Meinrad’s kinsmen, Abbots Hatto and Erlebald, had run the abbey school on Reichenau Island, in Lake Constance, where Meinrad had been educated, became a monk and been ordained a priest.

After some years at Reichenau, and at a dependent priory on Lake Zurich, he had embraced an eremitical life and established his hermitage on the slopes of Etzel Mountain.

Meinrad died on January 21, 861, at the hands of two robbers who thought that the hermit had some precious treasures, but during the past eighty years the place has never been without one or more hermits emulating his example.

One of them, named Eberhard, previously Provost of Strassburg, erects in 934 a monastery and church here, of which he becomes first abbot.