In 1556, a document reports a very tragic incident in the Staad tavern, through which the family of the business leader Hans Bruder was plunged into considerable excitement and sadness. 

Among the travelers who were brought over from Meersburg by the Staader boatmen on December 5, 1556 at 10 o’clock in the evening, there was also a citizen of Ulm named Daniel Schreiber, who looked for and found a night’s lodging in the manor house.

When he went to bed, he suddenly heard “something going on” in his bedroom. He jumped from the bed, pulled off the leather, and stabbed blindly in the dark. It was neither a robber nor a ghost that the apparently somewhat frightened young man from Ulm met, but the Bärbele, the host’s 12-year-old daughter, who collapsed fatally injured.

Instead of regretting his mistake, the nasty guest blamed the landlord and his dead child with abuse and suspicion.

The criminal case came before the court of Count von Fürstenberg, who had high jurisdiction in the area of the Kommende Mainau. The matter turned out to be successful for the perpetrator. Little thieves were literally hanged then; but rich killers were let go with a fine.

The father of this Daniel, who obviously thought he was in the lions’ den, Hans Schreiber, undertook to pay 70 guilders to the parents of the slain. Daniel himself was ordered not to enter the Staader inn again.