David Clay Large. The Grand Spas of Central Europe

In The Grand Spas of Central Europe: A History of Intrigue, Politics, Art, and Healing, David Clay Large tells a rollicking tale of Central Europe’s grand spas from their origins through the twentieth century. He focuses his attention on German-speaking Central Europe (Germany, Bohemia, and Austria). Although there are other important European spas, Large argues that the Central European ones offer an especially rich history. Central European spas were not only the places where the European water cure reached its zenith of refinement and global resonance in the nineteenth century, they persisted well into the twentieth century, were reshaped by the East-West divide of the Cold War, and experienced a late-twentieth-century resurgence not seen in the rest of Europe. They thus offer a rich window into the history of spas and of modern Europe more broadly. Central Europe was home to hundreds of spas by the late nineteenth century and even saw the emergence of new ones in the early twentieth century. However, Large is interested not in spa culture as a whole, but in the particular fortunes and dynamics of a handful of grand spas such as Baden-Baden, Marienbad, and Gastein. These were the spas one reads about in novels—glittering centers of music, gambling, courtship, political intrigue, and sexual peccadillos. Large makes a case for the medical significance of spas, and devotes part of chapter 6 to their modern medicalization, but his real interest is in the ways in which these towns played an often outsized role in culture and politics. He regales the reader with stories of the people who made them famous, giving the spas—and the high art and politics that took place there—a decidedly human aspect as we encounter famous composers and emperors sometimes literally with their pants down.

Ancient history · Archaeology · East-Central Europe · Economic history · German · Political science · Politics · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law