Au peninsula

Au Peninsula

Native name: Halbinsel Au
Au Peninsula as seen from Felsenegg
Geography
Location	peninsula at Au, Zürich, on Zürichsee lake shore
Area	0.5 km2 (0.19 sq mi)
Administration
Switzerland
Canton	Canton of Zürich
District	Horgen

The Au Peninsula (German: Halbinsel Au) is located on the Swiss Zürichsee lake shore in the municipality of Au, Canton of Zürich.

Au is a peninsula situated on the southwestern Zürichsee lake shore on the slope of the Zimmerberg plateau. In its south, between the headland and the peninsula, a small lake respectively a reed landscape to the north is situated. The area is located in the municipality of Au between Wädenswil and Horgen.

Located on the Au peninsula, the Neolithic site named Wädenswil–Vorder Au was one of the numerous sites of Prehistoric pile dwellings around Zürichsee. At Au numerous pottery and textile finds from the transitional period between the Pfyn and Horgen were excavated, as well as relics of the Bell Beaker culture.

The roughly 0.5 square kilometres (0.19 sq mi) large peninsula is first mentioned in the year 1316 as «Owe» belonging to the commandry of the Knights Hospitaller in Bubikon. Its name may be derived from the German term Au, meaning an "inland island" because its southern small lake. Sold by the Knights Hospitallers in 1550, until 1835 it was a domain of the old city republic of Zürich. The farm Au was acquired by the Swiss General Hans Rudolf Werdmüller (1614–1677) in 1550. The Au peninsula got further literary honor: The German poet (1724–1803) immortalized his 1750s visit in his „Ode an den Zürichsee“ (Ode to the Lake Zürich), and again in 1878 in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's novel about Werdmüller. In 1835 the former city republic, now the Canton of Zürich, sold the Au lands, and so the first restaurant was built on hilltop in 1865/66; it became popular as "Pensions- und Cur-Anstalt Au" (rebuilt in 1957/59 as Landgasthaus) in the 1900s, but it had to be sold for financial reasons. That's why local industrials founded the so-called Au-Consortium in 1911, that bought the middle part of the Au hill respectively those buildings together with the guest house and prevented the idyllic peninsula to be overbuilt and preserved it for public use.