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The Grand Spas of Central Europe

A History of Intrigue, Politics, Art, and Healing

David Clay Large

The Grand Spas of Central Europe leads readers on an irresistible tour through the grand spa towns of Central Europe—fabled places like Baden-Baden, Bad Ems, Bad Gastein, Karlsbad, and Marienbad. Noted historian David Clay Large follows the grand spa story from Greco-Roman antiquity to the present, focusing especially on the years between the French Revolution and World War II, a period in which the major Central European Kurorte (“cure-towns”) reached their peak of influence and then slipped into decline.

Written with verve and affection, the book explores the grand spa towns, which in their prime were an equivalent of today’s major medical centers, rehab retreats, golf resorts, conference complexes, fashion shows, music festivals, and sexual hideaways—all rolled into one. Conventional medicine being quite primitive through most of this era, people went to the spas in hopes of curing everything from cancer to gout. But often as not “curists” also went to play, to be entertained, and to socialize. In their heyday the grand spas were hotbeds of cultural creativity, true meccas of the arts. High-level politics was another grand spa specialty, with statesmen descending on the
Kurorte to negotiate treaties, craft alliances, and plan wars.

This military scheming was just one aspect of a darker side to the grand spa story, one rife with nationalistic rivalries, ethnic hatred, and racial prejudice. The grand spas, it turns out, were microcosms of changing sociopolitical realities—not at all the “timeless” oases of harmony they often claimed to be.
The Grand Spas of Central Europe holds up a gilt-framed but clear-eyed mirror to the ever-changing face of European society—dimples, warts, and all.


  • Details
  • Details
  • Author
  • Author
  • TOC
  • TOC
  • Reviews
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Features
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 476 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-1-4422-2236-6 • Hardback • October 2015 • $47.00 • (£36.00)
Subjects: History / Europe / General, Social Science / Regional Studies, Social Science / World / Europe
David Clay Large is a senior fellow at the Institute of European Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and professor of history at the Fromm Institute, University of San Francisco. He has also taught at Smith College, Yale University, and Montana State University. Among his many books are Berlin, Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936, and Munich1972: Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph at the Olympic Games. Large divides his time between San Francisco and Bozeman, Montana.
Introduction

Chapter 1: Spas and Spa Culture from the Greco-Roman World to the Grand Tour
The Ancient West
Decline and Resurrection
The Grand Tour
Chapter 2: Baden-Baden: The “Summer Capital of Europe”
Becoming Baden-Baden
Faites Votre Jeu: The Age of Bénazet
August Granville’s Baden-Baden
The “Jewish Question”
Getting There
The Revolutions of 1848–1849
Chapter 3: Muses in the Water
Two Titans at the Fountains: Goethe and Beethoven
Scribble, Squander, Soak: Romantic-Era Writers in Baden-Baden
The Sound of Music
Chapter 4: Roulettenburg: Russian Writers at the Grand German Spas
Troubled in Soul (and Bowels): Nikolai Gogol in Baden-Baden
Ivan Turgenev’s Path to the West
Turgenev versus Tolstoy
Ménage à Trois on the Oos
Fedor Dostoevsky in German Spa Land
Showdown in Baden-Baden
Do Svidaniya to Deutschland
Chapter 5: Politics on the Promenade
A Line in the Water
The German Question(s)
Five Balls over the Waters: Bismarck’s Alliance System
Vicky, Willy, Nicky, Bertie, and Franz Josef
Chapter 6: Modernization and Its Discontents
Innovations
Medicalization: “It’s Not Just about the Waters Anymore!”
A Jewish Space
Taking the Waters with Marx/Twain
Chapter 7: Trouble in Paradise: Spa-Town Life from World War I to the Triumph of Hitler
The Grand Spas at War
German Spa Towns and the Weimar Republic
Rump Austria
Slouching toward Berlin: Karlsbad and Marienbad in the Twenties and Thirties
Chapter 8: Brown Waters: Grand Spas under the Third Reich
Nazis and Spas
“Germany’s Visiting Card”
“Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer”
A Coda: Badenheim 1939
Wartime
Chapter 9: A New Beginning
Postwar
Recovery
Epilogue: The Grand Spas Today

Acknowledgments
Principal Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading
Index
About the Author
[Clay Large's] account is spirited and entertaining.
— New York Review of Books


With a focus on the grand spas of Germany and Habsburg Austria, the author of this book provides an engrossing and entertaining history of their development as centers of healing and as hubs of social, cultural, and political maneuvering. His anecdotes about famous cultural figures taking the waters lend fresh insight into their influence and personalities.


