Prague Reflections III: The Baths of West Bohemia

One of the main reasons Toby and I took our expedition to the Czech Republic was to leave Prague and take a motor tour around western Bohemia, specifically to visit some of the many towns that boast thermal springs and medicinal baths. A number of the towns that dot the landscape of what were once crownlands of the Habsburg Empire (later Austro-Hungarian Empire) are the creation of the 18th and 19th centuries, and exist solely because of their hot springs. (One particularly bizarre, if somewhat sad tale for dog lovers, was that the Habsburg emperor Charles IV discovered the springs at Karlovy Vary [Karlsbad -- "Charles' Bath"], the best known of these baths, when one of his hunting dogs was sniffing around the woods and fell in to one of the springs. With water running at around 80 degrees C after it has been piped through the plumbing to drink - thus it is much hotter at its source - I imagine the dog was stewed).

What interests me is that fact that these springs and the towns that were built up around them became the main locus of Central European tourism for a great portion of the period that I study. There are a few reasons for this. The first is one of health: the baths were (and still are, I would learn) regarded as a legitimate cures for any number of ailments. People suffering from chronic illness -- probably some of the most common including things like TB, gout, cardio-vascular illnesses -- all of those things that we are able to treat so effectively today with modern medicine would come to the spas, often for extended periods, often many times over their adult lives. (It is sometimes hard to imagine just how central illness was to everyday life in a time before antibiotics and other 20th century innovations.)

As time went on and a more robust middle class developed, and along with it things we take for granted like disposable income and leisure time, the spas became some of the first major tourist/resort destinations. By the time we reach my period of interest, the fin-de-siecle period (around 1890 until the First World War), these spas had become perhaps the most common vacation destinations for anyone who had a bit of money set aside, and hotels and spas catered to income levels from the low to moderate middle class all the way to the aristocracy. In towns like Karlovy Vary famous personalities of all types, from Karl Marx to the Tsar of Russia, from Beethoven to Chopin, visited at various times to "take the waters." They were particularly popular among the increasingly middle-class Jews of Central Europe (who, in the darker side of the spa culture, were frequently caricatured in an entire genre of anti-Semitic spa-town postcards, many of which can still be purchased online today through specialty collectors) -- this is the reason for my specific interest, as I hope a chapter of my next book will illustrate.

The two towns Toby and I visited were perhaps the most famous two in Western Bohemia, Karlsbad and Marianbad (Kalovy Vary and Marianske Lazne). The former I've already discussed, the later, Karlsbad's smaller, but more refined sister is perhaps best known to modern ears (or at least lovers of avant-garde French cinema) as the location of "Last Year at Marianbad," (L'Année dernière à Marienbad) the surreal early '60s movie by Allain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais.

Both towns became significant spa destinations in the 18th century, but the height of their popularity was the second half of the 19th until the First World War. In their heyday, tens and even hundreds of thousands of visitors would descend on these towns in the tourist season.

The setting that visitors would encounter was bucolic and semi-rural, with the town centers featuring massive ornate colonades (usually late 19th century neo-Baroque; in the case of Karlovy Vary, some of them designed by Fellner and Helmer ) that provided the setting for the main activity: walking around and drinking hot water with a heavy mineral content that naturally surfaced from the hot mineral springs beneath. To facilitate the drinking, a special type of cup (called a "becher," supposedly after the Becher family of pharmacists-cum-distillers who created Becherovka, the ubiquitous west Bohemian spirit in the tall green bottles). The cup is ceramic with a hollow handle running from the bottom of the cup up, through which one sucks the mineral water (see picture of Toby above).

Around these colonades are dozens of hotels, many of them featuring their own spa treatments, most of them built during the post-Ausgleich (post-1867) pre-war period. In Marianbad, simply walking from the spa complexes down the hill gives one a sense of the social stratification. The grander, fantastic hotels are near the top of the hill, closest to the waters and the grand Lazni (spa buildings - see picture of the Nove Lazne above). Continuing down the hill, all along the right-hand side of the main street (Hlavni Trida) are smaller, botique-y hotels that become more and more middle class.

