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Constance  Effectively a localized broadening of the River Rhine, which separates Germany from Switzerland, Lake Constance is a popular tourist centre. Its major resort, the historic town of Constance (Konstanz), is to some extent an enclave of Germany surrounded by Switzerland, and lies on the southwestern shore of the lake. | Town in Baden-Württemberg, south Germany, on the section of the River Rhine joining Lake Constance and Lake Untersee, 160 km/100 mi south of Stuttgart; population (2001 est) 77,900. Suburbs stretch across the frontier into Switzerland. Constance has traditional industries such as mechanical engineering, clothing manufacture, and printing, and it has also attracted modern pharmaceutical and computer industries. There is a modern university, and the town is a tourist centre and health spa. It is also a port on Lake Constance. |
| Constance was originally a Celtic, and later a Roman, settlement. In 1183 Frederick I made peace here with the Lombard league (the house in which the peace was signed still exists), and in 1192 it was made a free city of the empire. In 1805 it became part of the state of Baden. |
| There is a fine Romanesque cathedral, begun in 1052, and a Renaissance Rathaus (town hall). Parts of the original city walls remain in the historic Neiderburg quarter. In the Middle Ages the city was famous for its linen industry. |
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| As to the other King, he was really fond of his wife, Queen Constance, but he often grieved her by his thoughtless ways, and in order to punish him for his carelessness, the fairies caused her to die quite suddenly. The destruction of Crispus, a young prince of rare towardness, by Constantinus the Great, his father, was in like manner fatal to his house; for both Constantinus and Constance, his sons, died violent deaths; and Constantius, his other son, did little better; who died indeed of sickness, but after that Julianus had taken arms against him. For the great airships with which Germany attacked New York in her last gigantic effort for world supremacy--before humanity realized that world supremacy was a dream--were the lineal descendants of the Zeppelin airship that flew over Lake Constance in 1906, and of the Lebaudy navigables that made their memorable excursions over Paris in 1907 and 1908. |
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