Bolzano brothers

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The Bolzano brothers were both the bath tenants Peter Bolzano and Ferdinand Bolzano in the royal Bavarian state bath Bad Kissingen and the company of the company they ran and their heirs. Bad Kissingen owes its development into a " world pool " to these first private tenants .

Vita of the brothers

The brothers Peter and Ferdinand Bolzano ( Italian Bolzano = Bozen ) came from an Italian family from the province of Como , whose German descendants were resident in Würzburg as merchants from the end of the 17th century .

The older brother Peter Karl Bolzano (* 1794 in Würzburg; † July 6, 1839 in Bad Kissingen). like his ancestors was also a merchant and owned a shop for gallantry , cloth and cut goods on the Würzburg Salzmarkt as early as 1805 . He may also have been a co-owner of his father's business. In 1813 he had a portrait of himself made by Johann Michael Albaneder (1762–1824) in wax painting . In 1824 he signed the lease agreement with the royal Bavarian government. At that time, his Würzburg trading company was "best known at home and abroad". He married Josephe in 1824/1825 (last name not known). Bolzano died on July 6th at the age of 45 of gastric fever and was buried in the Würzburg family grave on July 8th. The funeral service was held on July 15, 1839 in the Würzburg Cathedral .

His six years younger brother Ferdinand Bolzano (* September 1800 in Würzburg, † May 1, 1838 ibid) married there on October 10, 1820 Agnes Rechthaler, the daughter of the royal Bavarian residence castle - curator Xavier Rechthaler and the residence castle-nurse Magdalena Paskaly. The couple had at least two daughters, Emilie Margarethe (1824–1898), married from 1843 to Carl Reuss (1813–1870), and Elise Bolzano. In 1820 he had himself portrayed by the painter Franz Xaver von Meixner . Johann Wendt wrote about him in 1837 in his work Die Heilquellen zu Kissingen in the Kingdom of Baiern : "... and the small round and nimble figure of Mr. Ferdinand Bolzano is everywhere, and watches over the welfare of all guests with Argus eyes ...". He died of an inflammatory disease at the age of 38. The funeral service was held on May 5, 1838 in the Würzburg Cathedral. His wife Agnes was the Bavarian King Ludwig I. a Reuss Amethyst paid. A portrait of her is said to be hanging at Nymphenburg Palace .

In 1817 the two brothers came together to Bad Kissingen for a cure or summer break.

Bathroom tenant

The Kissinger Kurhaus after expansion by the Bolzanos (1845)
The Bad Kissinger jug magazine , facility for bottling medicinal water
Bolzano trademark on clay pot

With the course season of 1824 the brothers - only for the first short time together with the innkeeper Adrian Stöhr from Würzburg - were the highest bidder for an initial ten years for an annual rent of 600 guilders with a lease from February 6th and effective from March 1st, 1824 first private leaseholder of the Kissingen bathing establishment, the royal spa house and mineral healing springs as well as the jug magazine . Your contractual partner was the district judge Theodor Boveri , who was also responsible for the health resort . The government actually wanted to sell everything, but required the buyer to make considerable investments in modernization measures, which is why no buyer could be found. As spa operators, the Bolzanos were to a certain extent forerunners of the later state spa administration or today's “Bayer. Staatsbad Bad Kissingen GmbH ". The Bolzanos also established a casino with roulette , billiards and faro , which lasted until 1849.

In 1825, the leasing of the nearby state-owned Bockleter bathing company was added, although only Peter Bolzano dedicated himself to this. As early as the next course season, he had the facilities there brought up to "the level that perfectly meets the expectations of every spa guest".

During the lease time of the Bolzano brothers, the decisive course was set in Bad Kissingen for the rise of the health resort to become a “world spa”. The two merchants turned out to be ideal partners of the Wittelsbach royal family under King Ludwig I, who tried in the following years to raise the level of the somewhat provincial seaside resort. That is why the lease also says: "... as it is ... the ultimate intention to provide both bathing establishments and their mineral waters with the greatest possible celebrity, the tenant undertakes in particular to do everything in terms of capital and labor to achieve this purpose."

