A short history of Bad Reichenhall

A short history of Bad Reichenhall

Johannes Lang, transl.: Kristin Turnblad

Salt is the fertile ground on which Bad Reichenhall’s history is based. It was the salt that originally attracted people here. Without salt, the town neither would have been established nor have prospered. Nor would Bavaria have its current appearance, for the salt from Reichenhall made dukes, archbishops, and kings rich; the salt trade created new towns throughout the countryside. But the so called “white gold” also engendered envy and resentment, ultimately leading to serious political crises. The salt production itself was repeatedly responsible for devastating town fires. Because of its many possible applications, salt is used as a remedy. Not least due to this fact, Bad Reichenhall owes its transformation from an industrial salt-producing town to an internationally renowned health spa.

About 240 million years ago, the Reichenhall valley was almost at level with the equator. The climate was humid to dry, and our current habitat was in the middle of a large lagoon. The seawater had a salinity of about 35 grams per liter. The lagoon repeatedly dried out and was again flooded, forming salt deposits, which were covered by erosion with sand from the mainland. Consolidation, the retreating sea, and geological overthrusts led to the formation of so-called Haselgebirge, a mixture of clay, gypsum, and salt. Today these deposits are about one kilometer wide and two kilometers long; they extend to a depth of about 500 meters and are tremendously massive. To this day they feed the Reichenhall brine springs.

The earliest proven epoch in the Reichenhall region is that of the Neolithic period. The first known settlement in the Karlstein high valley dates back to the transitional period between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, when copper was already known and processed, but stone implements were still being made and used. Thanks to its favorable location, the high valley developed into an important settlement site, which was occupied almost continuously until the time of Christ’s birth.

At the transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, there was a center of metalworking craft in the Karlstein high valley. Hatchets, dagger blades, and bronze ingots could be crafted from the molds found there. The inhabitants were part of a society that afforded itself the maintenance of warriors, the acquisition of luxury goods, and complex fortifications. Strangely enough, settlement activity markedly declined beginning around 800 BC, not only in the Karlstein high valley, but also in the entire Reichenhall region for more than 500 years. The cause is unclear; perhaps people left for economic reasons.

It was about 150 BC that they returned – now all the more powerful! Iron had replaced the softer bronze as a material for weapons. An imposing settlement developed, which experienced its cultural peak in the last Celtic phase: There were close economic contacts between the Celts from the Reichenhall region and the Roman provinces south of the Alps. They not only imported from the Mediterranean area, but also imitated the lifestyle of their southern neighbors. And they cast and coined their own money – “little silver” from Karlstein.

Beginning in 15 BC, the Reichenhall valley came under Roman rule. In contrast to many other Celtic regions in the Alps, integration into the Roman Empire was for the most part peaceful here: High altitude settlements such as those on the Karlstein mountain were abandoned in favor of newly established villages and villas in the valley. The archaeological remains reveal a high level of civilization and culture, and they point to the diverse trade connections within the large Roman Empire.

From the 3rd century AD, the Roman provinces were repeatedly subject to incursions of barbarian tribes; this also occurred in the Reichenhall valley. While some of the population left the region after the collapse of the Roman Empire in 476, another part remained. Then Germanic tribes invaded from the northeast, and in the course of several decades merged with the people living south of the Danube. The Bajuwaren – the first Bavarians – emerged as a new tribe. The appearance of St. Rupert in 696 marks the beginning of written records and a new era for Reichenhall.

Unfortunately we don’t know anything about the prehistoric usage of the Reichenhall brine springs. But the Roman name for Reichenhall was “Salinas”, which corresponds to the german word “Saline”, which means salt-works and that refers to the use of the brine springs. The writings from the Early Middle Ages clearly indicate the operation of a thriving saltworks, which must have been preceded.

Salt is a product essential to human existence. It symbolizes life and community, but also prosperity, wealth, and power. Without salt, there was no food stockpiling in the past. Due to its properties, salt was one of the few ways to preserve food – especially meat, fish, cheese, and vegetables – until the invention of modern cooling methods in the 19th century. Food storage is unthinkable without preservation. And without preservation, every crop failure would end in famine and death. In the Middle Ages, salt, the so called “white gold“, thus had a similarly prominent status as petroleum has in our times.

In Reichenhall salt appears in its dissolved state – as brine. In contrast to sea saltworks, where intense sunlight causes the water to evaporate and the remaining salt can then be harvested, in our latitudes the brine must be artificially heated. This originally was done by means of a fire kindled under a pan filled with brine. When most of the water had evaporated, the moist salt mush was shoveled into wooden containers and set to dry until the salt had hardened.

From the 7th to the end of the 12th century, the Reichenhall saltworks were considered to be the most productive in the Eastern Alpine region. Since wood was needed as fuel for refining, tree trunks were drifted over great distances down the Saalach river down to Reichenhall by the current. The wood industry for the saltworks became the biggest employer in the region; in 1509 the first Bavarian Forestry Office was established – maybe it’s been the fist in the world. Since spruce was the preferred type of wood due to its straight growth and its floating properties, a monoculture was already established in the Middle Ages, and has left its mark on the forests around Reichenhall to this day.

By water and by land, the salt from Reichenhall passed through numerous villages. These were given salt depot rights, whereby merchants had to offer salt for sale there. These places thus became reloading points and centers of trade, resulting in the emergence of new towns. Over the course of the 13th century, towns such as Traunstein, Wasserburg, and even Munich developed along the salt trade route to the west. The town and province of Salzburg owe their name to the salt from Reichenhall.

Until the end of the 12th century, with the exception of the Reichenhall saltworks, there were only a handful of very small saltworks in the Eastern Alpine region. Only Reichenhall was able to produce and export salt in large quantities. Passau developed into a central reloading point, from where salt ships not only travelled down the Danube river, but could also be pulled upstream. Additionally, an important land route led from Passau to Bohemia called the Goldener Steig (golden trail).

With the largest saltworks by far, even in the Early Middle Ages the settlement attracted large numbers of people who found work here. This led to the creation of social, economic, and legal structures, and resulted in the emergence of a town, first mentioned in a document in 1159. Reichenhall with its self-confident citizenry was at times one of the richest towns in Central Europe. It was only following the destruction of the town in 1196 that the saltworks lost their monopolistic position to competing saltworks.

Since the numerous saltworkers proved to be appreciative customers for beer, five breweries already existed in the town in the late Middle Ages. To improve the quality of the beer, the town council issued the Reichenhaller Reinheitsgebot (Reichenhall beer purity law), in which the ingredients and the manufacturing process were specified – 16 years before the world famous Bayerisches Reinheitsgebot was written down.

Bishoprics, monasteries, and nobles at that time had their saltworks shares, administered by local stewards. These formed a kind of manageral class who over time became independent saltworks entrepreneurs (so-called Siedeherren). Only they could be elected to the town council, the “Council of the Sixteen”; thus power lay in the hands of a small, exclusive group.

Beginning in the 15th century, disasters, problems with the wood supply, as well as workers’ rebellions and revolts put the saltworks entrepreneurs increasingly under pressure. Their possible bankruptcy was forestalled by a “hostile takeover” by the sovereigns: Beginning in 1481, the dukes acquired all saltworks shares, thus establishing a sovereign monopoly on Bavarian salt production.

In the course of the 18th century, Reichenhall developed into an industrial town. A catastrophic conflagration in 1834, to which about three quarters of the town fell prey, was the catalyst for one of Reichenhall’s most important developments: In the years that followed, the Bavarian government – lead by King Ludwig I – pushed forward the rebuilding of the town and saltworks with generous funding and the involvement of renowned architects. In the meaning of the contemporaries the king had built the “most beautiful saltworks in the world”. – Today it’s the architectural symbol of our town.

But something else completely new was created now: a spa facility. This brought lasting change to the economic orientation of the town, which had previously only been known for its saltworks. Within a few decades, Reichenhall was officially designated as a spa, and developed into one of the most famous health spas in Europe.

Reichenhall has been associated with the healing powers of salt and brine since the Middle Ages. But it was only after the fire of 1834 that the idea developed to provide a new source of revenue for the saltworks town with the spa operations.

Bathing in salt water was regarded as beneficial, and corresponded to a trend coming from England. It was only through private initiative that the brine and whey sanatorium Bad Axelmannstein could be opened in 1846, resulting in the transformation of Reichenhall into an internationally renowned spa town within a few decades. After King Max II of Bavaria stayed for several weeks, the spa was so to speak “enobled”, thus attracting an aristocratic clientele.

The spa treatments were especially tailored to local conditions, and contributed to the rapid rise of the health spa. Most important was brine, which was used for baths, inhalations, and the drinking cure. A pharmacist developed specific herbal extracts and examined the composition of the treatments; doctors from Reichenhall invented numerous inhalation methods. And the spa doctor Georg von Liebig – sun of the world-famous chemist Justus von Liebig – analyzed Reichenhall’s climate.

Bad Reichenhall’s reputation as a world-class spa was justified by the embedding of the town in a romantic landscape, an attractive townscape, renowned doctors, and the world-famous “pneumatic chambers”, which were developed in 1866. A small group of newcomers, all of whom contributing in their own ways, were responsible for the rapid transformation of the town. The rapid rise in spa guests was followed by social changes sustained by a cosmopolitan atmosphere.

Well-known persons from the fields of music, art, literature, and science all gathered in Bad Reichenhall. Prior to the beginning of the First World War, the share of foreign guests, including a large clientele of Jewish faith, was the highest of all Bavarian tourist destinations. Two world wars, several economic crises, but also periods of prosperity have markedly molded and changed Bad Reichenhall in the last one hundred years.

Tourism is sensitive to economic growth, but also to crises. The sophisticated spa with its aristocratic guests experienced an abrupt end with the beginning of the First World War in 1914. In the interwar period, attempts were made to make the health spa appealing once again. This was followed during the Nazi era by a mass influx of guests, a war, a devastating bomb attack, and over 10,000 evacuees, refugees, and displaced persons. With the German economic miracle, Bad Reichenhall quickly recovered, and in the 1970s and 80s became a popular tourist destination. Since that time the town has faced new challenges, caused by the social, political and economic developments of our days.