by MJ Malleck//
Today I’ve pulled a blank souvenir postcard depicting the town of Lucerne and Mount Pilatus in the distance. The town of Lucerne sits on the fourth largest lake in Switzerland, near to Mt. Pilatus, where legend says a dragon once lived.
Perhaps the visitors took the 4,618-meter-long cogwheel
railway from Alpnachstad (a village close to Lucerne by train) to the mountain peak.
With a gradient of 48% (meaning it gains 48 feet in elevation for every 100
feet forward, disregarding the incline) it is the steepest cogwheel railway in
the world. When engineer Eduard Locher suggested putting a railway on Mount
Pilatus he was mocked, but his masterpiece was exhibited at the 1889 World Fair
in Paris and is still in use today. He cleverly devised his system using two
horizontally rotating cogwheels. Most of these systems (also called rack
railway, or rack-and-pinion) put the toothed rail underneath the train, between
the running rails. On flat surfaces, friction is enough.
You can catch the train at the station in Lucerne, and
if you like, take the cableways and gondolas to Kriens, another city close by.
This costs 85.20 CHF. CHF stands for Swiss Franc, and the current exchange rate
is $1.38 CDN Canadian.
Here’s a National Geographic 3-minute film about the
train:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTSBRl8rbgo
While in Lucerne our visitors might have seen something
that we can not see today, all of the original 17th century
paintings on the interior of the wooden Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge). Unfortunately, a
fire in 1993 destroyed two-thirds of the paintings (who doesn’t protect a
wooden bridge with such rare treasures from fire I’m asking myself, and then
thinking about how Notre Dame burned.) The bridge is the oldest surviving truss
bridge in the world, though now is only 204.7 metres long, down from its
original length of 270 metres.
The
wooden boards were painted by Catholic painter Hans Heinrich Wägmann, each
panel sponsored by a city councillor to depict local history or promote the
church. Only 30 of the 147 that existed in the ‘70s have been restored since
the fire.
The
photograph we see was taken by a local photographer. After much on-line
sleuthing, I discovered that Franz Schneider, born January 1, 1898 (a New Year’s
baby!) was a pioneer of color photography and Swiss landscape photography. He
ran a photography shop from 1930 to 1965 on Weggisgasse in Lucerne and founded
his art and map publishing company there in 1948. It is said he shaped the
image of Switzerland abroad, with his landscape paintings and postcard views of
Lucerne and Central Switzerland. He retired in 1965 to Piedmont and died October
22, 1974 (perhaps the year my postcard was bought!) The Lucerne City Archives
hold part of his estate.
At
an international auction site, I found two photographs he took of the beach in
Lucerne in 1934 (Gelatin silver prints.) It was noted how excellent he was at perspective; able to make
everything “true in their entirety” from the clouds in the sky to the distant “glacier
massif” to the “foaming flower crowns” in the foreground. The photos sold in
2017 for $543 CHF.
At
this website you can see a photograph of Franz working with a developing tray.
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