The Grand Spas of Central Europe: A History of Intrigue, Politics, Art, and Healing

by 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

476 pages, Hardcover

First published October 16, 2015

About the 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.

Reviews

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Clay Large is an excellent historian, knows the history of Germany-Austria extremely well. He has identified spa culture as a key element in the social history of the region. So he combs through the information and conscientiously retells the history of Central Europe from the perspective of events in Baden-Baden, Bad Ems, Bad Gastein, Baden bei Wien, Karlsbad, Marienbad etc. He's especially good on the diplomacy that took place in the various resorts as kings met and talked in a relaxed atmosphere. Post-war, you get big business negotiations at such places, so the early efforts at the European Union, and the Bilderberg group meetings, take place in spas. He hints at the Russian-German connection at the mineral springs, two totally different cultures, both in love with taking the waters, from Peter the Great to Putin. But Large does not speculate as to why there is this connection. He identifies important cultural monuments that were inspired by spas, the enduring stories by Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Goethe, Thomas Mann. And the fine music from Beethoven to Lehar that is nourished by spa culture. So the book is a competent retelling of the Central-European historical narrative with mineral springs and promenades thrown in. Combining macro-history with social history is of course a difficult task. But still...the tone of the narrative is unnecessarily condescending, flippant, and crude. The print version fails to include a single image other than a schematic map for those without the internet. What is missing from the book is the element that inspired Beethoven, Turgenev et al. What is missing from the book is the charm that these places had, the very reason for their existence in the first place.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF after Chapter 4: Roulettenburg. Despite in the intro spending much time talking about how many men and women were interacting with each other all the time at German spas, despite pointing out how many British women visited spas on the Grand Tour, Large goes on to completely ignore women in his history, only to mention them as sex objects. Even George Sand is reduced to her sexual history rather than literally anything else she did. The book has interesting moments, and I guess it's just been a long time since I've read histories that didn't fall into an anticolonial or feminist framework, but to read a book from 2015 that is so relentlessly ignoring half of the participants in its subject matter is just exhausting.

I'm so glad Large could reach a level in his career where he could frame his research around where he wanted to go on vacation. I love that for him and that's truly so great. I just wish in the process he also treated women like independent people in their own right and not just sexual objects for the men he's apparently exclusively interested in.

[Charles Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm thoroughly waterlogued after this saturating plunge into the nasty middle European scum encrusted "baths" across the centuries! Drenched in fascinating stories of the Eurotrashy sopping wet frolickers, moistening their collectives gullets, kings and serfs, novelists and assassins, some good Germans but mostly not. Wars and treaties, chess games and chesty tarts, fat naked aristocrats and amputees (wait! already booking your Grand Tour, I see...?) all drowned in noxious polluted gaseous water in search of a cure for their...what? Europeanness? I drowned in the flood of hydraulically themed stories backed up with equally moldy primary sources. All in all a maelstrom a veritable tidal wave shot out the EUROeurethra of the metaphorical kidneys and swimming pools of these fat, fat middle-Europeanishchers.

Oh, I guess being a great historian and full professor makes it possible to pursue one's dream historical project: good for you Dr. Large! This is indeed an unexpectedly excellent way to learn middle European history. But a merciless editor immersed in her work and deploying tactical deletion should have severed and drowned in radon sulphur tainted water
THE ENDLESS DELUGE OF PUNS AND BEING SUBMERGED IN TIDES OF DAD JOKES
GREAT SURPRISING HISTORY OF EUROPE AND BALNEALOGY
TAKE THE PLUNGE GET CURED

[Sevelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flawlessly researched book about the tradition of “taking the waters” at big, expensive European hotels with casinos. The author writes in a special narrative voice, with his own personal observations poking out in a wry and bemused tone. Here, he presents a century or more of historical information in a marvelously readable, entertaining, and informative narrative that also easily qualifies as a serious academic work. Five stars all around!

[Jbondandrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have liked to have seen footnotes with this book and even some pictures of the spas and perhaps more about how they were built.

[Veronica Bonino · Rating 4 out of 5]

78/100
Un interessantissimo e accuratissimo resoconto delle stazioni termali dell'Europa centrale. Da leggere per tutte le curiosità che contiene.