Rákóczi clay vessel by the Bolzano brothers (around 1830)

Following this claim, the brothers intended to bring the “big world”, that is, the nobility and the socially superior and financially well-off upper class from all over Europe, to Kissingen. In order to achieve this goal, they expanded the Kurhaus built in 1827 around 1837 and added a generous extension with 47 rooms. Johann Wendt wrote about this in 1837: “The new spa house, created by the grace of the king, has already developed so far that the whole building plan is clearly visible.” With this they created the first really befitting accommodation for the highest-ranking Bad Kissingen spa guests. Foreign spa guests from all over Europe could now change their money in the Kurhaus. The Bolzanos also booked hotel and private rooms. At the same time Ferdinand Bolzano was responsible for the catering in the large Kurhaus, Peter Bolzano for the catering in the neighboring Bad Bocklet. Johann Wendt wrote in 1837 that “your restaurant table is one of the best”.

The brothers Bolzano were particularly known for the highly successful distribution of the mineral Rákóczi and Pandur - both sources were in 1737 when laying the Franconian Saale been rediscovered - and acidulous water (first mentioned in 1520), today after King I. Maximilian Maxbrunnen called. They expanded the mail order business and put it on a commercial basis that was professional for the time. They had the healing water filled into clay vessels in the jug magazine and sent them within Europe and even overseas, for example to Paris , London , Saint Petersburg or to the imperial Brazilian court in Rio de Janeiro . As a large-scale advertising measure, the brothers published the advertising pamphlet Latest News about the Kissingen spa and its healing springs with expert reports from the sources, which they distributed in large numbers from 1827 onwards. Because of the poor quality of the Rhön clay pots, the company later used hand-blown glass bottles made of hyalite . They were thick-walled and opaque, so that daylight could not reduce the water quality. The Kissinger mineral water was shipped in larger and smaller hyalite bottles (bottle bottom diameter 7 and 9 centimeters ).

The Würzburg doctor and journalist Gottfried Eisenmann confirmed in his work Die Heilquellen des Saalthales in 1837 , “that the Kissinger Bad had gained through the operation and the liveliness of the Bolzano brothers ...; But I also like to see that the mentioned bath tenants had no other motive for their activity than the Kaze in catching a mouse, namely their advantage. But what does that do? "

The long tradition of spa music in Bad Kissingen began with the Bolzano brothers. For the course season 1837 they engaged 15 musicians from Bohemia and entrusted the musical direction of the spa orchestra to the conductor Johann Kliegl (1808-1883).

After Ferdinand's death (1838), Peter Bolzano ran the Kissinger and Bockleter baths alone. But even after his death in the following year (1839), "everything is moving in the same way as before," as several newspapers announced at the time. Because his widow Josephe Bolzano, with the support of the entrepreneur Adolph Reuter, continued operations in Bad Kissingen and Bad Bocklet until 1853 as managing director under the company "Gebrüder Bolzano". Reuter, together with Wilhelm Sattler and Georg Ernst Wüstenfeld, had been a stoneware manufacturer in nearby Aschach since 1829 .

However, the successors lacked the entrepreneurial skills of the brothers. This was probably one of the reasons why the lease with the royal Bavarian government expired after a 30-year term at the end of the course season in 1853. Nevertheless, the name Bolzano was still held in high regard. With a newspaper advertisement dated April 14th, the last owners of the company "Gebrüder Bolzano", Ferdinand Bolzano's son-in-law Carl Reuss and Louis Rubach, had to expressly point out that their business would be extinguished at the end of the lease and that they would not with the current pool leaseholder, the inn owner E. Maulick from Munich, work together. At that time, with the note “E. Maulick previously advertised the Bolzano Brothers ”.