— Historian


With scintillating wit and a storyteller's élan, David Large is the perfect guide to the colorful history of Europe's spa culture. This is serious scholarship leavened with delicious gossip about spa celebrities, from Beethoven and Tolstoy to Karl Marx and Mark Twain.

— Adrienne Mayor, author of The Poison King and The Amazons


In this learned, thoroughly researched, and elegant study, the distinguished Central European historian David Large begins our grand tour of spas with Greek and Roman bathing rituals, carrying his fascinating story into the turn of the twentieth century.
— John Merriman, Charles Seymour Professor of History, Yale University


There is no better, more mischievous, more companionable guide to German history than David Clay Large. Once again he has written a book that draws on deep expertise, deep research, a keen knowledge of social texture, and yet reads like a guilty pleasure. The history of the spas reveals modern Europeans wrapped only in towels.

— David Quammen, author of The Song of the Dodo and Spillover


This absorbing book is just as diverting and delightful as the places it chronicles once were. Large writes with verve and style, and he knows how to put vivid characters and vignettes to the service of important historical points. An altogether arresting and rewarding overview of modern European history through an unconventional and entertaining lens.

— Peter Hayes, Northwestern University


Only comprehensive history of Central European Spas in any language

First major study of grand European spas in English

Based on original research and personal experience

Engaging style and accessible prose

Excellent historical guide for visits to grand European spas


The Grand Spas of Central Europe

A History of Intrigue, Politics, Art, and Healing

Cover Image
Hardback
Summary
Summary
  • The Grand Spas of Central Europe leads readers on an irresistible tour through the grand spa towns of Central Europe—fabled places like Baden-Baden, Bad Ems, Bad Gastein, Karlsbad, and Marienbad. Noted historian David Clay Large follows the grand spa story from Greco-Roman antiquity to the present, focusing especially on the years between the French Revolution and World War II, a period in which the major Central European Kurorte (“cure-towns”) reached their peak of influence and then slipped into decline.

    Written with verve and affection, the book explores the grand spa towns, which in their prime were an equivalent of today’s major medical centers, rehab retreats, golf resorts, conference complexes, fashion shows, music festivals, and sexual hideaways—all rolled into one. Conventional medicine being quite primitive through most of this era, people went to the spas in hopes of curing everything from cancer to gout. But often as not “curists” also went to play, to be entertained, and to socialize. In their heyday the grand spas were hotbeds of cultural creativity, true meccas of the arts. High-level politics was another grand spa specialty, with statesmen descending on the
    Kurorte to negotiate treaties, craft alliances, and plan wars.

    This military scheming was just one aspect of a darker side to the grand spa story, one rife with nationalistic rivalries, ethnic hatred, and racial prejudice. The grand spas, it turns out, were microcosms of changing sociopolitical realities—not at all the “timeless” oases of harmony they often claimed to be.
    The Grand Spas of Central Europe holds up a gilt-framed but clear-eyed mirror to the ever-changing face of European society—dimples, warts, and all.


