Memorial event Shadows over beautiful landscape

Shadows over Beautiful Landscape

On Monday, November 10, 2025, at 7:30 PM, Oswald Burger will report at the Jacob Picard Memorial about his decades-long work on remembrance for the Überlingen tunnel. It all began with Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who was born in 1838 on the island near Constance, in the former Dominican monastery where his family operated a textile factory. Zeppelin became a soldier and officer and developed the idea during the wars of the 19th century that one must be able to fly behind enemy lines to strike the enemy more effectively than at the front. To this end, he began building airships in Friedrichshafen starting in 1900. Although several of these were used for this purpose, all were shot down in World War I. The four companies Zeppelin Airship Construction, Maybach Motor Works, Gear Factory, and finally Dornier Aircraft Works had to sustain themselves with harmless products in the 1920s or they relocated abroad. However, since the beginning of the Nazi regime, all four companies resumed the production of armaments. Many foreigners were brought to Lake Constance for this purpose, including recruited laborers, prisoners of war, and eventually concentration camp inmates. When the Allies began to destroy these companies through bombing raids in World War II, alternative locations had to be sought throughout the Lake Constance region. After the heart of Friedrichshafen's industry was ultimately destroyed, it was decided to relocate the factories underground to make them bomb-proof. This seemed possible in the molasse rocks along the Überlingen lakeshore. From the autumn of 1944 to the spring of 1945, 800 concentration camp inmates built a kilometer-long tunnel system, where the production of armaments was supposed to begin on May 1, 1945. However, this was not to happen, as the French army marched into Überlingen on April 25, 1945. The Überlingen historian Oswald Burger tells the story of the armaments industry on the northern shore of Lake Constance as well as that of the people who built it and those who fell victim to it.