Located on the Alpine frontier between Bavaria and Austria, Reichenhall was once a secluded town, historically defined by its salt industry. Its reputation began to change in the mid-nineteenth century, after a number of enterprising locals opened “cure facilities,” thereby establishing the foundations of a modern health resort. By the end of the century, the spa town drew over 10,000 guests per season. The local community accommodated these visitors with an expanding hospitality industry and a growing number of pleasurable activities. By 1900, the recently renamed Bad Reichenhall had become more than a spa: it was a multifaceted and modern tourist destination, offering progressive medical treatment and cosmopolitan entertainment, along with easy access to the Alpine environment. The following article argues that the marketing of these diverse attractions provides insight into how German society thought about modernity at the turn of the century.

In this context, modernity refers to a post-traditional condition that began to define parts of Europe over the course of the long nineteenth century.Footnote ¹ Modernity was characterized by “explosive upheavals in every dimension of personal, social and political life,” changes that uprooted large portions of society both literally and figuratively.Footnote ² Industrialization, urbanization, secularization, and the rise of the nation-state were the defining features of the larger process of modernization that produced this new world. Although historians continue to disagree about the trajectory of German modernization, with some still insisting on a “special path,” most agree that the late nineteenth century was a period of major breakthroughs and extraordinary complications. In a matter of decades, Germany evolved from an assemblage of predominantly agrarian states into an industrial and military superpower. Gemeinschaft gave way to Gesellschaft, or a “society in which every kind of social or political identity was suddenly disrupted and replaced by the anonymity and facelessness of modern life.”Footnote ³ In search of solace, many Germans looked to the past.

Still, the citizens of the Kaiserreich did not think exclusively in terms of “modern” versus “anti-modern,” or “new” versus “old.” Instead, they developed combinations of both. In her work on the “challenges of modernity” between 1890 and 1960, Adelheid von Saldern notes that the Germans produced “blends and amalgams that are specific to particular times and social systems and must be thoroughly studied in their own right.”Footnote ⁴ Alon Confino identifies one of these amalgams in his work on the Württemberg Heimat movement, whose members preserved regional traditions and history while simultaneously celebrating modernization and its rewards. One of the ways in which they accomplished this was by including “symbols of modernity,” such as factories, bridges, and railways, within posters depicting the idealized German Heimat.Footnote ⁵ In his work on landscape preservation and German identity, Thomas Lekan argues that middle-class environmentalists worked toward an “alternative modernity” during the early twentieth century, seeking “a harmonious balance between industrial technology and the natural environment in the countryside.” For example, activists such as Paul Schultze-Naumburg insisted that paper mills, mines, and even railways had become naturalized elements of the landscape, just as cities could remain connected to the past through the conservation of green spaces and medieval architecture.Footnote ⁶ Similarly, Thomas Rohkrämer maintains that German environmentalists during the Imperial and Weimar periods were part of a more general reform movement that sought to achieve “another modernity,” one that was environmentally sustainable without completely rejecting technological advances.Footnote ⁷ The members of the Bad Reichenhall tourism industry participated in this broader movement by promoting their own version of modernity: a unique synthesis of old and new that provided more than a temporary escape from industrial life.

Bad Reichenhall may have been a latecomer to the spa business, but its appeal was multifaceted. Its claim to fame could not be reduced to a simple formula, and its marketing stressed nearly all of the elements found in spas such as Wiesbaden and Bad Kissingen, but with a greater emphasis on the resort's progressive character. Bad Reichenhall's modern infrastructure and social life guaranteed its status as an oasis of cosmopolitan culture between Munich and Vienna, while the natural environment itself was the source of the resort's most popular treatments, and the basis of an identity that transcended contemporary society and national boundaries. Balancing these different elements, the local tourism industry did not merely promote Bad Reichenhall; it marketed an alternative vision of contemporary society that revolved around the interrelated themes of nature, “modernness,” and cosmopolitanism. I refer to this amalgamation as “grounded modernity,” a romanticized version of the present that reconciled tradition with progress, continuity with change, and nature with technology and science.

In a turbulent and unfamiliar world, grounded modernity provided a taste of stability, and a glimpse of authenticity.Footnote ⁸ The tourism industry of Bad Reichenhall depicted a sojourn in the Alpine spa as an antidote to modern civilization, and a cure for the disorienting experience of contemporary life. At the same time, guests could expect modern treatments, amenities, accommodations, and transportation. The newness of it all was undeniable. In other words, the Reichenhall spa culture at the turn of the twentieth century did not provide an escape from modernity; it provided a more acceptable version of it.Footnote ⁹ When rooted in nature and Gemütlichkeit, modernity proved much easier to sell.

Recent scholarship on the modern European spa culture has identified important connections between leisure and class consciousness without focusing explicitly on the issue of modernity. David Blackbourn describes nineteenth-century European spa towns as fashionable destinations where different social groups mingled, medicated, and escaped “the rigours of business, or town, or court, or marriage.”Footnote ¹⁰ Heikki Lempa attributes the popularity of nineteenth-century German spas in particular to the complete spa experience, a combination of discipline and leisure that helped to cement the cultural identity of the German middle class.Footnote ¹¹ Similarly, Alexa Geisthövel focuses on the pursuit of both recovery and amusement in nineteenth-century spas, concluding that this seasonal “culture of interaction” helped to unite the upper and wealthy middle classes.Footnote ¹² While these scholars have made valuable contributions to the social and cultural history of spa towns, none of them has focused on advertising, and the images of grounded modernity that defined destinations like Bad Reichenhall.

In order to illuminate the relationship between the turn-of-the-century spa culture and changing perceptions of modernity, this article outlines the history of the Reichenhall tourism industry and examines its marketing during the fifteen years before World War I, when the spa was at the pinnacle of its success. Using numerous examples of what was commonly referred to as tourist propaganda (brochures, guidebooks, postcards, and medical literature), this article demonstrates how the local and regional tourism industry promoted the spa with the interrelated themes of nature, modernness, and cosmopolitanism. This unique marketing reveals how Germans reconciled neo-romantic “back to nature” sentiments with seemingly contradictory attitudes toward technological progress and urbanity, as well as competing local, national, and cosmopolitan identities. An undeniably popular tourist destination, Bad Reichenhall was simultaneously old and new, and a lucrative example of modernity grounded in nature. In several regards, it allowed visitors to deal with a rapidly changing world. This alternative modernity also appealed to international visitors, suggesting that the experience of German modernization was not unique, and that the therapy was not culturally specific. These international visitors became less common after 1914. World War I inaugurated a period of decline for Bad Reichenhall, isolating the spa from its cosmopolitan clientele and denying it one of the foundations of its constructed identity.

The history of Reichenhall is extensive, and has always been intertwined with its primary natural resource: salt.Footnote ¹³ The salt industry originated as early as 400 BCE, when the area's Celtic inhabitants began employing the local saline springs to produce the so-called “white gold.”Footnote ¹⁴ During the Middle Ages, the saline wealth of the town now known as Reichenhall (“rich in salt”) became a source of contention between the local inhabitants, the Duke of Bavaria, and the Archbishop of Salzburg, located a mere 14 kilometers away.Footnote ¹⁵ Reichenhall entered a period of relative stability after the fifteenth century, when Georg the Rich, Duke of Bavaria, created a state monopoly over salt production, establishing the foundations of an economic monoculture.Footnote ¹⁶ The transformation of the Duchy of Bavaria into a centralized kingdom at the beginning of the nineteenth century brought several important changes to Reichenhall, including the further consolidation of the salt industry.Footnote ¹⁷ However, in spite of some improvements in the channeling of brine waters, production declined, just as the regional saline industry began to face new competition from salt-producing towns in Baden and Württemberg.Footnote ¹⁸

Ironically, it was the natural resource of salt that provided the foundations of Reichenhall's new identity as a spa. At the end of the eighteenth century, salt water became a commonly prescribed Kur, or medical treatment. In Germany, this treatment was available at seaside resorts along the Baltic and North Sea coastlines, or in specifically designed saline baths, which were available in Bad Pyrmont as early as 1790.Footnote ¹⁹ In southeastern Bavaria, the utilization of local saline as a therapeutic remedy began in Kirchberg, just across the Saalach River from Reichenhall. A Salzburg physician first documented the medicinal properties of the community's spring waters in 1713. Over one hundred years later, a Kirchberg doctor opened a saline bath, but the modest facility only managed to attract locals.Footnote ²⁰

On the other side of the river, two events paved the way for Reichenhall's transformation into “the Queen of German Alpine Baths.”Footnote ²¹ The first occurred during a November evening in 1834, when a massive fire engulfed Reichenhall, leaving 75 percent of the town in ruins.Footnote ²² Bavarian King Ludwig I allocated a sum of 10,000 gulden for the rebuilding of Reichenhall, but he insisted on the modernization of the town through the widening of the medieval streets and the rational alignment of new buildings. Reichenhall's citizens consented, demolishing most of the medieval wall, and replacing the town's winding alleyways and narrow squares with open avenues and centrally located plazas.Footnote ²³ The centerpiece of the new town was the Royal Saline Works, which reflected the neo-baroque sensibilities of Ludwig's court architects.Footnote ²⁴ Confronted with disaster, Reichenhall transformed itself into one of Bavaria's most modern urban centers, “newly constructed and crisscrossed with wide streets and landscaped squares.”Footnote ²⁵ The reconstruction and modern look of Reichenhall became common themes in the tourist propaganda of the turn of the century.

The second event that paved the way for Reichenhall's transformation was the opening of the Kuranstalt Axelmannstein on May 15, 1846. The Axelmannstein was a saline and whey cure facility, where guests could bathe in one of fifteen heated saltwater baths and drink beverages produced from mountain herbs and the whey of local goat milk. Local resident and Royal Saxon tax inspector Ernst Rinck oversaw the construction of Reichenhall's first spa facility in the lavish home of his late father-in-law, Kaspar von Reiner. Before it opened, Rinck secured a deal with the newly elected mayor, local pharmacist Matthias Mack, who had made the construction of a bathing facility his chief priority in office.Footnote ²⁶ In exchange for the right to levy a so-called Kur tax, Mack provided Rinck with an inexpensive supply of saltwater. The natural resource that had been synonymous with the local economy for centuries was now utilized in a completely new fashion, promising tangible benefits for both local residents and out-of-town visitors. Since the inception of the Reichenhall spa culture, nature was an integral part of the cure.