Details
Details
  • Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
    Pages: 476 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
    978-1-4422-2236-6 • Hardback • October 2015 • $47.00 • (£36.00)
    Subjects: History / Europe / General, Social Science / Regional Studies, Social Science / World / Europe
Author
Author
  • David Clay Large is a senior fellow at the Institute of European Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and professor of history at the Fromm Institute, University of San Francisco. He has also taught at Smith College, Yale University, and Montana State University. Among his many books are Berlin, Nazi Games: The Olympics of 1936, and Munich1972: Tragedy, Terror, and Triumph at the Olympic Games. Large divides his time between San Francisco and Bozeman, Montana.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Introduction

    Chapter 1: Spas and Spa Culture from the Greco-Roman World to the Grand Tour
    The Ancient West
    Decline and Resurrection
    The Grand Tour
    Chapter 2: Baden-Baden: The “Summer Capital of Europe”
    Becoming Baden-Baden
    Faites Votre Jeu: The Age of Bénazet
    August Granville’s Baden-Baden
    The “Jewish Question”
    Getting There
    The Revolutions of 1848–1849
    Chapter 3: Muses in the Water
    Two Titans at the Fountains: Goethe and Beethoven
    Scribble, Squander, Soak: Romantic-Era Writers in Baden-Baden
    The Sound of Music
    Chapter 4: Roulettenburg: Russian Writers at the Grand German Spas
    Troubled in Soul (and Bowels): Nikolai Gogol in Baden-Baden
    Ivan Turgenev’s Path to the West
    Turgenev versus Tolstoy
    Ménage à Trois on the Oos
    Fedor Dostoevsky in German Spa Land
    Showdown in Baden-Baden
    Do Svidaniya to Deutschland
    Chapter 5: Politics on the Promenade
    A Line in the Water
    The German Question(s)
    Five Balls over the Waters: Bismarck’s Alliance System
    Vicky, Willy, Nicky, Bertie, and Franz Josef
    Chapter 6: Modernization and Its Discontents
    Innovations
    Medicalization: “It’s Not Just about the Waters Anymore!”
    A Jewish Space
    Taking the Waters with Marx/Twain
    Chapter 7: Trouble in Paradise: Spa-Town Life from World War I to the Triumph of Hitler
    The Grand Spas at War
    German Spa Towns and the Weimar Republic
    Rump Austria
    Slouching toward Berlin: Karlsbad and Marienbad in the Twenties and Thirties
    Chapter 8: Brown Waters: Grand Spas under the Third Reich
    Nazis and Spas
    “Germany’s Visiting Card”
    “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer”
    A Coda: Badenheim 1939
    Wartime
    Chapter 9: A New Beginning
    Postwar
    Recovery
    Epilogue: The Grand Spas Today

    Acknowledgments
    Principal Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading
    Index
    About the Author
Reviews
Reviews
  • [Clay Large's] account is spirited and entertaining.
    — New York Review of Books


    With a focus on the grand spas of Germany and Habsburg Austria, the author of this book provides an engrossing and entertaining history of their development as centers of healing and as hubs of social, cultural, and political maneuvering. His anecdotes about famous cultural figures taking the waters lend fresh insight into their influence and personalities.


    — Historian


    With scintillating wit and a storyteller's élan, David Large is the perfect guide to the colorful history of Europe's spa culture. This is serious scholarship leavened with delicious gossip about spa celebrities, from Beethoven and Tolstoy to Karl Marx and Mark Twain.

    — Adrienne Mayor, author of The Poison King and The Amazons


    In this learned, thoroughly researched, and elegant study, the distinguished Central European historian David Large begins our grand tour of spas with Greek and Roman bathing rituals, carrying his fascinating story into the turn of the twentieth century.
    — John Merriman, Charles Seymour Professor of History, Yale University


    There is no better, more mischievous, more companionable guide to German history than David Clay Large. Once again he has written a book that draws on deep expertise, deep research, a keen knowledge of social texture, and yet reads like a guilty pleasure. The history of the spas reveals modern Europeans wrapped only in towels.

    — David Quammen, author of The Song of the Dodo and Spillover


    This absorbing book is just as diverting and delightful as the places it chronicles once were. Large writes with verve and style, and he knows how to put vivid characters and vignettes to the service of important historical points. An altogether arresting and rewarding overview of modern European history through an unconventional and entertaining lens.

    — Peter Hayes, Northwestern University


Features
Features
  • Only comprehensive history of Central European Spas in any language

    First major study of grand European spas in English

    Based on original research and personal experience

    Engaging style and accessible prose

    Excellent historical guide for visits to grand European spas


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