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The Grand Spas of Central Europe
A History of Intrigue, Politics, Art, and Healing
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Publisher:
2015
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.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2015
ISBN-Print
978-1-4422-2236-6
ISBN-Online
978-1-4422-2237-3
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
466
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 10
CHAPTER ONE. Spas and Spa Culture from the Greco-Roman World to the Grand Tour No access Pages 11 - 50
CHAPTER TWO. Baden-Baden: The “Summer Capital of Europe” No access Pages 51 - 90
CHAPTER THREE. Muses in the Waters No access Pages 91 - 136
CHAPTER FOUR. Roulettenburg: Russian Writers at the Grand German Spas No access Pages 137 - 180
CHAPTER FIVE. Politics on the Promenade No access Pages 181 - 224
CHAPTER SIX. Modernization and Its Discontents No access Pages 225 - 268
CHAPTER SEVEN. Trouble in Paradise: Spa-Town Life from World War I to the Triumph of Hitler No access Pages 269 - 318
CHAPTER EIGHT. Brown Waters Grand Spas under the Third Reich No access Pages 319 - 366
CHAPTER NINE. A New Beginning No access Pages 367 - 390
EPILOGUE. The Grand Spas Today No access Pages 391 - 406
Acknowledgments No access Pages 407 - 410
Principal Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading No access Pages 411 - 434
