Bathhouse

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Scene in a bathhouse: Bader treats bathers, engraving by Jost Amman , 1568
Women's bathing room, anonymous woodcut after Albrecht Dürer , 1510

A bath house (also bath house , bathhouse , office or Stoben ) was a public bathroom . It was not only used for personal hygiene and the treatment of diseases, but was also a popular social meeting place.

Europe from the Middle Ages

Bath house operation in Paris in 1671
Scene from a bathhouse. (Illustration from the Factorum Dictorumque Memorabilium of Valerius Maximus, 15th century)

A bathhouse in the Middle Ages and early modern times was run by a bath on behalf of the community . It played an important role in everyday culture from around the 13th to the 16th centuries . Bathing took place - mostly with a (spatial or temporal) separation of the sexes - especially on Saturday or the eve of high holidays . In the bathhouses, which by no means corresponded to today's hygiene requirements, activities such as pulling teeth, cutting hair, shaving and minor surgical interventions ( bloodletting , cupping ) were carried out.

The heyday of bathhouses in Central Europe was the late Middle Ages . However, bathhouses already existed in the early Middle Ages , such as in the Waldschlössel (Rhineland-Palatinate) is proven in the last third of the 11th century and Charlemagne even owned a whole thermal baths based on the Roman model in his Aachen royal palace in the 8th century .

In the 15th century, the wood gradually became scarce, which led to an increase in prices and made bathing more expensive, so that the baths were less visited. The decline of the bathing culture was decisively initiated by the occurrence of epidemics such as plague and syphilis . In Vienna , the bathhouses were temporarily closed in 1521, 1554, 1562 and 1691 due to the risk of epidemics. The first cases of syphilis in Germany were reported in 1495, brought in by Landsknechten . The Thirty Years War also led to the closure of bathhouses, especially in the Protestant areas of southwest Germany.

In 1489, Ulm had 180 bathhouses. In the Middle Ages there were 21 bathing rooms in Vienna, eleven in 1534 and only seven at the beginning of the 18th century. In Frankfurt am Main around 15 bathhouses were operated in the Middle Ages, the civic register from 1387 names 29 bathers (including journeymen). In 1555 there were only two bathing rooms in operation, and only twice a week. The last bath of this type was closed here in 1809.

Bathhouse scene (engraving by Virgil Solis , 16th century)

In Zedler's Universal Lexikon from 1733 a public bathing room is described:

“But a bathroom looks like this: It is a low room, at one end of which there is an oven, but next to this oven there is a kettle with hot water and a bucket with cold water, from which one can draw and how one wants to use it that can moderate heat. On the walls there are benches in front of and above each other, on which one can sit higher or lower after one urges to sweat heavily or gently, and these are called the sweat benches. Those who want to bathe wet sit in a bathtub that is filled with water. "

According to Zedler's Lexicon, bathhouses were still very common in Poland , Russia, Lithuania and Scandinavia at that time , but hardly in Central Europe.

The rulers or the municipalities as operators issued bathing regulations for the public bathing rooms. This regulates the duties of the bathers and their staff (bath attendants and bathers) as well as the behavior of the bathers. Since bathing was done separately by gender in most of the bathing rooms - bathing brothels (with “bathing maids” employed in them) were only available in the relevant districts of larger cities - the bathing regulations also contained provisions on “chaste” behavior.

In the 19th century and also in the early 20th century, many bathhouses were set up as a measure of public hygiene in large cities, the so-called public baths . Most working-class families at that time did not have their own bathroom. Bathhouses were also built in many health resorts . Today only a few bathhouses have been preserved in their original state.

A fountain near a bathhouse is also known as a bath fountain .

Historic bathing rooms

Badgasse or Badstrasse as the street name occasionally reminds of earlier bathing rooms , see for example Badgasse in Garmisch-Partenkirchen , Badgasse in Ochsenfurt , Bad- und Waschanstalt Winterthur . The term “bath” or “bath room” also occurs in field names; In many cases, these are plots of land that were lent out as a fief together with the bathroom.

Germany

The bath house in Dieburg from the Middle Ages
Badstoven Münden

Further

The historic bath house in Kulmbach

Other cultures

Entrance to a hammam in the Hammamet medina

literature

  • Birgit Adam : The punishment of Venus. A cultural history of venereal diseases. Orbis, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-572-01268-6 , here: pp. 42-44 ( The bathhouse: Swinger Club in the Middle Ages ).
  • Susanne Grötz, Ursula Quecke (ed.): Balnea. Architectural history of the bathroom. Jonas Verlag , Marburg 2006, ISBN 3-89445-363-X .
  • Julian Marcuse : Baths and Baths in the Past and Present. A cultural-historical study. Enke, Stuttgart 1903.
  • Alfred Martin: German bathing in the past few days. Diederichs, Munich 1989 (reprint of the 1906 edition).
  • Hans Peter Duerr : Nudity and Shame. The myth of the civilization process. (= Suhrkamp Pocket Book No. 2285). Frankfurt am Main 1994 (Chapter 3: The medieval bathing rooms ).
  • Birgit Tuchen: Public bath houses in Germany and Switzerland in the Middle Ages and early modern times. Imhof, Petersberg 2003, ISBN 3-935590-72-5 .
  • Eberhard Fritz: Baths in the constitution process of the rural community in southwest Germany at the turn of the early modern period. In: Journal of Württemberg State History. 65, 2006, pp. 11-35.
  • Albrecht Cordes : parlors and parlor parties. On the village and small town constitutional history on the Upper Rhine and in Northern Switzerland. Stuttgart, Jena, New York 1993.
  • Clemens Zerling : Social togetherness in medieval and rural bathing rooms. Naked as God made them. In: Wolfgang Bauer , Sergius Golowin , Clemens Zerling: Heilige Quellen, Heilende Brunnen. Neue Erde, Saarbrücken 2009, ISBN 978-3-89060-275-2 , pp. 92-102.

See also

Web links

Wiktionary: Bathhouse  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Birgit Adam : The punishment of Venus. A cultural history of venereal diseases. Orbis, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-572-01268-6 , p. 42.
  2. ↑ Badstube. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 3, Leipzig 1733, column 98.
  3. ↑ Susanne Grosser and Herbert May: "Wolher ins Bad Reich vnde Arm". Public baths in the late Middle Ages and in the early modern period. In: Cleanliness at all times! Hygiene in the country (=  writings of South German open-air museums . Volume 7 ). Petersberg 2019, p. 39-57 .
  4. ^ Badhaus, history. Retrieved October 19, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Homepage Pommelsbrunn medieval bathhouse . Retrieved March 17, 2013 .