half of the fourth century, several families emerged as the warrior leaders, capable of fending off minor Roman comebacks, and of protecting themselves, their kin, and their dependents from not only the Romans, but also other groups.
As the Romans withdrew more and more of their forces, to concentrate on the western boundaries or to focus on the conquest defense of Iberia, Franks, particularly Clodwig, or Clovis (482–511), and Goths, particularly Theodorich (471–527), contested for control of the region. Throughout this period, Alemannic dukes maintained their primary seat in Überlingen. The Alemannic Überlingen was first mentioned in 770 as Iburinga. Before that, it was probably known as Gunzoburg (641), the seat of the Alemannic or Swabian duke Gunzo. The probable site of Gunzo's villa has been identified in the northwestern quadrant of the city, just outside the present-day inner moat.
The Allemannic dukes were well connected to other families throughout Europe; the first wife of Charlemagne, Hildegard, came from the family of Linzgau counts, whose seat in Buchhorn (present-day Friedrichshafen) bordered the lake. Louis the Pious, 814–840, and Louis the German, 843–876, both married women from the Alemannic Welfen families. In the 10th century, the Linzgau fell to an invasion of the Hungarians, and ongoing battles with the Hungarians nearly brought the families of the region to ruin.
The Investiture Controversy of the 11th century brought further conflict. Villages and properties in the possession of one side of the conflict would be besieged and destroyed by members of the other party, in battle after gruesome battle, but by the end of the 11th century and the first half of the 12th, the Hohenstaufen emperors stabilized the Holy Roman Empire. The family came from the region, and Swabia, the Linzgau, and the Bodensee region became the middle point of the Empire.
This is also the beginning of Überlingen's period of blossoming. Many of the documents from the period have been lost, possibly in the city fire in 1279, but a great deal of information can be extrapolated. Hand-in-hand with the expansion of the Holy Roman Empire, localities throughout the empire experienced infrastructure improvements - improved roads and exchange regulations encouraged trade, particularly in the all-important, centrally located Swabia. The exact date in which the city received its market rights is ambiguous, but it was probably between 1180 and 1191; maps showing the trading road from Stockach to Buchhorn show the city of Überlingen in comparable size and type; by 1226 Überlingen had a Jewish cemetery, and these clues lead to the conclusion that the city had a market for a much longer period than this, thus the supposition that Emperor Barbarossa had established the market at the end of his own regime. He had been in the region several times: 1153, 1155, 1162, 1181, 1183, to hold court sessions, and in 1187, he stayed in Wallhausen, across the lake, to sign the documents establishing the Cloister of Salem.
At the end of the 14th century, the city was granted status as a free imperial city. In 1547, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, broadened the city's market rights to prohibit any trade in grain or salt within two German miles (about 15 km or 10 English miles) of the city.
The city flourished in the 13th to 16th centuries, mainly due to widespread grapevine cultivation on the south-facing slopes of the Lake Constance and its salubrious climate, which gave rise to a profitable spital (hospital) industry. The Holy Ghost Spital in Überlingen held large landholdings in Upper and Lower Linzgau, and in the Hegau. The city's affluence encouraged the construction of an impressive religious building - the St Nikolaus Munster in the late 15th century; a City Hall in the late 15th century; and impressive residences for the family of the spital doctors. The relative affluence of the city has been documented in its art and architecture, and the size and solidity of its physical plant, especially its fortifications.
As a fortified bridgehead, the city proved vital to the reduction of the German Peasants' War in 1525. When Georg Truchsess von Waldburg's soldiers rose against him during the war, and besieged Radolfzell, the Burgermeister of Überlingen led a small force to free the nearby town; they returned with 150 prisoners, all of whom were executed in a single day by the city's executioner. As a result of this assistance, Überlingen was granted the right to quarter a shield with a drawn sword, the Habsburg hawk, and the imperial eagle. As a result of its participation and assistance, the city retained its guild rights after the Schmalkaldic War of the 1540s and 1550s. In the Thirty Years War, the city was invested and besieged by Swedish soldiers and their Saxon allies in 1632 and 1634; despite lengthy and grueling siege, the city defenses held. Even when the walls were breached in May 1634, the population was able to resist in street to street, and house-to-house fighting, until the invaders withdrew. This seemingly miraculous occasion was attributed to the intervention of the Virgin Mary, and every year the citizens of Überlingen hold a so-called Sweden Procession. Another assault on the city in 1643 resulted in a French occupation until Franz von Mercy's Imperial-Bavarian army recaptured it in 1644. As a result of the Truce of Ulm ending hostilities between Bavaria and the allies Sweden and France, Swedish troops occupied the city in 1647–1649.
With the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss in 1803, Überlingen lost its status as a free imperial city, and its legal, economic, and political autonomy. As part of the German Mediatisation process, through which several of the German dynasties that lost lands and subjects on the west bank of the Rhine were compensated with other territories and populations, Überlingen became a part of the duchy of Baden, later the Grand Duchy of Baden. Through 13 organization edicts, the Duchy of Baden administration reorganized formerly free territories into a new ducal organization. For Überlingen, this meant the restructuring of the entire apparatus of administration and governance. Organization edicts deconstructed Überlingen's consular system of mayors, in which two men were elected to the office for one year, the first serving until immediately after Christmas, and the second from then until the new election in the spring. The once free imperial city became the administrative seat for the district (Bezirksamt).
Despite the relative importance of its position of administrative authority, the city entered a nearly century-long economic decline, exacerbated in the first decade of ducal authority by the Year without Summer, a consequence of the Tambora volcanic eruption in 1815, which had a VEI–7 index.
In the revolutionary period, 1848–1849, Überlingen experienced its share of turmoil. Überlingen's own militia apparently enjoyed an early occupation of the wine cellars at the former Salem Abbey, which after 1803 became a ducal palace and winery, but revolutionary activity extended more deeply into the social fabric. In early July 1848, Prussian and Bavarian troops invaded the Bodensee region, and imposed a form of military rule; several important personages, including Überlingen's physician and one of its schoolteachers, drew lengthy prison sentences for their revolutionary activity, nine months and a year, respectively. One of the former abbeys served as a prison for revolutionary convicts. Two companies of Prussian troops, about 400 men plus their officers, occupied the city until late 1850, when they were replaced by ducal troops. Although no sons of Überlingen fought in the civil war with Austria (Austro-Prussian War), Baden preferred to remain outside the conflict, and 72 of Überlingen's young men were called to fight the war with France in 1870; three of them fell in action and are commemorated in the parish church, St. Nikolaus. From 1846 to 1910, around 300 Überlingen sons and daughters emigrated to Switzerland, North or South America, or Australia.
The healing properties of the city's mineral waters, which sprang from a source under one of the towers on the western side of the city wall, had been understood since the early 16th century, and produced a regular source of income for the city and the spital; during the Thirty Years' War, the spring had been covered over; it remained covered in the postwar period and then was largely forgotten. It was fortuitously "rediscovered" during Überlingen's difficult times. A spa hotel was constructed and the notables started to arrive: Heinrich Zschokke (1771–1848), Ludwig Uhland, the poet (1787–1862), Gustav Schwab (1792–1850), and Germanist Franz Pfeiffer (1815–1868) were regular visitors. A pathway along the western wall, to the highest point within the city gates, is still called the Uhland walkway, and a marker notes that this was one of the poet's favorite walks.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Überlingen”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.