Have you ever wondered
how "Kastanienbaum"
chestnut tree in English"
got its name?

It is an unusal name even if you take into account the numbers of places named after trees. There is a story that answers where the name Kastanienbaum originates. Interestingly, for IMI the story concerns an act of hospitality

On an autumn evening in this area amid a terrible thunderstorm 2 foreigners were travelling through. Wet through the skin and feeling very cold, they searched for shelter. They came across a farmhouse and knocked on the door. The farmers wife took pity on them and invited them in, and prepared a meal for them and place to rest. The next morning with the storm abated the foreigners resumed their journey and thanks the farmers wife for her hospitality with a pair of chestnuts. The farmers wife planted the chestnuts in the ground and in the spring two young trees appeared and soon the whole peninsula of Kastanienbaum was covered in chestnut trees - hence the name.

It seems that this story happened in a late medival period, where it still was a time of great change around lake Lucerne with the opening up of the St Gothard Pass linking northern Switzerland with southern Switzerland and Italy. It was still an arduous journey and until the advent if the steam ferries and the arrival of tourists some six hundred years later travelers had to be rowed across the lake, sometimes using sails, a journey that took many hours. Those who wanted to save money for the ferry had to walk around the lake, and this may be what our mysterious chestnut bearing foreigners were trying to do. Since the pass was the most direct route north and south there would have neen more foreigners passing through the region than in earlier periods. The opening of the pass would not only have brought more trade into the area, but would have also enhanced Lucerne's strategic significance - hence the great walls around the city. The Austrians, under the Habsburg, wanted to control the region and their pressure led eventually to the formation of the Swiss Confederation. It was beside the lake in the Rütli meadow, that legend has it that it on August 1. 1291, representatives from the three forest cantons - Uri, Schwyz and Nidwalden - met in secret to withstand Habsburg repression and to sign a pact of eternal mutual defence, thereby laying the foundations of the Swiss Confederation. Compiled by M Hitchcock