The tourist diversions in both towns included theater (in Karlovy Vary, the theater was designed by Fellner and Helmer) and casinos. But the main activity of these towns was quite simple: promenading around the colonades and parks, stopping at the many little spigots -- some of them ornately decorated (see picture) found everywhere around the springs -- to fill up your becher and drink. It was a place to see and be seen, where health care became a pretext for socializing and traveling.

The waters themselves are, as I mentioned, heavily metallic. In Marianske Lazne, they actually had a pleasant taste (to me at least), a more mild mineral flavor, kind of like warmed-up seltzer. In Karlovy Vary, the waters had a much, much stronger flavor. From what I could tell, they probably have a heavy iron content, as the first flavor that popped into my head when I drank was that it tasted like blood. According to some sources, it was recommended to patients at times that they consume as much as 5 litres per day of the waters -- but I can't imagine doing that was very good for you.

As I mentioned before, these towns were very popular sights for Jewish tourism specifically. My theory is that this had nothing to do with any particular attachment by Jews to spas, but rather that they were the destinations that epitomized middle class style, and Jews over the course of the late 19th century entered the growing urban middle class in numbers far disproportionate to other ethnic populations. As I mentioned, an entire, rather disturbing, genre of postcards quite popular at these places featured rabidly anti-Semitic stereotypes. The postcards were ubiquitous indicating how popular they were as souveniers (and still seem to be: the postcard shown here, with the caption "Gruss aus Karlsbad" -- Greetings from Karlsbad -- I took from an on-line catalog of anti-Semitic postcards from a mainstream stamp and postcard collecting website -- http://www.stampcircuit.com/).

But whatever that world was, it has been totally effaced. In Marianske Lazne the only surviving indication of any Jewish presence is a stone marker in the park on the main Hlavni Trida. The marker is a monument to the synagogue that once stood in the city -- a monumental 19th century neo-Moorish building. I didn't realize until I crossed the street to look at it that, if you turned around, there was a large gap and vacant lot among what was otherwise an unbroken line of hotels and shops. It dawned on me that this lot was in fact the site of the shul -- the monument across the street, I guess, was put up to be more visible to passers by. The monument contains an image of the facade of the shul, beneath which is written first a verse from Tehillim (Psalms 118 -- לא אמות כי אחיה ואספר מעשי יה -- I shall not die but live to tell the works of God) and a platitude in Czech and German -- "Na pamet Marianskolazenskych Zidovskych Obcanu a synagogy postavene roku 1884, vypalene v noci za pogromu 9-10.11.1938 -- Nikdy nezapomine jme!"/"Zur erinnerung an die juedischen Buerger von Marienbad und die im Jahre 1884 Erbaute und in der Pogromnacht 9/10.11.1938 niedergebrannte Synagoge -- Vergessen wir nie!" (In memory of the Jewish citizens of Marianbad and the synagogue built in 1884 and destroyed by fire in the pogrom night [i.e., Kristallnacht] of November 9-10 1938 -- We do not forget!).

I frankly think the empty lot says a lot more than the stone.

Toby's response was very interesting. He really wanted to dig down into the snow to find the ground on the vacant lot (there was about 6 inches of packed snow -- with more falling constantly). I think he was hoping that he might find the floor of the building or something...but of course (as he found out), it's just dirt.

Nowadays, the towns are once again hopping after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kalovy Vary is the most surprising: it has become almost entirely Russian. I don't know the figures or the details, but from a casual observation, the tourist heart of the city is oriented firmly east. At almost every hotel and spa, Russian was the second (after Czech) if not the first language of menus and rates. Several buildings, many of them either old buildings that were being remodeled and subdivided into holiday apartments, had signs advertising the units exclusively in Russian.

I could not help but be struck by the irony. Not 20 years ago, the Soviets were regarded as brutal colonizers, occupying the country and imposing near-martial law after the protests of '68. They left in 1989...but now their successors are, arguably, more influential (in terms of the tourist economy) than ever.