Yachts of the King of Württemberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wilhelm II. , The last king of Württemberg, owned three representative private yachts at the beginning of the 20th century: the motor yacht Kondwiramur and the sailing yachts Skidbladnir and Aluminia . All of them had their berth in the castle harbor of the royal summer residence in Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance .

Kondwiramur

Skidbladnir , the sailing yacht of King Wilhelm II of Württemberg

The elegant saloon motor yacht was built in 1901 by the Swiss shipyard F. Treichler & Cie. (since 1920: Boesch) designed and built in Kilchberg ZH . Its name is borrowed from the Parzival legend . The boat with a white hull in Kravell design was 18.5 m long, 3 m wide and had a draft of 1.1 m; the displacement was 10 t with a maximum of 25 passengers . The luxuriously furnished (half) salon covered almost the entire mahogany deck. The four-cylinder gasoline marine engine from Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft , Bad Cannstatt , with an output of 20 hp was a top technical achievement . The top speed was 17.5 km / h. Her home port was Friedrichshafen , her berth was the castle harbor in front of the king's summer residence, which was still usable at the time .

The motor yacht was used privately and on semi-official occasions by the royal court . A passenger steamship of the "royal class" was used for state representation purposes, from 1913 the Hohentwiel . The further whereabouts are unknown, but in the standard work of German warships , the M / Y Kondwiramur is listed under the heading Yachten und Avisos - Yachts of the Federal Princes , with the note "1921 still available".

Skidbladnir

Aluminia , the motor sailor of Prince zu Wied, was in the castle harbor from 1906 to 1911.

King Wilhelm II was an important sponsor of sailing and often a sailing guest at Graf Zeppelin . In 1905 he acquired the Skidbladnir sailing yacht . The yacht was drawn by the renowned yacht designer Max Oertz and built at his Hamburg shipyard. The gaff rigged cutter had a sail area of ​​130 m 2 , was 16 m long and displaced 7 t. Because of the changing water levels on Lake Constance and the shallow water depth in the castle harbor, the yacht was a keel sword . It was mainly used by Wilhelm II in regattas , which he mostly only observed from his motor yacht.

Until the founding of the Royal Württemberg Yacht Club (KWYC) in Friedrichshafen in 1911, which he significantly supported , the yacht was registered with the Imperial Yacht Club Kiel . In 1915, Wilhelm II donated the yacht to the Red Cross , which it only sold to a businessman from Friedrichshafen in 1917. It changed owner (always KWYC representative) and name several times until it was bought by a sailing school on Lake Ammer in 1936 and converted into a two-masted yawl with a fixed keel . Under the name Albatros , it is still the flagship of the sailing school today .

Aluminia

The motorized sailing yacht Aluminia , originally owned by Wilhelm Fürst zu Wied , was also in the castle harbor. There she was available to the family of the Hereditary Prince zu Wied, who was married to the daughter of Wilhelm II. The yacht, built almost entirely of aluminum by Escher, Wyss & Cie in Zurich , was the property of Wilhelm II from 1905 until it was sold in 1911, but was called "the princely yacht".

Castle harbor

The castle harbor, in which the three royal yachts and a dinghy were moored, can hardly be seen today. The promenade, which was restored in 2010, an oversized landing bridge in the neo-renaissance style, and the 160-meter-long Schlosshafensteg give an idea of ​​the dimensions of the port on the Schlosshorn, which was abandoned in the 1930s. A Lädinen landing site of the Hofen monastery, which had passed into the possession of the Württemberg royal family in 1806 , had been there for centuries . After the expansion into a summer residence, the pier on the protected east side was provided with a pier and in 1872 with gas lanterns before 1848 . A top view from 1890 shows the harbor with two berths separated by an inner pier.

gallery

  • Old landing site at Friedrichshafen Castle in 1839 before the castle harbor was built.

  • A few years later: the western mole of the castle harbor has been built.

  • Former castle harbor in Friedrichshafen around 1910 as seen from the Zeppelin.

  • View from the renovated Schlosshafensteg over the former castle harbor to the Schlosshorn.

  • Strolling bridge of the former castle harbor.

  • Detail of the promenade before the renovation.

  • Kondwiramur in the castle harbor of the summer residence in Friedrichshafen.

Web links

Commons : Schlosshafensteg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ The prefix S.MY is mainly used on contemporary postcards . This designation was only reserved for imperial ships.
  2. ↑ As early as 1866, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin is said to have ordered a sailing yacht from this shipyard for Prince Wilhelm at the time. J. Schuhmacher: The beginnings of sailing on Lake Constance . In: Segeln21
  3. ↑ The information is largely taken from the article Motor boats . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung , Volume 37/38, Issue 16, 1902, pp. 167f. [1] ETH Library [2] .
  4. ↑ Erich Gröner , Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: The German Warships, 1815-1945. Volume 6, p. 202, Verlag Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1989, ISBN 978-3-7637-4805-1
  5. ↑ The claim that the yacht was a gift from Tsar Nicholas II is not substantiated. Skíðblaðnir is the name of a magical ship in Norse mythology.
  6. ^ Archives of the House of Württemberg, Altshausen: Court authorities
  7. ^ Archives of the House of Württemberg, Altshausen: Court authorities
  8. ↑ Christian Meeh: 100 years Württembergischer Yacht Club . In: Stadtjubiläum 2011, p. 16 ( PDF ( Memento from January 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive ))
  9. ↑ The complete old port facility can be seen - perhaps best - on the extremely enlarged map section in front of the Schlosskirche Friedrichshafen on "Google Earth". The shallow, dangerous for Lake Constance shipping, is clearly visible through the extension of the “Schlosshorn” headland to the south, a so-called “mountain”. You can also see remains of the foundation, rows of stakes and boulders . The five nautical symbols No. 37–41 are used to identify the danger point.
  10. ^ Martina Goerlich, Rolf-Dieter Blumer, Janine Butenuth, Sophie Richter: Always on the wall long ... The renovation of the Schlosshafensteg in Friedrichshafen . In: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg , 41st year 2012, issue 1, pp. 15-21 ( PDF ( Memento from January 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive ))