A text by Markus Stier
When it starts to move, hissing and hissing, when the huge piston rods slowly move down the slideways, when the mighty crank drive stretches and begins to rotate, it looks like an ancient dragon coming to life deep in the belly of an iron cave. And it is still breathing fire.
A rainy morning in Hard on Lake Constance, the steel monster is still asleep. Felix Brandauer lovingly strokes the high-pressure cylinder and feels it with the two machinists: "When it's running properly, it's 36 to 38 degrees down here and it's really loud." The tamer of this giant beast is a slender man who only just towers over the large steering wheel in the wheelhouse, which two men used to have to lift in heavy weather. Brandauer speaks in a low voice as he guides us through the ship, as if he doesn't want to wake the monster and because he is not someone who wants to make a fuss. He has only put on his captain's hat for the photo.
The way to the "Hohentwiel"
He likes the silence, the whisper of the wind in trees or fluttering cloth. Brandauer likes sailing and wanted to become a boat builder. He applied all the way to Brazil, but who takes someone seriously who comes from the Black Forest, where the nearest coast is a day's journey away? He became a carpenter until the financial crisis put him on the street. In 2011, he got a job on the "Hohentwiel", walked through the ship in amazement like the visitors he shows around today, and asked in the face of this polished splendour in mahogany and brass: What is there to repair here? For him, it was just luck. The fact that the ship still exists is a miracle.
She could have died her first death on a spring night around eight decades ago. On 27 April 1944, a British bomber squadron burnt its sister ship, the "Friedrichshafen", to ashes and the "Württemberg" sank into the sea, badly hit. The "Hohentwiel" - warned just in time - waited out the inferno in the harbour of Constance. Shortly afterwards, the "Unerschütterliche" returned to service. In 1943 alone, she had travelled around 53,000 kilometres. But the paintwork is long gone, the chic furnishings of the early days have long since been removed, the gleaming white has been painted over with olive green camouflage and the royal coat of arms has been melted down due to a general lack of materials.
Where does the name come from?
When she was put into service on 1 May 1913, she was the showpiece of the Royal Württemberg Lake Constance Fleet. She took her name from Singen's local mountain, whose castle on the almost 700-metre-high summit withstood five sieges during the Thirty Years' War alone. Kaiser Wilhelm II inherited his father's enthusiasm for technology and progress. The industrial revolution was a century old and the machine age was in full swing. Almost every steam engine of the time is unique. With a construction time of almost three years, further innovations are already flowing into the next one.
The "Hohentwiel" stretches its bow just as vertically and straight into the waves as the large Atlantic liners and also shines in white with a black painted underwater hull. On the oceans, ocean liners race to be the fastest across the water. At 29.13 kilometres per hour, the 950 hp machine from the Zurich-based company Escher Wyss already exceeds the target of 28 kilometres per hour during the acceptance run. Anything seems possible. Man drives a car and a motorbike, and he flies. In July 1913, Count Ferdinand Zeppelin, the father of airships, celebrates his 75th birthday on the "Hohentwiel". The chic semi-saloon steamer not only provides a scheduled service, it also serves as a royal party location. In August, Wilhelm invites the Saxon King Friedrich August III to a steam party lasting several hours.
But the early glamour faded after just a few years, the First World War was lost, the empire was history and Württemberg no longer had a king. Even in the "Roaring Twenties", travelling across the lake was no longer an elitist pleasure. With mass tourism on the rise, the classy furnishings were extended and the number of passengers increased to 800. Twenty years after the launch, passengers now travel second class in the once chic saloon. After the Second Great War, she steamed under the tricolour, serving as a floating casemate for the French occupying forces, painted a peaceful white once again.
In the late fifties, the "Hohentwiel" is already an elderly lady, the age of steam is on its last legs. In June 1962, her last hour seemed to have come, but an explosion in the shipyard of her successor, the "München", gave her a reprieve. The extended period of service ends in August when the cast housing of the start-up valve, which had already been welded in a makeshift manner, finally breaks. The machine is silent.
A new home for the "Hohentwiel"
The Bregenz Sailing Club takes her across the border to Austria. They needed a new clubhouse and saved them from being scrapped. They tackle the paddlewheels with cutting torches, and their housings are now used for storage. There is soon a waste water tank in the engine room and rubbish on the crankcase. Felix Brandauer remembers: "It blew my parents in there once during a sailing trip." After the storm, they are glad to have dry clothes, but also shocked at the state of the barge. The pride of the Swabian Sea had become an eyesore. When the club restaurant closes in the summer of 1984 for hygiene and safety reasons, its fate seems to be sealed. But things turned out differently. "When my parents came back to the ship a few years ago, they didn't recognise it," says Brandauer as he leads us through the forecastle, the "most aisled part of the ship", as he calls the saloon, which is made entirely of mahogany and was only a cargo hold even in the golden age. He asks for indulgence that the engine telegraph on the port wing has not been polished after the mixed weather of the last few days. 40 years ago it was rotten and rusty, now the captain stands on an immaculate upper deck made of pitch pine. To protect the parquet flooring, shoe heels must be at least two centimetres by two centimetres.
Even the most well-meaning made a damning judgement when they saw the remains of the "Hohentwiel": a pile of scrap. And yet nobody wants to scrap her. Engineer Reinhard Kloser's heart has not stopped bleeding since he saw the ailing ship at the reserve pier in Bregenz in 1963. Who is going to stop this man who, as a 26-year-old, refloated two steamships that had been mothballed for 20 years in ten days for a Hamburg shipping company and ferried them from Oregon to Mexico? Kloser joins the newly founded International Lake Constance Maritime Museum Association, develops a concept and gathers specialists around him. Lindau District Administrator Klaus Henninger collects money. It helps that three countries meet at Lake Constance. The International Lake Constance Conference (IBK) buys the "Hohentwiel" and promises to donate half of the 4.8 million marks needed to rebuild it. Many companies around the lake are infected by the enthusiasm. Dornier's training workshop builds a new rudder system, while apprentices at ZF make new oil drippers. Some parts are smuggled across the water by "short official channels", some companies never write an invoice.
Cultural asset becomes a star
The wind has changed. What was scrap iron yesterday is now nostalgia, what is no longer contemporary is now a cultural asset. Around 30 paddle steamers still float on the lakes of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The initial idea of turning the "Hohentwiel" into a floating travelling exhibition to be towed from port to port finds few supporters. The plan was quickly realised: She should sail again. Few believed it would succeed, but in 1990 it did. "It takes eight hours of maintenance for one hour's journey," says Brandauer. Despite all the effort - the ship makes a profit. The "Hohentwiel" is now a star that James Bond has already visited. The ship made a brief appearance in "Quantum of Solace" in 2008.
Felix Brandauer actually only wanted to stay for a while, but the ship took him in, accepted him and paired him up: his Vroni signed on in the on-board restaurant in 2011. They hit it off at a fireworks display in the summer. "On-board relationships were actually frowned upon. We tried to muddle through," says Brandauer, although everyone up to the operations manager had long known about it. The young couple would never have thought of getting married on the "Hohentwiel". "We couldn't afford it," says Brandauer. Today, a ticket with a five-course meal from Heino Huber's gourmet kitchen costs 145 euros. At least there was a champagne reception on the "Hohentwiel" in June 2018, which the company paid for. The operating company Historische Schifffahrt Bodensee (HSB) had bigger plans for the man who actually only wanted to stay for a year. Brandauer has been operations manager since 2023. Even before that, he was encouraged to obtain his captain's licence. Since then, he has been organising weddings himself. These are not legally binding, but are very popular.
Hardly anyone ever returns to the registry office where they got married, and quite a few of those married on the "Hohentwiel" regularly return to the "scene of the crime", on whose flanks the motto "Fearless and faithful" is once again emblazoned under the Lion of Württemberg. The "Hohentwiel" is not only a witness to a marriage, the immortal is also a mourning companion in the event of death. For her 38-year-old captain, the ship became a member of the family, even though the christening of the little daughter took place on the association's second ship, the 15 years younger Art Deco motor ship "Oesterreich", for cost reasons.
Brandauer drives them both. The "Oesterreich" is much smoother to steer, it is much quieter on board. And yet: "My heart beats more for the 'Hohentwiel'." Not because the mooring manoeuvre in Friedrichshafen in seven Beaufort is more spectacular with the paddle steamer, but because the steamboat does something to people. "Many of those who come on board are stressed by everyday life. And then you watch them relax more and more." t can hardly be because of the silence. One woman complained about the noise of the hissing monster and initially wanted to sit further away from the boiler. She became a regular. Perhaps it is the gravity and the warmth of the 51-tonne engine in the middle of the ship that recalibrates its surroundings with its heartbeat of 22 crankshaft revolutions per minute, with its mass and composure, rotating unwaveringly and for all to see.
Open crankcases are not uncommon on paddle steamers. Apart from the visual spectacle, the heat can be dissipated much better. However, on many ships, the drive is now covered, with at least one plexiglass pane separating the engine and people. On the "Hohentwiel", they are fighting for a clear view of the technology despite constantly tightening rules and regulations. Felix Brandauer is convinced: "If the engine were no longer visible, it would take away some of the ship's soul."
She is not just a ship
She is not just a ship, she is an organism. In the cold of winter, she contracts so tightly that the doors no longer want to open. Brandauer swears you can even smell the cold. When they warm up "the cold block" again in spring after half a year of silence, when the smell of oil and soot dispels the mustiness, a leaden burden falls away from everyone. Then the machine speaks to him. "But unfortunately only about its aches and pains," says Brandauer with a grin. When the starboard paddlewheel makes another knock, he replies: "Yes, I know, we have to change the bearing."
In Hard, it's not spring when they switch off the heating at home, but when smoke billows out of the ship's chimney again. No one has been shovelling coal since the restoration. The "Hohentwiel" now burns light, low-sulphur heating oil. From the beginning of May to October, she goes out on the lake five times a week. The engine draws dust, rust and water. It has to be moved to stay fit. Felix Brandauer would still like to build sailing boats. He now knows enough people in the industry that he no longer has to convince anyone that forest dwellers can also build boats. "But who knows? Maybe I'll be here in the wheelhouse for the next 20 years."
Ship data
- Length over everything: 56,84 m
- Width over everything: 13,00 m
- Max. Draught: 1,60 m
- Displacement: 365 t
- Drive: 2-cylinder compound steam engine
- Performance: 950 PSi at 62 rpm
- Maximum speed: 16.7 kn (31 km/h)
- travelling speed: 10 kn
- Seating below deck: 170, on deck 130
- Home harbour: Hard near Bregenz (Austria); charter and themed trips with and without food from the beginning of May to the beginning of October
- Info and bookings: www.hs-bodensee.eu
