Steckborn

In the winter of 1312/1313, Reichenau Abbot Diethelm von Castell traveled from the Untersee all the way to Emperor Henry VII's military camp near Florence to petition for market privileges for Steckborn. On January 26, 1313, the emperor issued a charter granting Steckborn the right to hold a weekly market every Thursday. The original charter document is preserved in the cantonal archive in Frauenfeld. Merchants traveling to Steckborn's market received imperial protection, with a penalty of 10 marks of gold for anyone hindering the town's market privileges. The charter gave Steckborn the three defining features of a medieval city: weekly market, city rights, and fortification walls.

The shallow shores of the Untersee around Steckborn were home to Neolithic and Bronze Age pile-dwelling settlements built on wooden platforms raised above the water on stilts, dating from roughly 5000 to 500 BC. These are among the 111 sites inscribed as the UNESCO World Heritage Site 'Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps' (designated June 27, 2011). The oxygen-poor lake-bed conditions preserved organic materials: food remains, wooden tools, textiles, weapons, and jewelry thousands of years old. Discoveries from Lake Constance sites include some of the oldest wooden wheels in the world (around 3,400 BC) and the oldest textiles in Europe (around 3,000 BC).

For roughly 100 years, Steckborn was a center of bobbin lace-making (Kloeppelei), a delicate textile craft using multiple threads wound onto spindle-shaped bobbins, crossed in pairs and twisted together. Lace traders operated from the Haus zur Glocke, a mercerie (notions shop) in the old town, bringing raw materials and patterns called 'Kloeppelbriefe' to home workers who needed supplementary income. The finished lace was sold onward, with Steckborn's lace-makers collaborating with the hat industry in Wohlen (AG). The craft declined with industrialization but is preserved in the Turmhof museum's collection. The great fire of 1668 destroyed large parts of the medieval town center.

In 1890, Karl Friedrich Gegauf (1860-1926) moved to Steckborn and opened a workshop for his invention: a monogram embroidery machine. On February 27, 1892, the Patent Office granted him patent No. 4670 for the world's first hemstitch sewing machine, capable of 100 stitches per minute. He set up production in the old Feldbach Convent buildings. By 1900, the workshop employed 70-80 people. In 1895, a fire destroyed the main building and church of Feldbach Monastery -- Gegauf's sewing machine prototype was famously the only thing rescued from the workshop. After his death in 1926, his sons Fritz and Gustav developed the first Bernina household sewing machine, entering production by end of 1932.

The Turmhof (tower house) is Steckborn's most iconic building, a fortified residential tower built around 1282 by Reichenau Abbot Albrecht von Ramstein. It originally served as the seat of the Reichenau abbots when visiting their mainland possessions. A coat-of-arms tower was added in 1602. The building passed to the city of Steckborn in 1639, served as a school from 1856 to 1864, and has housed a local history museum since 1937. The Museum im Turmhof spans three floors covering 6,000 years of history -- from Neolithic pile dwellers to Romans, Alemanni, and modern times. It features stove building, bobbin lace-making, and a Bernina sewing machine collection.

The Wacht- und Pulverturm (Watch and Powder Tower) is a medieval defensive tower on the northwestern Seepromenade, first mentioned in 1451, with a foundation of large glacial boulders. It was restored in 1907. The tower served a dual purpose: as a watchtower scanning the Untersee for approaching threats and as a powder magazine storing gunpowder and munitions. The Seepromenade connects the old town's landmarks with views across the Untersee to Germany's Hoeri peninsula. Steckborn's medieval town plan forms an isosceles triangle with the parish church at the apex and the lakefront as the base.

Kloster Feldbach was a Cistercian nunnery founded on a small peninsula just east of Steckborn's old town. In 1252, nobleman Kuno von Feldbach assigned his castle with fields and vineyard to a sister association from Constance. In 1253, Abbess Sophia moved with 20 nuns to Feldbach, where they adopted the strict Cistercian rule. The abbesses proved clever administrators, building up their own judicial authority over surrounding places. An early Gothic monastery church was likely built around 1327. The monastery was abolished in 1848 by the Thurgau Grand Council; in 1853, the remaining nuns (5 choir women and 4 lay sisters) moved to Gwiggen in Vorarlberg. Today the site is the See & Park Hotel Feldbach.

After Karl Friedrich Gegauf's death in 1926, his sons Fritz (1893-1980) and Gustav developed the first household sewing machine, naming it 'Bernina' after the Bernina Pass. It entered production by the end of 1932. In 1938, the first Bernina zigzag machine was introduced; in 1945, the world's first portable zigzag sewing machine with a free arm was launched. By mid-1963, one million Bernina zigzag machines had been manufactured in Steckborn. Today, Bernina still maintains its headquarters and main factory in Steckborn -- a remarkable example of a global brand rooted in a small Swiss town of fewer than 4,000 residents.