St. Blasien (Sankt Blasien) is a small town located in the
Waldshut district 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
Southern Black Forest, 17 km northeast of
Waldshut-Tiengen
Waldshut-Tiengen (; gsw, label= Alemannic, Waldshuet-Düenge, italic=no), commonly known as Waldshut, is a city in southwestern Baden-Württemberg right at the Swiss border. It is the district seat and at the same time the biggest city in Waldsh ...
.
St. Blaise's Abbey in the Black Forest
Saint Blaise Abbey (german: Kloster Sankt Blasien) was a Order of St. Benedict, Benedictine monastery in the village of Sankt Blasien, St. Blasien in the Black Forest in Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
History 9th–12th centuries
The early hist ...
is located in St. Blasien. The town is
twinned with
Saint-Blaise in
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
. It is home to the
Jesuit
, image = Ihs-logo.svg
, image_size = 175px
, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders ...
college-preparatory school,
Kolleg St. Blasien.
History
Abbey history
The benedictine abbey, or
St. Blaise's Abbey, in what is today known as St. Blasien was first mentioned in 858. The history of the city is closely tied to that of the abbey, which reached its heyday under the leadership of prince-abbot Martin Gerbert from 1764 to 1793. In 1771, Gerbert ordered the construction of the abbey's striking, classicism-style dome church based on plans by architects Pierre Michel d’Ixnard and
Nicolas de Pigage
Nicolas de Pigage (3 August 1723 – 30 July 1796) was a French builder.
Pigage was born in Lunéville. His father was a stonemason. In 1743 he began his studies at the École Militaire, changing to the Académie Royale d'Architecture after ...
and under the leadership of project manager Franz Josef Salzmann. St. Blasien abbey was secularized in 1806. The last remaining monks relocated to the St. Paul diocese in the Lavant Valley in the Alp-city
Carinthia
Carinthia (german: Kärnten ; sl, Koroška ) is the southernmost States of Austria, Austrian state, in the Eastern Alps, and is noted for its mountains and lakes. The main language is German language, German. Its regional dialects belong to t ...
, taking with them art treasures such as the remains of 12 Habsburgs and the
Cross of Adelheid. On September 26, 1808 Baden's new Grand Duke
Charles Frederick ordered a review to determine whether the expensive maintenance of the dome still made sense or if the money should instead be used to build a more modest but less costly parish church.
In 1809, Zurich native mechanic and inventor
Johann Georg Bodmer
Johann Georg Bodmer (6 December 1786 – 29 May 1864) was a prolific Swiss inventor, making contributions to areas ranging from weaponry to steam engines, textile manufacture (machinery for wool spinning), and railroad construction.
See also
*Be ...
began to establish one of the first engineering works in Germany using the former abbey buildings. After Baden found a potent financial backer in David von Eichthal, it granted the Societé St. Blaise the right to use the premises (which were now hosting a mechanical spinning factory) for the next 10 years. The company manufactured handguns, whose rawly forged components could now for the first time be processed further using specialized machines and even be produced in series. It also manufactured coining machines for the mint in Mannheim. Bodmer also ran tests with the then completely unheard of rear loading system for canons and an early version of the conveyor belt. In 1816, the factory employed 809 people and was therefore one of the focal points of early industrialism in Baden. In 1821, after Bodmer had left the company, the investor Baron David von Eichthal bought the building complex. He ordered Frenchman
Benoît Fourneyron
Benoît Fourneyron (31 October 1802 – 31 July 1867) was a French engineer, born in Saint-Étienne, Loire. Fourneyron made significant contributions to the development of water turbines.
Benoît Fourneyron was educated at the École Nation ...
to install what was then the most powerful reaction turbine (40 PS) in Europe and further expanded the cotton spinning factory. In 1853, 28.000 spindles were in use at the factory, which accounted for roughly a quarter of production in all of Baden. The company was nevertheless commercially unsuccessful. As a result of the financial crisis in Frankfurt and Karlsruhe as well as the revolution of 1848/1849 the company was shut down. The abbey buildings were sold to the textile fabricator Carl Wilhelm Grether and the banker Obermaier in 1852.
Under the direction of Grether's son-in-law, Ernst Friedrich Krafft, the cotton-spinning factory was reopened and evolved into a business that would prosper many decades. After the big fire of the abbey in 1874, Krafft was also able to reconstruct the spinning factory and rule it successfully. By October 1931, however, it went bankrupt because of the global economy crisis.
Between 1934 and 1939 and from 1946 onwards, the abbey housed the Jesuit-led boarding school
Kolleg St. Blasien. During World War II, the building was used as a military hospital.
The health resort – St. Blasien’s rise to a spa town with international reputation
In 1882 the businessman Otto Hüglin began the construction of the health resort, which comprised a central building as well as others, which Hüglin throughout its first decade developed into a prestigious, colossal establishment with all modern conveniences. Roughly 200 rooms accommodate 300 people. Hüglin convinced Hermann Determann to oversee the spa's medical direction; he converted the resort into a highly efficient, water-based sanatorium. In 2014, after considerable research, it became known that from the middle of the 1880s to World War I, celebrities from all over the world frequently visited the spa of St. Blasien for treatments lasting several weeks. Among them were the pianist and founder of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Hans von Bülow (1893), to whom the famous first piano concerto of
Tschaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , group=n ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. He wrote some of the most popu ...
is dedicated; the then world-renowned Polish pianist
Józef Hofmann
Josef Casimir Hofmann (originally Józef Kazimierz Hofmann; January 20, 1876February 16, 1957) was a Polish-American pianist, composer, music teacher, and inventor.
Biography
Josef Hofmann was born in Podgórze (a district of Kraków), in A ...
, who as a ten-year-old child made his legendary debut in New York in 1867; 15-year-old Prince Gawriil Konstantinowitsch Romanow of St. Petersburg (1902);
Hermann Sudermann
Hermann Sudermann (30 September 1857 – 21 November 1928) was a German dramatist and novelist.
Life
Early career
Sudermann was born at Matzicken, a village to the east of Heydekrug in the Province of Prussia (now Macikai and Šilutė, i ...
, the most performed dramatist of his time (1903);
Otto Brahm
Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants ''Audo'', '' Odo'', ''Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity".
The name is recorded f ...
, the head of German theater in Berlin (1903); Hugo Stinnes, an industrialist and the then-richest man in Germany (1903); the explorer Eugen Wolf (1903); the painter Fritz Mackensen (1905); the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, William IV, with his wife (1906); the writer
Stefan Zweig of Vienna (1909);
Paul Warburg
Paul Moritz Warburg (August 10, 1868 – January 24, 1932) was a German-born American investment banker who served as the 2nd Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve from 1916 to 1918. Prior to his term as vice chairman, Warburg appointed as a member o ...
from New York, son of the banker's family of Hamburg and co-founder of the US-Federal Reserve Bank (1910); the wife and son of Leon Sidelsky of Vladivostok, co-builder of the trans-Siberian railway (1913);
Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a Germany, German statesman who served as the first Chancellor of Germany, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the fir ...
, then Lord Mayor of Cologne (1917); and many other famous names of politics, science, literature and art from Germany as well as the rest of the world.
The health resort was expanded and in parallel with it St. Blasien's health resort became one of Europe's best-known medical institutes. Due to that, many famous people such as author
Heinrich Mann
Luiz Heinrich Mann (; 27 March 1871 – 11 March 1950), best known as simply Heinrich Mann, was a German author known for his Social criticism, socio-political novels. From 1930 until 1933, he was president of the fine poetry division of the ...
(1892) and Russian revolutionary
Maxim Gorki
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and sociali ...
(1921) took the cure there. The latter visited St. Blasien based on a recommendation by
Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
who had stayed in Zürich before WWI. Because of its modern spa facilities, metropolitan flair, seclusion and romantic location in the
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 ...
, St. Blasien was favored by the Grand Duke of Baden
Frederick I Frederick I may refer to:
* Frederick of Utrecht or Frederick I (815/16–834/38), Bishop of Utrecht.
* Frederick I, Duke of Upper Lorraine (942–978)
* Frederick I, Duke of Swabia (1050–1105)
* Frederick I, Count of Zoll ...
(German: Friedrich I.) and his wife Luise. Between 1870 and 1906, they often stayed in the Friedrich-Luise-Ruhe building, which was named after them, during their curative stays. During that time, St. Blasien received its town charter and obtained the approval to complete the renovation on the domed church. In September 1918,
Prince Max of Baden
Maximilian, Margrave of Baden (''Maximilian Alexander Friedrich Wilhelm''; 10 July 1867 – 6 November 1929),Almanach de Gotha. ''Haus Baden (Maison de Bade)''. Justus Perthes, Gotha, 1944, p. 18, (French). also known as Max von Baden, was a Ger ...
, the last Reich Chancellor of the German Empire, stayed in St. Blasien. Only weeks later he arbitrarily announced
Wilhelm II
Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 18594 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (german: Kaiser) and King of Prussia, reigning from 15 June 1888 until his abdication on 9 November 1918. Despite strengthening the German Empir ...
’s abdication in Berlin.
The first famous personalities to come to St. Blasien in the 19th century were liberal journalist and literary critic
Ludwig Börne
Karl Ludwig Börne (born "Loeb Baruch"; 6 May 1786 – 12 February 1837) was a German-Jewish political writer and satirist, who is considered part of the Young Germany movement.
Early life
Karl Ludwig Börne was born Loeb Baruch on 6 May 178 ...
(1832), composer
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include sy ...
with his wife Cécile on their honeymoon in 1837, and
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
, later president of the U.S. Roosevelt visited St. Blasien each year until he turned 14 with his parents for hiking and cycling. In 1905 he spent a part of his honeymoon there as well. One of the last well-known people to come to St. Blasien was the world-famous opera singer Heinrich Schulnus with his wife in 1945 during the end of WWII. After the health resort was sold and the health resort St. Blasien AG was dissolved by Otto Hüglin and his son Albert Hüglin in 1925, the town's level of renown gradually decreased.
Sons and daughters of the city
*
Alfred Buntru
Alfred Buntru (15 January 1887 – 23 January 1974) was a German academic and member of the Nazi Party. Born in Sankt Blasien in the Waldshut district of the Grand Duchy of Baden, he was educated at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Bun ...
(1887–1974), water engineer and rector of the RWTH Aachen University.
*
Josef Glaser (1887–1969), national football (soccer) player.
*
Busso Thoma (1899–1945) executed by the Nazi regime as one of the co-conspirators in the July 1944 attempted assassination of Hitler.
See also
*
List of cities and towns in Germany
This is a complete list of the 2,055 cities and towns in Germany (as of 1 March 2022). There is no distinction between ''town'' and ''city'' in Germany; a ''Stadt'' is an independent municipality (see Municipalities of Germany) that has been giv ...
Gallery
File:Menzenschwand Hinterdorf.jpg, Sankt Blasien
File:Dom_St._Blasien,_September_2020.jpg, St Blaise Abbey
File:Sankt_Blasien_-_Kunstwerk_-_Heileiger_Blasius_I.jpg, Artwork, 2018
References
External links
St. Blasien: pictures
Towns in Baden-Württemberg
Waldshut (district)
Baden
{{Waldshut-geo-stub