Nevertheless, the early Reichenhall spa culture was not limited to its medical treatments. The fact that other Bavarian health resorts like Bad Kissingen and Rosenheim already offered saline baths meant that Reichenhall would have to provide additional attractions.Footnote ²⁷ Alongside its bathing chambers and comfortably furnished rooms, the Kuranstalt Axelmannstein (or the Kurhaus, as it was initially known) contained an elegantly decorated dining hall and a billiard room, where guests could congregate and socialize. The Axelmannstein also featured its own English-style park, where guests could promenade and inhale the salt-infused air, reflecting a new middle-class fixation with nature.Footnote ²⁸ The combined package of medical treatments, social diversions, and Alpine views proved popular, and by the end of the first season, Reichenhall's first spa facility had registered ninety-two guests.Footnote ²⁹

Reichenhall's popularity soared after the summer of 1848, when Bavaria's new king, Maximilian II, sojourned in Reichenhall for several months with his family and entourage.Footnote ³⁰ Local historian Johannes Lang describes this single vacation as “the moment when Reichenhall tourism was born.”Footnote ³¹ The king's visit secured the reputation of the new spa, with 164 guests following his example the following season.Footnote ³² Maximilian's visit also encouraged other European royals to visit the Bavarian spa, and during the following decades, members of the Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Austrian, and Prussian royal families all vacationed in Reichenhall, contributing to the town's growing reputation as a cosmopolitan resort.Footnote ³³ The presence of such celebrities served as a powerful advertisement for the town, encouraging members of the upper class to confirm their status by following in the footsteps of the most elite.Footnote ³⁴

By 1855, Reichenhall was attracting one thousand guests per season, and the local community initially proved to be ill equipped for the increase in numbers.Footnote ³⁵ While the Kuranstalt Axelmannstein struggled to accommodate its patrons, unlucky visitors were forced to seek lodgings outside of the town in nearby Kirchberg and St. Zeno. The municipal government responded in 1850 by encouraging the locals to offer accommodations to guests during the summer season. Soon, dozens of citizens posted notices offering single rooms or entire apartments to out-of-town visitors.Footnote ³⁶ In the years that followed, other enterprising locals would follow the example of Ernst Rinck and try their hand at the cure business itself. The sons of local politician and pharmacist Mathias Mack opened a whey drinking hall in 1857, and an inhalation and respiration facility in 1863. Eventually known as the Dianabad, this facility featured the town's first pneumatic chambers, a novel form of therapy that was still new to German spas.Footnote ³⁷ The Marienbad opened in 1868, followed by the Luisenbad, the Maximiliansbad, the Ludwigsbad, and the Wilhelmsbad, among others. In the meantime, publications by prominent German physicians helped to establish the reputation of Reichenhall's modern medical treatments and facilities, leading to further expansion.Footnote ³⁸

For middle-class tourists who struggled to reconcile their work ethic with the very notion of leisure travel, spa medicine offered the ideal justification for an extended vacation.Footnote ³⁹ In Bad Reichenhall, these visitors had access to a growing number of practicing physicians, a figure that rose from nine to thirty-one between 1870 and 1906. Dr. Georg Liebig, an associate of Matthias Mack and the spa's most influential physician during the latter half of the nineteenth century, was the first to catalogue the various medical disorders that could be successfully treated in Bad Reichenhall, among them catarrhal inflammation of the lungs, chronic rheumatic disorders, and various skin infections.Footnote ⁴⁰ By the end of the nineteenth century, the Bavarian spa was also known for the treatment of heart disease; nervous conditions, and gynecological complaints, a popular subject in spa medicine literature.Footnote ⁴¹ However, it was respiratory disorders that remained Bad Reichenhall's primary specialty, and tourist publications promised relief for those suffering from chronic pneumonia, emphysema, and asthma.Footnote ⁴² Such claims helped to attract middle-class travelers to the Bavarian spa town during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Still, new spa facilities and modern treatments were just a few of the attractions that Reichenhall had to offer. Members of the community established a lending library in 1853 and a small Heimat museum in 1854, where visitors could take a break from modern medical treatments by familiarizing themselves with local customs and history.Footnote ⁴³ Locals also opened businesses catering to the spa's affluent clientele, including hair salons, tobacco stores, jewelry shops, and banks. Other residents offered boat and raft rides on the nearby Thumsee, converting this feature of the natural environment into a profitable tourist attraction.Footnote ⁴⁴ This swift economic reorientation led Munich travel writer Ludwig Steub to criticize the Reichenhall natives for their hasty abandonment of the traditional mountain lifestyle in favor of “service and slavery to the spa crowd.”Footnote ⁴⁵ Modernity manifested itself in many ways in the Alpine community, but the new, capitalist orientation of the locals left some Bavarians with misgivings.

Service to the spa crowd had implications for the town's physical appearance as well. A mere three weeks after the opening of the Kuranstalt Axelmannstein, middle-class citizens founded a Beautification Society, or Verschönerungsverein. This group was responsible for improving the sanitary conditions of the town, paving new walkways, planting trees, designating particularly rewarding views with markers, and providing coaches for excursions to nearby scenic locales. In general, they promoted a picturesque view of Reichenhall, blurring the boundaries between the modern town and its Alpine surroundings. Their efforts helped to establish the foundations of the local tourism industry, confirming that the spa's success was not fortuitous, but the direct product of a concerted, local strategy.Footnote ⁴⁶ The Beautification Society existed in several incarnations through 1908, when it was reorganized as the Spa Association, or Kurverein: an association that supported economic growth through the development of tourist infrastructure and the distribution of propaganda.Footnote ⁴⁷

The Bavarian Ministry of the Interior also played an active role in Reichenhall's transformation by appointing a state spa commissioner, or Badkommissär, in 1856. This official was responsible for utilizing cure tax dividends to organize activities for the resort's visitors, leading to the emergence of a new social life centered on the Kuranstalt Axelmannstein and its grounds. The Kurhaus hosted “soirées musicales,” chamber music concerts, and extravagant balls, while the adjacent park became the scene of festive illuminations and the firework displays of so-called “Italian nights.”Footnote ⁴⁸ In 1868, the spa commissioner signed an agreement with the Munich conductor, Joseph Gungl, who assembled a twenty-one-man orchestra to perform open-air concerts for two hours every morning and evening during the summer season, in addition to playing at the weekly balls.Footnote ⁴⁹ Such orchestras were common in nineteenth-century spas, where they provided “diversion and distraction during the long periods of enforced inactivity that made up a large part of the curistes' day.”Footnote ⁵⁰ In spas like Reichenhall, live music also accompanied the post-drinking cure promenade, providing rhythm to therapy, from 6:00 to 8:00 each morning.Footnote ⁵¹

While measures taken by the Reichenhall Beautification Society and the spa commissioner contributed to the overall experience of guests, the number of visitors remained limited due to the resort's isolated location in the Bavarian Alps. As late as the 1850s, the coach ride from Munich to Reichenhall still required two full days of travel. In 1860, a railway line between Munich and Vienna finally opened, decreasing the travel time between the Bavarian capital and Reichenhall to under seven hours. During the following season, Reichenhall registered over two thousand guests for the first time.Footnote ⁵² This did not satisfy some representatives of the local tourism industry, who demanded a separate rail connection for the growing resort.Footnote ⁵³ Other residents voiced reservations about the expansion of the railway into Reichenhall, arguing that trains would tarnish the idyllic quality of the resort, and potentially bring more guests than the community could actually accommodate.Footnote ⁵⁴ Some locals clearly had reservations about the modernization of their Alpine community, but they were incapable of stopping progress.

After extensive debate, Reichenhall received its own train station on a line with Freilassing in 1865. The spa town was now indirectly connected with every major city on the continent, a feature that helped to establish its “European reputation.”Footnote ⁵⁵ An 1893 Beautification Society flyer, printed in German, French, and Russian versions, confirmed the rail connections to the resort, as well as the exceptional views from the train:

Reichenhall was now accessible to anyone who could afford a ticket, first or second class, German or non-German. Moreover, the resort became even further integrated into its scenic surroundings through the experiences of rail travel and “panoramic perception.”Footnote ⁵⁷ In this manner, the tourism industry began to promote grounded modernity by reconciling nature and technology.

By the final decade of the nineteenth century, Reichenhall had secured its reputation as an “internationally renowned and frequently visited spa and health resort,” as noted in an 1892 guidebook published in Zurich.Footnote ⁵⁸ In 1890, Reichenhall officially became Bad Reichenhall, when the government of Prince Regent Luitpold formally renamed the town.Footnote ⁵⁹ Still, its transformation into a modern spa had come with a price. The abolition of the Bavarian state's monopoly over the salt trade in 1868 and the subsequent decline of the local saline industry had made Reichenhall's residents increasingly dependent on tourism as a means of income.Footnote ⁶⁰ The demise of one economic monoculture coincided with the rise of the new one, just as the expansion of the local tourist infrastructure contributed to a municipal debt that had reached 1.3 million Marks by 1896.Footnote ⁶¹ Hoping to achieve financial stability, the local government appealed to Munich to be included in the ranks of the “Royal Baths.” The state government granted this request in 1899, and Bad Reichenhall became an official Bavarian Staatsbad. Its growing financial problems became the concerns of the state, and the Bavarian Ministry of Finances was involved in decisions relating to local taxes, building projects, and the management of all spa institutions utilizing saline.Footnote ⁶²

Reichenhall's new status almost immediately bore fruit in the form of the Royal Cure House, or Königliche Kurhaus.Footnote ⁶³ This impressive neo-baroque structure, a product of government investment, first opened its doors in May 1900.Footnote ⁶⁴ Unlike the older spa facilities, this building was explicitly dedicated to recreation. It contained a large ballroom that could accommodate 1,500 guests, as well as a café-restaurant and various reading, music, billiard, and conversation rooms, all “tastefully-decorated,” according to a local guidebook.Footnote ⁶⁵ A memorandum published in Munich proudly detailed the amenities of the 450,000 Mark building, including its electricity and plumbing.Footnote ⁶⁶ The social center of Bad Reichenhall subsequently shifted from Kuranstalt Axelmannstein to the new and emphatically modern Kurhaus, where members of elite society could indulge in pleasurable distractions, and distinguish themselves from the middle-class curistes.Footnote ⁶⁷

At the turn of the century, the Reichenhall spa culture was a combination of “the pleasant and the useful,” a unique blend of modern medicine, urbane entertainment, and Alpine views that catered to both middle-class and elite tastes.Footnote ⁶⁸ Now at the pinnacle of its success, a variety of organizations and individuals marketed Bad Reichenhall with an assortment of publications, including guidebooks, brochures, postcards, and medical literature. These printed materials advertised the commodities available at the Bavarian spa, but that was not their only function. Like other advertisers in modern Germany, the authors of these materials responded to the insecurities of modern society by promoting specific “ideologies and lifestyles.”Footnote ⁶⁹ In the case of Bad Reichenhall, they developed a vision of grounded modernity that revolved around the three central motifs that had come to define the spa since the mid-nineteenth century: nature, modernness, and cosmopolitanism.

