Event archive

On 08/01/2021 at 6.30 p.m. in the courtyard of the Kulturzentrum am Münster, the exhibition "Fabric. Blood. Gold. On the Traces of Constance's Colonial Era" will be inaugurated. It was prepared as a cooperation project of the University of Constance, the HTWG (Eva-Maria Heinrich) and the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern (Frank Forell) together with the City of Constance (International City of Constance Office and Cultural Office). It can be viewed in the Richental -Saal (Kulturzentrum) until 22 October 2021.

The date of the opening was not chosen by chance: Exactly 500 years ago in August, Mexico-Tenochtitlan fell into the hands of the Spanish colonial power. Gold and silver, dyes and cotton, sugar and pearls were extracted on the basis of plunder or slave labour and shipped to Europe from then on. It is astonishing that only five years after the Conquista of Mexico, the first Constancers travelled to the Caribbean to establish trading bases of the Welser Company for gold, cloth and slaves. In 1528 Venezuela became "Welser country". Which families took part in the enterprise, what the networks and routes of the traders looked like, what they discussed with Cortés and the Spanish king and how many people from Africa and South America they had abducted and sold: The exhibition likes to tell all this from a local perspective in the context of the Conquista story.

For the first time, the exhibition will shows the original letter (1535) of a Lindau resident, Titus Neukomm, from Venezuela in the manuscript of the Neukomm Chronicle, several valuable printed works on nautics, cosmography and herbal medicine of the early 16th century, as well as a large number of letters, coins, contracts and pictures as reproductions, which document the connection between Constanceans, St. Galleners and Lindauers with the early Spanish colonial period in a coherent way as colonial history and the history of slavery by traders from Lake Constance. An audio app will make excerpts from the letters audible.

For more information visit: https://konstanzer-kolonialzeit.de/