Bad Nauheim

Generalities

As of 2012, Bad Nauheim has a population of 30,788. The town is approximately 35 kilometres (22 mi) north of Frankfurt am Main, on the east edge of the Taunus mountain range. It is a world-famous resort, noted for its salt springs, which are used to treat heart and nerve diseases. A Nauheim or "effervescent" bath, named after Bad Nauheim, is a type of spa bath through which carbon dioxide is bubbled. This bath was one of several types of hydrotherapy used at Battle Creek Sanitarium and it was also used at Maurice bathhouse, in Bathhouse Row in the early 1900s, during the heyday of hydrotherapy. The Konitzky Foundation, a charitable foundation and hospital for those without means, was founded in 1896 and its building occupies a central place next to the Kurpark.

History

On September 29, 1945 General Dwight D. Eisenhower reassigned General Patton from his beloved 3rd Army, the army he successfully led from the Normandy landings, to Czechoslovakia as Eisenhower could no longer keep General Patton in position as the Military Governor of Bavaria. General Patton was assigned to command the Fifteenth Army, actually a group of historians given status as an Army, with its headquarters in Bad Nauheim. On December 9, 1945, General Patton left Bad Nauheim for a hunting trip near Mannheim, during which he died after a car crash.

The Grand Hotel in Bad Nauheim was also the location of the Gestapo-led internment of around 115 Americans who worked in the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, December 1941. The group left Bad Nauheim on May 12, 1942.

In addition, during World War II Adolf Hitler had a command complex in nearby Langenhain-Ziegenberg called Adlerhorst, "the Eagle's Nest" (not to be confused with Kehlsteinhaus of Obersalzberg, which was never referred to as "the Eagle's Nest" by the Nazis).

Bad Nauheim was used as a residential area for American occupation forces after World War II. Despite its proximity to Frankfurt am Main and Hitler's command complex, Bad Nauheim was totally spared from Allied bombing. American occupants from that time were told that President Roosevelt had loved the town so much from his days there that he ordered it spared.

The novel The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (published 1915) is set in part at Bad Nauheim.

Mayors

Elvis Presley and others

In the old town center of Bad Nauheim is the barn at the gate to the castle. The gate, the 'Burgpforte', was used by Elvis Presley as the motif of a record cover for his 1959 #1 hit record 'A Big Hunk o' Love'. Presley lived in Bad Nauheim during his time with the United States Army in Friedberg. There is an annual Elvis festival in the city, starting in 2002.

Other famous people who have stayed in the town include Jamshetji Nusserwanji Tata – founder of Tata Group of Companies (he died in Bad Nauheim on 19 May 1904 aged 65), the Irish novelist and man of letters Patrick Augustine Sheehan holidayed at the Hotel Augusta Victoria in Bad Nauheim 6–23 September 1904, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (as a boy, FDR had been taken for several extended visits to Bad Nauheim where his father underwent the water cure for his heart condition), the Saudi Arabian football team during the 2006 FIFA World Cup, General George S. Patton, who celebrated his sixtieth birthday in the grand ballroom of the Grand Hotel and Albert Kesselring, Nazi General who died there in 1960.

Sons and daughters of the town

The Holocaust

Before the Holocaust there was an on-and-off Jewish presence in Bad Nauheim since around 1303. Before the Holocaust nearly 400 Jews lived in the town, making up nearly 3% of the population. On Kristallnacht the schoolhouse was desecrated and ransacked as well as Jewish stores, businesses and the synagogue. Many Jews were taken that night to concentration camps. Some were let out. Of those let out many were rearrested. By the end of the Holocaust there were just three Jews left in Bad Nauheim. For the most part those who weren't murdered had left the country.

The Sprudelhof

This complex is recognized as the largest center of Art Nouveau (Jugendstil in German) in Germany.

Education

International relations

Bad Nauheim is twinned with: