Per Pedal to Poetry: Literary cycling route 03

Starting in Konstanz, the secret capital of Lake Constance, immediately crossing the German border, the cycling route runs along the Swiss shore of the Untersee, with views of the Reichenau monastery island and the Hegau, past the former artist colony Gottlieben to Schloss Arenenberg, where Napoleon’s stepdaughter attracted renowned authors from Byron to Dumas with her literary salons. The route ends in the medieval-picturesque Stein am Rhein and shows the Untersee as a landscape of transit and passage. Unlike the German shore, the Swiss was not only a destination for city refugees and bohemians around 1900 but also a refuge for writers and publishers from the Vormärz and the 1848 revolution facing persecution and repression; a refuge that had to prove itself again during World War I and the Third Reich.