Bad Herrenalb is a municipality in the
district of Calw, in
Baden-Württemberg
Baden-Württemberg (; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million inhabitants across a ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. It is situated in the northern
Black Forest
The Black Forest (german: Schwarzwald ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is t ...
, 15 km east of
Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the Rhine, the border with Fra ...
, and 22 km southwest of
Pforzheim
Pforzheim () is a city of over 125,000 inhabitants in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, in the southwest of Germany.
It is known for its jewelry and watch-making industry, and as such has gained the nickname "Goldstadt" ("Golden City") ...
.
The town is connected to the city of
Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the third-largest city of the German state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital of Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the 22nd-largest city in the nation, with 308,436 inhabitants. ...
by the
Albtalbahn, an electric railway that forms part of the
Karlsruhe Stadtbahn
The Karlsruhe Stadtbahn is a German tram-train system combining tram lines in the city of Karlsruhe with railway lines in the surrounding countryside, serving the entire region of the middle upper Rhine valley and creating connections to neighbou ...
. Bad Herrenalb is the terminus of one of the branches of the Albtalbahn, which operates as line S1.
History
The town grew up around
Alba Dominorum, a
Cistercian monastery founded in 1148. The monastery was later dissolved during the
Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
. As early as 1841 Dr. J. Weiss established a cold water sanitarium which was later transformed into a water therapy institute with a sanitarium for nervous disorders. The sanitarium was further developed under the leadership of Councilor Dr. Mermagen.
Since 1954 Herrenalb is officially known as a “health resort.” In 1971 a 600 meter deep well was drilled into a mineral rich water source. With the exploitation of this source, Herrenalb officially appended the word “Bad” (German for bath) to its name on July 26, 1971.
On January 1 and February 1, 1972 the Rotensol and Neusatz were respectively incorporated into Bad Herrenalb. And finally, on January 1, 1975 Bernbach was likewise incorporated into the municipality.
Mayors
* 1962–1996: Robert Traub (
CDU)
* 1996–2004: Manfred Renz (born 1952), (
GRÜNE)
* 2004–2020: Norbert Mai
* 2020–present: Klaus Hoffmann
References
External links
Bad Herrenalb: pictures
{{Authority control
Calw (district)
Spa towns in Germany