The Inselhotel in Constance seen from the right bank of Lake Constance in autumn 2023. Today, the hotel belongs to the state-owned Rothaus brewery and is run by the Steigenberger Group. — **The *Inselhotel* in Constance seen from the right bank of Lake Constance in autumn 2023. Today, the hotel belongs to the state-owned *Rothaus* brewery and is run by the Steigenberger Group.** Photo: Felix Graf

Genevan exiles at Lake Constance

In November 1834, 17-year-old Amélie Macaire, the daughter of a Genevan manufacturer, married German Count Friedrich von Zeppelin on an island in Constance that was the site of a former monastery. French was the predominant language spoken. And not without reason...

Felix Graf

Felix Graf was a curator at the National Museum Zurich until 2017. Now he works as a freelance publicist.

At first glance, the following do not appear to have anything in common: the Inselhotel in the German city of Constance, General Dufour, the Zeppelin airship named after its inventor, and the use of French-suited playing cards in affluent towns like Steckborn and Ermatingen along the Swiss shore of Lake Constance. But look closer and you will discover the connection. In 1785, the Macaire de L’Or family left Geneva and settled in Constance, where it ran a textile printing factory until 1870, situated on what was then known as ‘Dominican Island’ in a building that had previously been a monastery until dissolved by Emperor Joseph II of Austria. Constance was also the birthplace of Genevan cartographer, structural engineer and general in the Sonderbund War, Guillaume Henri Dufour, whose parents were members of the colony of exiled Genevan manufacturers and merchants. And Amélie von Zeppelin, née Macaire, the mother of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, was also born there ‒ on what was now being called ‘Genevan Island’.

Conversely, while the indirect link between the Genevan presence in Constance and the use of French-suited playing cards in parts of the canton of Thurgau may seem obvious, it has not yet been conclusively proven. What we do know is that, in 1817, David Macaire, the father of Amélie von Zeppelin, arranged the sale of Schloss Arenenberg to Hortense de Beauharnais, the mother of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte. The estate in the community of Salenstein could be reached from Constance within a good half-hour on horseback. And in Thurgau, local tradition has it that the card game jass is played with French-suited cards within a radius of one day’s horse ride from Arenenberg.

**Whether the presence of Louis Napoléon Bonaparte at...** Swiss National Museum

**... Arenenberg had any bearing on the use of French-suited playing cards in the area remains unanswered today.** e-pics

‘The Genevans’

A Genevan colony at Lake Constance? – That’s right. In the pre-revolutionary year of 1785, a group of well-heeled Genevan merchants and manufacturers of luxury goods, including printed cotton textiles featuring exotic Indian designs (hence the name indiennes) and clocks and watches, settled in the city that had once hosted the famous ecumenical Council but which was now economically run-down, although already an attractive tourist destination. Seeking to flee the political unrest plaguing Geneva at that time, they saw Austrian-ruled Constance as a safe location for manufacturing and chose to settle there after carefully approaching and negotiating with Emperor Joseph II, who granted them many privileges.

A few years later, ‘the Genevans’ made up a good 10% of the city’s roughly 4,000 inhabitants! Göttingen-educated historian and writer Christoph Meiners, who stopped off in Constance on both his trips to Switzerland, claimed not to recognise the city again on his second visit in 1788. Whereas the interior décor in the Gasthof zum Goldenen Adler on the main market square where he stayed during his first visit in 1782 seemed to date back to the time of the Council of Constance, on his second stopover everything appeared brand new. The Adler was now the top place to stay. Like the Krone in Schaffhausen or the Schwert in Zurich. He heard French being spoken everywhere, the streets seemed “much livelier than before”, the buildings were either new or had been renovated. But his contemporary account of his travels also provides a clear-eyed view of the not entirely unproblematic relationship between the locals and the newcomers. The initial euphoria felt by the emigrants did not last for long. By the turn of the century, many of them had already returned to Geneva.

**Indienne à la chaumière. Unknown manufactory. Wooden block print on cotton, 1790–1800.** Swiss National Museum

The Macaire de L’Or family

Not so the Macaire family. Banker and businessman Jean-Jacques Louis Macaire de L’Or was the leading light of the Genevan colony in Constance and the first person to sign up as a member. He set up his first factory for the production of indienne textiles on the premises of the former Dominican Island monastery in 1785; printed cotton fabric was to become one of the main branches of industry in Constance in the 19th century. One year later, he founded the city’s first banking house, which soon numbered Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon’s stepson, and his sister Hortense de Beauharnais, Queen of Holland and mother of Louis Napoléon, among its clientele.

In 1830, one of Jean-Jacques Louis’s sons, David Macaire, became a founding shareholder of the steamship company for Lake Constance and the Rhine, also serving as its first Chairman. It goes without saying that he was motivated by the prospect of improving the means and mode of transport of the textiles produced by Macaire frères – whether that suited the local boatsmen’s guild or not. At the age of 17, his daughter Amélie wed Count Friedrich (known as Fritz) von Zeppelin. It was a love match. The marriage between the witty manufacturer’s daughter and the warm-hearted count was happy. So too was the extremely well-documented childhood of their daughter Eugenie and their two sons Ferdinand and Eberhard at Schloss Girsberg, a manor house in nearby Emmishofen in the canton of Thurgau.

However, the family’s happiness was to last only 18 years. Amélie von Zeppelin died of tuberculosis at the age of 36 ‒ a blow from which Fritz von Zeppelin and the three children would take a long time to recover. Eugenie subsequently became the heart and soul of the family, while Eberhard would go on to turn the former island monastery and indienne manufactory into a luxury hotel, and Ferdinand to develop airships. Two decades later, Ferdinand would become one of the most popular figures in Germany at that time.

The LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin landing at Geneva on 14 September 1930 with the German representatives of the General Assembly of the League of Nations on board. — **The *LZ 127* *Graf Zeppelin* landing at Geneva on 14 September 1930 with the German representatives of the General Assembly of the League of Nations on board.** Swiss National Museum

In short, then, the Genevans, and especially the Macaire family, were a huge impetus in the former diocesan town’s economic and social development. They set up their Calvinist church in the refectory of the erstwhile Dominican monastery, the first time a Protestant religious community had actively worshipped in Constance since the ‘old faith’ of Catholicism had been forcibly re-established in1548. The first child to be born to the Genevan colony in Constance was christened in that very church on 16 April 1786. And given the name Constance. The christening scene was depicted in 1895 by Carl von Häberlin, a German painter of historical subjects, in a large mural adorning the former cloisters of the monastery now transformed into a plush hotel.

He also painted a scene memorialising the Macaire frères indienne manufactory as it was circa 1800, the third from last in a series of eighteen large-scale pictures depicting the history of the island from the time of the prehistoric pile dwellers to the opening of the hotel in 1874. The scene, executed with Keim mineral paints, a brand that had only came onto the market in 1878, shows the jetty in front of the factory where the owner is supervising the loading of bundles of cloth onto a merchant vessel of the kind traditionally used on Lake Constance. In his grey coat and black top hat, the manufacturer cuts a striking figure as he exchanges papers with the ship’s master against a backdrop of cotton cloths hung out to dry after being dyed red.

**Portrait photograph of history painter Carl von Häberlin, early 20th century.** Wikimedia

Carl von Häberlin and Switzerland

Born in Oberesslingen near Stuttgart in 1832, Carl von Häberlin was undoubtedly the most important and productive exponent of late-period history painting in a naturalistic vein in southwestern Germany. His monumental cycle of paintings depicting the history of the former monastery island in Constance is one of the most spectacular, and probably also one of the most visited, oeuvres of its kind. While working on-and-off on the paintings in the Inselhotel from 1887 to 1896, he set up private residence in Schloss Wyden near Ossingen, an area in the canton of Zurich known for its wine. His attention had been drawn to the castle by fellow countryman Julius Motteler, who had organised the first Congress of the German Social Democratic Party there in 1880 while living in exile in Zurich, at a time when the party was banned under Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Laws.

During his stay at Wyden, he also created the murals at Schloss Castell in Tägerwilen (Thurgau) and in the town hall of Stein am Rhein (Schaffhausen), for which he was made an honorary citizen on 25 March 1901, thereby also gaining Swiss citizenship. He also prepared three sketches for the competition to design the murals for the Hall of Arms in the Swiss National Museum in Zurich during the period of its construction from 1893 to 1898. However, the commission was awarded to Ferdinand Hodler, an artist whose completely new style of history painting was both highly expressive and highly unconventional, leading to the longest and most passionately contested quarrel over art Switzerland had ever seen.

Given that he is portrayed as a young man, it is reasonable to assume that this is David Macaire (1774–1849), the grandfather of the man who commissioned the murals, hotel owner and historian Count Eberhard von Zeppelin. The three men hard at work behind Macaire are noticeably strapping; looking at them, it’s hard to believe they were paid a mere pittance for their daily toil of 14 hours or more a day. And the three working-class children playing in the background add an almost idyllic note to the scene. But the reality was different. There is absolutely no sign here of the children supplied by the orphanages and forced to work in the factory from the age of six. It goes without saying that history paintings tell us more about the era in which they were created and about how the patrons who commissioned them saw themselves than about the historical reality of the subjects chosen for depiction. The same can be said of the historiography. But as an artistic depiction of early-industrial activity, placing the hotelier’s family history on view for the numerous well-heeled guests of the Belle Époque era who passed through the former cloisters of the monastery now serving as the hotel foyer, they are truly remarkable.

“Christening in the refectory of the first child born to the Genevan colony, 1786”. Mural by Carl von Häberlin, 1895. — *“Christening in the refectory of the first child born to the Genevan colony, 1786”*. Mural by Carl von Häberlin, 1895. Photo: Felix Graf

“Era of the Macaire frères indienne manufactory, by Royal and Imperial Appointment, circa 1800”. Mural by Carl von Häberlin, 1895. — *“Era of the Macaire frères indienne manufactory, by Royal and Imperial Appointment, circa 1800”*. Mural by Carl von Häberlin, 1895. Photo: Felix Graf

And Guillaume Henri Dufour? – He was born on 15 September 1787, the son of watchmaker Bénédict Dufour and his wife Pernette Valentin, in the Zum Falke building on Wessenbergstrasse dating back to the late Gothic period. His parents had left Geneva in 1782 to escape the political turmoil. Like many other emigrants, although slightly earlier, they returned there in 1789. Henri Dufour maintained ties with the region through his friendship with Prince Louis Napoléon, who had spent much of his childhood at Schloss Arenenberg. Dufour had taught the young Bonaparte from 1830 to 1836 in his guise as engineering instructor at the federal military academy in Thun. Said Louis Napoléon, who knew Constance and the Lower Lake Constance area like the back of his hand, attended the wedding of Amélie Macaire and Friedrich (Fritz) von Zeppelin on the city’s ‘Genevan Island’ – at which he wore the uniform of a Bernese artillery captain.