Perhaps the most prominent of these three motifs was the spa's close relationship with the natural environment. Nature's most direct contribution to Bad Reichenhall was the cure itself. For example, locals used mountain herbs like brooklime, watercress, and dandelions to produce an “herbal juice” (Kräutersaft), a novel treatment popularized by Mathias Mack.Footnote ⁷⁰ Likewise, local dairy products were the basis of many popular drinking cures, including whey and kefir, a fermented milk drink. Even more important was the local saline, which patients could imbibe in a diluted or concentrated form, while a purgative solution produced from the former was available for both local consumption and exportation.Footnote ⁷¹ Saline was also central to bathing cures, including diluted saline and carbonic acid baths, which were supposedly beneficial for those suffering from heart conditions and neurasthenia.Footnote ⁷²

Bad Reichenhall's saline springs also made the air itself a valuable remedy, producing a marine-like climate at an already advantageous, high altitude. The spa enjoyed a reputation as “Germany's largest climatic health resort,” where fresh mountain air helped to make the treatment of pulmonary disorders a specialty.Footnote ⁷³ Tourist propaganda described the local air as the spa's “sovereign cure,” most effectively administered in the Gradierhaus, a 170-meter long, open-ended wooden structure in the spa's large park, the Kurgarten. Within this structure, saline flowed through a densely stacked pile of twigs, facilitating an accelerated evaporation that simultaneously reduced the temperature and infused the air with beneficial saline particles, small quantities of iodine and bromine, and a considerable amount of ozone.Footnote ⁷⁴ This simple technique, once used for concentrating the salt solution, was an effective means of harnessing the benefits of Bad Reichenhall's most precious natural commodity, and it caught the attention of the international and local press. A June 1901 issue of the British tourism magazine The Traveller declared, “Verily, the idea was a good one, and its practical application at Reichenhall has deservedly done much to give to the place that fame which it now enjoys … providing the atmosphere of mid-Atlantic in an Alpine valley.”Footnote ⁷⁵ Even foreign publications confirmed that the Bavarian resort was unique among Alpine retreats, helping to attract international guests in the process.

Nature had bestowed many gifts upon Bad Reichenhall, investing both water and air with alleged curative properties. Salt aside, the surrounding landscape itself also possessed therapeutic potential. During the final decades of the nineteenth century, physicians speculated that bathing and inhalation treatments were insufficient means of restoring the health of many patients. They began to prescribe hiking, which if conducted properly, could contribute to the strengthening of heart muscles. This was the logic behind Dr. Max Joseph Oertel's “terrain cure,” which entailed physical exercise, carefully prescribed walks, and the ascent of progressively steeper mountain trails. The Bad Reichenhall valley proved ideal for the program, as it featured long, flat stretches and a range of ascents.Footnote ⁷⁶ In accordance with Oertel's guidelines, locals charted a special network of trails through the town's environs in 1886, with the steepest path providing an incline of 10 percent.Footnote ⁷⁷ The terrain cure became a popular addition to the resort's growing lists of treatments, helping to blur the lines between Bad Reichenhall and the surrounding landscape. A modern preoccupation with health led to a new appreciation of timeless nature.

Historically, a stroll in the spa meant following the carefully manicured promenades of the town itself. Matthias Mack was the first to lead guests into the mountainous surroundings of Reichenhall, inviting both patients and tourists into the uncultivated wilderness and providing them with information on local flora and fauna.Footnote ⁷⁸ By the turn of the twentieth century, the natural environs of the spa were no longer simply a “tamed and decorative” backdrop; they were the site of physical activity that was central to the very notion of the cure.Footnote ⁷⁹ Tourist propaganda emphasized that there were over 200 kilometers of trails in the spa town and its environs, while the local section of the German Alpine Association posted large-scale maps of these routes in the Kurgarten and at the train station.Footnote ⁸⁰ In his 1900 guidebook, Adolf Bühler pointed out that the resort's numerous trails not only provided the opportunity to enjoy the scenic landscape, but also constituted an essential component of the larger cure experience, allowing the guest to comfortably exercise out in the open, while methodically increasing the amount of physical exertion.Footnote ⁸¹ This was a decidedly pragmatic and modern understanding of the natural environment.

In many ways, Bad Reichenhall's close relationship with nature helped to ground the health resort, offering an important balance to its more modern dimensions. A 1904 Spa Association brochure reminded visitors, “One must not remain in his or her room in Reichenhall; out into God's magnificent and beautiful nature!”Footnote ⁸² Nature was an essential element of the spa's identity, from its surrounding mountains and valleys, to the green spaces of the “grand garden city” itself.Footnote ⁸³ Although it was not a planned organic community like Hellerau in Dresden, Bad Reichenhall reflected the ultimate goal of the international garden city movement: “to enrich urban life with the positive psycho-social characteristics attributed to living in close contact with nature.”Footnote ⁸⁴ Postcards tended to picture Bad Reichenhall completely dominated by its natural surroundings, with the town engulfed in green and overshadowed by towering mountains.Footnote ⁸⁵ A 1904 guidebook published by the Association for the Promotion of Tourism in Munich and the Bavarian Highlands noted that the spa was “pleasantly surrounded by marvelous mountains” providing “a lush perimeter” of “wild beauty.”Footnote ⁸⁶ In addition to the hiking trails, the Spa Association's 1911 brochure advertised a number of outdoor sporting activities. “Carefully-trimmed” courts were open to visitors interested in playing tennis, while an equestrian path along the Saalach came highly recommended to guests who were fond of horseback riding. The publication also noted that local streams were perfect for trout fishing, just as the nearby forests contained a variety of wild game for hunters.Footnote ⁸⁷ Once again, nature defined another dimension of the Bad Reichenhall tourist experience, making it part of “a modern culture that remained rooted to the soil.”Footnote ⁸⁸

Bad Reichenhall's special relationship with the natural environment was a central motif of early twentieth-century tourist propaganda, but it was connected to a second group of marketing claims that revolved around modernness in various incarnations. In one sense, the town that had burned to the ground in 1834 could not avoid being modern. Rebuilt in line with nineteenth-century tastes, it was a model for city planning, and guidebooks commonly referred to its “modern look.”Footnote ⁸⁹ Other developments around the turn of the century helped to secure Bad Reichenhall's identity as a modern urban space. In 1892, Reichenhall acquired its first telephone, two years after an electric power plant opened in Kirchberg, allowing for the illumination of Reichenhall's streets, which were first paved in 1898. This was also the same year in which Reichenhall opened its first movie theater and welcomed its first automobile, a 6-PS-Benzinwagen owned by a local physician, Karl von Heinleth.Footnote ⁹⁰ The local community's insistence on providing urban amenities to its cosmopolitan clientele explains the relatively early adoption of these forms of technology. In other words, the rise of tourism fueled a unique form of modernization.

Tourist publications highlighted the many modern features of the idealized urban space of Bad Reichenhall, from the recently opened Royal Cure House, to the exquisitely clean asphalt roads illuminated by electric light.Footnote ⁹¹ While the 1904 Woerl guidebook called attention to the town's two power plants, which supplied most hotels with electric lighting, the Illustrated Brochure of 1904 directed attention to the town's waste management program and its new sewage system, created in line with “the most modern principles.”Footnote ⁹² Another publication issued by the Spa Association in 1912 described the town's saline works as an impressive example of modern engineering, and a veritable tourist attraction. The brochure reported that the saline works pumped 400,000 liters of salt water to the Gradierhaus each day, in addition to noting that the interior of the spring building, or Quellenbau, was “fabulously lit” in multicolored electric light for all to see.Footnote ⁹³ In his 1906 travelogue, American tourist Frank Roy Fraprie dedicated the majority of the Bad Reichenhall chapter to the saline works, augmenting his description with facts about the springs, their varying degrees of saltiness, and the engineering involved in their exploitation, including the construction of “an underground canal half a mile long and big enough to float a boat.”Footnote ⁹⁴ Simultaneously old and new, this Bad Reichenhall institution was a marketable example of grounded modernity, as it demonstrated how technology could coexist with nature.

Tourist propaganda similarly portrayed Bad Reichenhall's treatments as unequivocally modern. This emphasis distinguished the resort from nearby Alpine destinations such as Berchtesgaden, which tended to rely more on their rustic character and sporting opportunities.Footnote ⁹⁵ Physician Bruno Alexander portrayed the Bavarian resort's cure regimen as “truly in tune with the time,” while the 1911 article in The Traveller depicted the spa as a “very progressive place,” noting the simple ingenuity of the Gradierhaus, as well as the “fine needle-baths, steam and Russian vapor baths, douches, inhalations, gymnastics, massage and last, but not least, pneumatic rooms for treatment by compressed air.”Footnote ⁹⁶ The hermetically sealed pneumatic chambers constructed by the Mack family, advertised as “the largest in the world,” became a particularly popular selling point for the spa industry.Footnote ⁹⁷ Tourist publications explained how the technology functioned and identified the benefits that these chambers held for both the respiratory and cardiac systems.Footnote ⁹⁸ A 1911 issue of The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal praised the new technology at Bad Reichenhall, declaring, “Patients suffering from asthma and chronic bronchitis claim great relief from daily treatments of this kind of one to two hours’ duration.”Footnote ⁹⁹ Bühler's 1915 guidebook claimed that when it came to modern medicine, Bad Reichenhall “did not hold back,” and was the first spa destination to recognize the curative potential of radium-heavy spring water.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Thus, the guidebook demonstrated how modern society might utilize natural resources in new ways. Other publications, such as the 1904 Illustrated Brochure, underscored the novelty of the spa's electric baths, which allowed patients to subject portions of their bodies to controlled doses of electric light and elevated temperatures, an allegedly effective treatment for those suffering from rheumatism and nervousness.Footnote ¹⁰¹

The treatment of the latter condition became one of Bad Reichenhall's specialties during the early twentieth century.Footnote ¹⁰² Neurasthenia had become something of a mass phenomenon in Imperial Germany. While historian Joachim Radkau characterizes the late Kaiserreich as an “age of nervousness,” Andreas Killen associates nervousness more explicitly to the urban lifestyle, or specifically, the “over-stimulation” caused by the speed, technology, and excitement of the modern metropolis. Noting that the disease eventually afflicted all segments of society, he identifies nervousness as an inevitable consequence of progress, “a product of civilization, located in the nerve centers of the brain.”Footnote ¹⁰³ Nervousness essentially paralyzed its victims, making them incapable of coping with the pressures of the external world.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Bad Reichenhall's electric baths promised to rejuvenate those suffering from neurasthenia, “shocking” them out of their powerlessness and passivity. This was a distinctly modern treatment for a distinctly modern ailment.

“Modern,” “progressive,” and “highly-developed”; these were phrases that defined Bad Reichenhall's cityscape, infrastructure, spa facilities, and treatments. By asserting these qualities within the tourist propaganda of the period, these authors indirectly made larger claims about the modernness of not only Bavaria, but Germany at large. In 1900, Bad Reichenhall was a small town, situated on the edge of a provincial region, within a state that had existed for barely three decades. Consequently, claims to be modern could be seen as claims of equality with or even superiority over other regions and nations of Europe. Bad Reichenhall had grown dramatically over the course of eighty years, and its recent ability to compete with well-established resorts such as Vichy or Marienbad symbolized the potential of both the German Empire and the Kingdom of Bavaria. Natural resources and impressive landscapes established a deeper identity that transcended the present day, but they coexisted with an architectural, technological, and scientific modernity that implied progress for town, region, and nation alike. Tourist publications corroborated this image by praising the extraordinary features of the Bavarian resort, and explicitly comparing them to those found in other resorts. For example, Wiedemann's 1915 guidebook contended that no other spa, in Germany or elsewhere, could compete with Bad Reichenhall's exceptional diversity of medical treatments and facilities.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

Although such claims could be construed as declarations of national or regional exceptionality, overtly patriotic sentiments were virtually nonexistent within the tourist propaganda. One reason for this was the fact that Bad Reichenhall lay only a few kilometers away from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a result, tourist propaganda rarely advertised the health resort as exclusively Bavarian or German, and usually incorporated Bad Reichenhall into a larger tourist region that included destinations on both sides of the border. For example, guidebooks on the Austrian Tirol and Salzburg, such as the 1907 Geuther guide to the Salzkammergut, regularly featured information on the Bavarian spa.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Meanwhile, guidebooks published in Bavaria and even Bad Reichenhall itself often covered nearby Austrian tourist attractions.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ These publications confirmed that the Bavarian spa was neither a distinctly German destination, nor a destination visited exclusively by Germans (or German speakers).

Its inclusion in a unified Alpine tourist region certainly contributed to the spa's international character, but it was ultimately the clientele, and not the geography, which secured Bad Reichenhall's cosmopolitan reputation. The tourism industry of Bad Reichenhall targeted international visitors by issuing publications in English, French, and Russian translations, but it also used this clientele as part of its marketing strategy.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ By the late nineteenth century, international visitors had become a fixture of many modern spas, even if the majority of these “international” guests were just European.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ This was the case in Bad Reichenhall, where Russian, Hungarian, and even American guests became part of the spa's larger profile.Footnote ¹¹⁰ A 1907 guidebook entitled Our Bavarian Land, published by the Association for the Promotion of Tourism in Munich and the Bavarian Highland, utilized the language of cosmopolitanism in its description of Bad Reichenhall, claiming,

The visible affluence of the international elite and the melody of up to ten different languages became tangible symbols of Bad Reichenhall's cosmopolitan character.Footnote ¹¹² A 1904 publication described the “colorful and captivating image” of evenings in the Royal Cure House, where international guests possessing “exotic beauty” and “famous names” socialized under the glow of electric light.Footnote ¹¹³ An August 1908 article in the Neues Münchener Tagblatt echoed this marketing, reporting that “the most beautifully-situated spa destination in Germany” annually served as a “playground” for countless guests from all over Europe and numerous exotic locales.Footnote ¹¹⁴ While amusing themselves under the tall trees and electric light of Bad Reichenhall, these foreign guests came into contact with an idealized version of the present, a grounded modernity available for consumption.

What did a status as a cosmopolitan resort mean for the town of Bad Reichenhall itself? In short, diversity implied independence from local, regional, and national affiliations. With the help of its international patrons, Bad Reichenhall transcended Upper Bavarian and German identities. It was an idyllic destination that now belonged to the world, but it was not the only German location to embrace a cosmopolitan identity. As historian Glenn Penny has noted in his work on Leipzig's ethnographic museum, “local interests and cosmopolitan visions continued to play dominant roles in the ways Germans conceived of themselves right into the twentieth century.”Footnote ¹¹⁵ In Bad Reichenhall, a “world-famous” status served as evidence of progress and a cornerstone of its modern status.Footnote ¹¹⁶

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Bad Reichenhall could also appeal to visitors of different faiths. Although Upper Bavaria was a traditionally Catholic region, the local community worked to ensure that religion did not hinder the tourism industry. A local government publication in 1893 declared that it was in the best interests of the tourism industry to propagate a cosmopolitan identity; the nationality and the religious affiliation of the guest should never be an issue. Not only did the Bad Reichenhall community refuse to discriminate against non-Catholic guests, they even invited them to continue their religious practices during their extended stays. Although the town contained only two Protestant residents in 1846, Prussian and Franconian travelers were increasingly common, and at least one-third of all visitors were Lutheran. With the help of Ernst Rinck and local doctor Adolf Schmid, Protestant guests contributed to the construction of a neo-gothic church in 1881, creating a space for weekly services during the tourist season.Footnote ¹¹⁷ Flyers printed by the Beautification Society around the turn of the century confirmed the existence of the Protestant church, providing guests with information on its location and services.Footnote ¹¹⁸

Religious tolerance for the sake of tourism did not make Bad Reichenhall unique, and the construction of churches for foreign guests was fairly common in larger health resorts, even in predominantly Catholic regions.Footnote ¹¹⁹ More noteworthy is the fact that the Reichenhall tourism industry accommodated its many Jewish guests during this period. Woerl's 1904 guidebook publicized two restaurants offering kosher food, as well as weekly religious services in their respective “prayer rooms.”Footnote ¹²⁰ The 1904 Illustrated Brochure contained separate advertisements for both the Israelitisches Restaurant Bermann and the Israelitisches Hotel und Pension National, one of the town's oldest and largest restaurants.Footnote ¹²¹ Bad Reichenhall even possessed a Jewish slaughterhouse, and in 1877, the émigré Jewish community began plans for the construction of a Jewish cemetery.Footnote ¹²² In Bad Reichenhall, the Catholic identity of Upper Bavaria did not preclude the spa's engineered cosmopolitan charm, and on the eve of World War I, the spa even welcomed several Muslim princes.Footnote ¹²³

