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Spa guests sun themselves in front of the open-air inhalatorium
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| City portrait Bad Sooden-Allendorf
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The Fort of White Gold
Turn left off Main Street, head toward the city center and suddenly Fort Knox comes into view. No, that can’t be…but there it is, a 170-meter-high wooden wall with two towers to the right and left. Of course there are flags flying over the towers, even though they’re not the American red, white and blue. Do the residents of Bad Sooden-Allendorf feel they need to defend themselves against enemy attacks from the nearby forest? Hardly. Besides, the wood walls are actually not made out of solid wood, rather of brushwood. They’ve got a wet sheen, even though the sun is shining. The huge wooden structure is an open-air inhalatorium and at one time it was used for salt extraction.
A Priest Hits the Road
No one really knows how long the saltwater springs in Bad Sooden-Allendorf have been bubbling. In any event the residents began producing salt from them early on. They boiled the spring water until only the salty residue remained. But the fires needed to heat the water not only polluted the earth’s atmosphere, they also began harming the nearby forest, since a lot of fuel, and wood, was needed to keep the fires burning. It all seemed very inefficient to a certain Father Rhenanus, who arrived in the city in 1555. He knew the best way to learn was to observe others, so he hit the road, traveling around to find out how other cities extracted salt. In one salt-work in Erfurt, he discovered the open-air inhalatorium. His enthusiasm soon infected the residents of Sooden and they got their own “inhalatorium.” The process is simple: saltwater trickles over the brushwood walls of the “house” up to seven times, during which some of the water evaporates. This increases the salt content of the remaining water from 4 to 22 percent.
White Gold
Up to 200,000 hundredweight of salt could be extracted annually—white gold for the owners of the salt-works. Salt was the only seasoning used at the time; and fish, meat and herbs were preserved with salt. The need was enormous and business flourished. The salt was exported to cities as far as Strasburg and Bremen. But the good times finally ended in 1906. Rock salt came on the market—it was so much cheaper that it spelled the end of the traditional way of doing things.
The Bathtubs Pointed the Way to the Future
The workers in the salt-works knew the worth of the salt-water springs—bad backs recuperated here splendidly. In 1818, the workers got their first bathhouse, with three bathtubs. And in 1881, the city was officially recognized as a spa town. From then on it was known as Bad (bath) Sooden-Allendorf. And once again salt began bringing wealth to the town. Spa guests overran the place--in 1992 the spa management counted 700,000. Sadly, healthcare reform has been crippling the town, since spa visits are rarely covered by heath insurance plans anymore. The result: the number of spa guests has gone down by half, and those who still come, mostly have to pay out of their own pockets. Still, visitors can enjoy one particular spa pleasure for free —a so-called “inhalation walk” around the inhalatorium. Take in a deep breath here, you’ll feel it all the way to your toes.
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