Baden, Baden-Baden and Badenweiler and their bathing Complexes
15 August 2024
Only a few cities have a double name, and certainly not when it is a repetition. The name of the German town of Baden-Baden (Baden-Württemberg) is functional to differentiate between Baden (canton Aargau) and Baden in Austria (near Vienna). Then there is Badenweiler in southern Baden-Württemberg.
Aargau was administered by Habsburg until 1415. The Confederation conquered 1415 the region (except for the Fricktal) and governed it as a subject territory (Untertanengebiet). Since 1803 (including Fricktal), Aargau has been a canton of the Confederation.
The Kurhaus and Casino in Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden, The Trinkhalle in the 19th century
Badenweiler, Grand Hotel Römerbad (1825), closed since 2016
The names of these places are also functional: they have been famous bathing and spa resorts since Roman times (around the first four centuries). They still live up to this fame today.
Roman bathing house in Badenweiler
In any case, the Romans invented the first stone bathing houses (thermae). These bathhouses were beautifully decorated and equipped buildings with baths, sophisticated systems for hot and cold water, drainage, heating, changing rooms, social rooms, gardens and other departments.
Local benefactors and the local government mostly financed them. The abundant literature on the subject provides further details about the fascinating world of Roman bathing culture. The beneficial effects of the mineral springs were also already known or at least suspected.
The women’s baths at Augst (Augusta Raurica, Canton of Basel-Landschaft). Picture. Römische Badenruine Badenweiler
This article focuses on the relationships between the towns mentioned, which maintained intensive contacts at the highest political and ecclesiastical levels right into the 19th century. Citizens, merchants, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, mercenaries and other professional groups were regular cross-border travellers.
There have always been borders between the Baden region and the canton of Aargau. However, the physical barrier of the Rhine did not form the border. For centuries, the Rhine was primarily a river for trade, communication, and transport. Language was not a barrier either. After the Romans left, Alemannic became the spoken language, and later, German.
The Roman roads and the Rhine. Picture: Römische Badenruine Badenweiler
Roman times
This region was part of Germania Superior for centuries in Roman times. At the height of Roman power (around 100 AD), the Limes Germanicus formed the border; it ran from Koblenz to the Danube and was 550 kilometres long. From the fourth century onwards, the Rhine was the Limes. The Romanisation of the local population (Swabians in Baden and Celts in Aargau) occurred in just a few generations.
Reconstruction. Picture: Römische Badenruine Badenweiler
The bathhouses in Baden-Baden (Aquae, vicus Aurelia-Aquensis) and Badenweiler (presumably Aquae Villae) fell into disrepair after the Romans left in the fourth century. It only happened in Baden (Aquae Helveticae) in the fifth century. The Roman road network also fell into disrepair but still characterises the contours of Baden and Aargau today.
Roman thermae in the cantons of Basel-Landschaft, Aargau and Vaud and Baden (German). Picture: Römische Badenruine Badenweiler
The Markgrave of Baden
The political history of Baden is only covered in outline. The many intrigues, uprisings and wars – including the Peasants‘ War (1525), the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), the Palatinate War of Succession (1688-1697), the Spanish War of Succession (1702-1713), the Reformation and other conflicts are omitted.
After the Romans’ (slow) withdrawal in the third and fourth centuries, the area was successively ruled by Alemanni (and their dukes), Frankish kings and emperors (Carolingians), and German kings and emperors of the Holy Roman Empire.
From the 10th century onwards, powerful monasteries (including Reichenau, St. Gallen, St. Blasien, and Säckingen) and bishoprics (Constance, Speyer, Strasbourg, Mainz, and Basel), as well as local princes, played an important role.
Duchy of Swabia. Picture: Marco Zanoli, Wikipedia
Around the year 1000, the mighty Duchy of Swabia (also known as the Duchy of Alemannia until the 11th century) was established. It was a large territory that extended as far as Graubünden.
This duchy then fell into decline, and new dynasties came into being. For Baden (and parts of Switzerland), the Zähringer and Habsburg dynasties were of particular importance (alongside the counts of the Palatinate (Pfalz), the dukes of Bavaria and Lorraine and the French kings, to name but a few).
From 1060 onwards, Baden was primarily ruled by margraves. These were related to the Dukes of Zähringen (1061-1218), who ruled large areas in Baden and Switzerland. The margraves founded many towns, including Bern, Fribourg, and Rheinfelden in Switzerland, Fribourg in Breisgau, and Neuchâtel on the Rhine in Baden. They developed Breisgau into a fortress and built St Peter’s Cathedral.
Breisgau and the Münster St. Peter
In 1515, the Margraviate of Baden-Baden and the Margraviate of Baden-Durlach were created, and they reunited to form the Margraviate of Baden in 1771. However, Baden-Baden remained Catholic during the Reformation, while Baden-Durlach became Protestant.
Baden-Baden and Baden-Durlach were plundered and destroyed several times during this period. In its various political constellations, Baden was always part of the Holy Roman Empire and its Habsburg emperors.
The French Revolution (1789), various wars and the political role of the First Consul (Napoleon (1769-1821) led successively to the Electorate of Baden (1803-1806) and, after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire (1806), to the Grand Duchy of Baden (1806-1918) in the Confederation of the Rhine (1806-1813).
After Napoleon’s fall in 1815, the German Confederation (1815-1866) was formed with an increasingly dominant Prussia. In 1849, a revolution in Rastatt led to a short-lived republic.
Due to Johann Gottfried Tulla’s Rhine corrections (1770-1828), the German customs union, the (diverse) industrialisation (including tobacco, glass, textiles, mining, machinery, railways (e.g., the Baden railway station (Badische Bahnhof) in Basel), the cuckoo clock), and the emergence of tourism in the Grand Duchy, bathing and spa resorts experienced their greatest heyday until 1914.
Karlsruhe, Archduke Karl Friedrich (1728-1811) of Baden and his palace
Swiss (textile) entrepreneurs, tourists, scientists, writers, and artists were always prominent. Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s (1746-1827) influence reached as far as Baden, and Johann Peter Hebel’s (1770-1826) is just one of many other examples.
The Strassburger Denkmal (1895) in Basel
The German Empire (1871-1918) was formed in 1870/71 after the Franco-Prussian War. During this war, Baden troops laid siege to Strasbourg; a monument in Basel commemorates Basel’s support for the citizens of Strasbourg. The Grand Duchy of Baden lost part of its sovereignty and fell with the Second German Empire in 1918.
The last Zähringer Friedrich II (1857-1928) abdicated his throne as Grand Duke of Baden in 1918, a Zähringer dynasty of almost 1,000 years! Not even the Habsburgs could compete with that. Baden then became a republic as part of the Weimar Republic.
From 1933 to 1945, Baden was ruled by a Gauleiter. After the German capitulation, Baden was divided into a French zone (with the almost intact Baden-Baden as its capital) and an American zone. Baden-Württemberg was created in 1947.
This eventful history of Switzerland’s immediate neighbour influenced mutual and direct contacts, especially in and from the 19th century. However, the modernised and contemporary spa culture in Baden-Baden, Baden and Badenweiler has remained intact, and the Roman buildings can still be visited.
Regional initiatives like the Regio Basiliensis also show that cross-border cooperation and projects are still part of the Alemannic DNA. Today, the towns of Rheinfelden and Laufenburg once again symbolise the Rhine’s unifying function.