Nature, modernness, cosmopolitanism: the three motifs that dominated the tourist propaganda on Bad Reichenhall were all part of this multifaceted tourist attraction's larger character. By blending these appeals, the local tourism industry responded to the disorienting experience of modernity with a vision of what could be. While it is difficult to assess the reception of these messages among the tourists themselves, the success of Bad Reichenhall's marketing can be verified on another level. Simply put, tourists voted with their feet, and statistics assembled by the spa commissioner confirm that thousands of visitors chose Bad Reichenhall during the years before the Great War. While numbers did not rise every year, being somewhat susceptible to international crises, they increased by over 35 percent between 1900 and 1913, from 11,350 to 15,447. Furthermore, in 1913, only 2,479 of 15,447 guests were Bavarian, and only 5,076 were German; 5,799 had traveled from Austria-Hungary, 1,473 from Russia, and 137 from America. The resort registered 7,892 foreign guests during the year before the war, over half of the total figure.Footnote ¹²⁴ In 1914, the town's identity as an international spa was undeniable, even though some locals did voice concerns that the tourism industry was relying too heavily on visitors from Eastern and Southern Europe.Footnote ¹²⁵

On the eve of World War I, the community of Bad Reichenhall could proudly advertise itself as a success story. In a matter of decades, the sleepy, saline town had developed into a modern and cosmopolitan tourist destination, widely renowned as the “Queen of the German Alpine Baths” and “Germany's largest climatic resort.” However, this success had some regrettable consequences. The rapid expansion of the spa and hospitality industries had made the local community dependent on tourism as a source of income. This left them vulnerable when tourism declined as a result of recession or international crisis, a phenomenon first encountered when the number of guests dropped by 55 percent during the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.Footnote ¹²⁶ Four decades later, Fritz Söllner, mayor of Bad Reichenhall from 1900–1926, was forced to admit: “Without the spa, we are a poor mountain town, without trade, without change, without traffic, without a hinterland.”Footnote ¹²⁷ In spite of this realization, the municipal government remained fixated on the tourism industry. Their extensive investment in urban infrastructure, including the improvement of Bad Reichenhall's roadways and sanitation, contributed to a debt that had reached 2.6 million Marks by 1909, having doubled since 1896.Footnote ¹²⁸

World War I revealed the depth of these problems and truly marked the end of an era for Bad Reichenhall. Not only did the four-year conflict exacerbate the town's financial predicament, it robbed the resort of its international clientele, forever changing its visitor profile. During the early days of the war, locals regarded foreign guests with suspicion, as fear of espionage led to fights and increased surveillance of international guests.Footnote ¹²⁹ The guests who had until so recently defined the resort were no longer welcome, even before official bans on travel prevented them from visiting the spa at all. Meanwhile, patriotism pressured locals into converting the stylish spa facilities into cheap sick bays for German soldiers. Ironically, it was the presence of these wounded soldiers that kept the community afloat, a development ominously foreshadowed by the opening of a military convalescence home in 1913.Footnote ¹³⁰ Cut off from foreign patrons, compelled to cater to new guests who could not pay as much, and plagued with shortages of the most essential provisions, the tourism industry of Bad Reichenhall and the entire community that it supported was on the verge of collapse by 1918.

Both town and tourism industry survived, but Bad Reichenhall never regained the momentum that had characterized the prewar period. As local historian Herbert Pfisterer observes: “The world and its political map had changed, and large segments of the former clientele (from the Dual Monarchy, for instance) were lost.”Footnote ¹³¹ In 1911, approximately 55 percent of the spa's patrons were foreign; in 1925, international guests constituted less than 15 percent.Footnote ¹³² This contributed to a decrease in the number of overnight stays. During the 1913–1914 season, Bad Reichenhall registered 542,000 overnight stays. The numbers stagnated during the following twenty years, with only 445,000 stays in 1925–1926, and 473,000 in 1930–1931. In the meantime, business in the Bavarian spa towns of Bad Tölz and Oberstdorf nearly doubled during the same period of time, reflecting both the rise of mass tourism and the decline of the elite tourism associated with destinations like Bad Reichenhall.Footnote ¹³³ Bad Reichenhall could still rely on the twin attractions of nature and modernness, but the cosmopolitan elite that helped to define the spa were gone forever.

At the turn of the century, Bad Reichenhall was a peaceful destination that was equally progressive and sophisticated, but also grounded. By connecting the spa's natural surroundings with its modern character and facilities, tourist propaganda established the image of a forward-looking community rooted in nature. Many a visitor may have left behind the commotion of city life for the secluded community of Bad Reichenhall, but what they found there was essentially an alternative reality, a grounded modernity that provided ephemeral stability and authenticity. However, the challenge of modernity was somewhat different after 1914. No longer epitomized by relatively abstract processes such as industrialization or secularization, modernity was now defined by the violent experiences of war, revolution, inflation, and fascism. The fantasy of grounded modernity was still lucrative, but the vision became increasingly nationalist during the interwar period.