Further development

The Bad Kissinger “Kaiserkur” from 1864

In general, it can be said that the Bolzano brothers "through restless efforts to remove all previous defects and through clever and attentive management of the business have so far been able to acquire the general satisfaction of the bathing public to the fullest". With the commitment of the two brothers, the development of Kissingen into a world bath began , because soon guests were coming from all over Europe, from Russia to England , and occasionally from overseas. While 725 summer visitors came to Kissingen in 1822, in 1836 there were already 2,025 guests.

After the deaths of both Bolzanos, the seaside resort had become the social meeting point of the high society of the time , i.e. the nobility , the upper classes and artists. In the year 1847 30 personalities from princely houses, 86 counts , 496 other nobles and 36 English lords , top statesmen from almost all states of the German Confederation and abroad, important artists and scholars were present.

The development work of the Bolzano brothers made the year of the "Kaiserkur" (1864) and the year of the "Hohen Kur" (1868) possible in Bad Kissingen: in 1864, the Russian Tsar couple Alexander II and Marija Alexandrowna , the Austrian Empress Elisabeth ( Sisi ), the Bavarian "fairy tale king" Ludwig II , the Württemberg king Karl I , the Hanoverian queen Marie and Marie , the last queen of both Sicilies , and other representatives of European rulers as well as several princes and grand dukes on top of each other (see: List of well-known spa guests in Bad Kissingen ). By 1860 the number of summer visitors was already 4,500. In 2012 there were around 240,000 guests.

Publications

  • Latest news about the health resort Kissingen and its healing springs. Richter, Würzburg 1827; 2nd edition, Stahel, Würzburg 1829.
  • Short report on the components, effects and use of the Rakoczy and the other healing springs of Kissingen. C. Jügel, Frankfurt am Main 1847-1852.

literature

  • Johann B. Scharold: Memories from the history of the spa fountain ... to Kissingen. 1838, p. 69 ff. (Digitized version) .
  • Birgit Schmalz: The Bolzano brothers. Entrepreneurs for the world pool. In: Thomas Ahnert, Peter Weidisch (Hrsg.): 1200 years Bad Kissingen. Facets of a city's history. Bad Kissingen 2001, ISBN 3-929-278-16-2 , p. 293.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bayerische Badezeitung , August 25, 1865, p. 148 (digitized version) .
  2. ↑ In some documents like the DNB , 1800 is given as the year of birth; this is demonstrably wrong, since according to the obituary from 1839 he died at the age of 45.
  3. ↑ He is not to be confused with the doctor Peter Eduard Bolzano (1793–1818), professor of medicine in Prague .
  4. ↑ Carl Gottfried Scharold: Würzburg and the surrounding area. 1805, p. 89 (digitized version) .
  5. ↑ At the time of his birth (1794) there was a dealer of the same name in Würzburg, Peter Bolzano, who among other things dealt with golden snuffboxes and watches. He died in 1818 and left Katharina Bolzano († 1844) as a widow. Due to the same name, it could be the father. See the summons to the creditors in: Neue Würzburger Zeitung of August 25, 1844 (digitized version ) .
  6. ↑ Hans-Peter Trenschel: The wax portrait of Würzburg businessman. In: Old Franconian pictures and coat of arms calendar. Volume 84, 1985, p. 13 f.
  7. ↑ Münchener Conversations-Blatt of May 31, 1831 (digitized version) .
  8. ↑ Lt. He was married for 14 years as an obituary.
  9. ↑ Fränkischer Merkur of July 11, 1839 (digitized version) .
  10. ↑ Official obituary: Bolzano, Peter Karl (✝ July 6, 1839). Würzburg University Library, accessed on October 28, 2012 .
  11. ^ Intelligence sheet for the Lower Main District of the Kingdom of Bavaria from October 14, 1820 (digitized version) .
  12. ↑ Xaver Rechthaler and his wife were therefore the manager / caretaker couple of the Marienberg Fortress in Würzburg.
  13. ↑ Obituary in: Neue Würzburger Zeitung of July 29, 1841 (digitized version) .
  14. ↑ According to Franz Xaver von Meixner around 1790 Zweibrücken - 1825 portrait painter, 1809 pupil at the Münchn. lot-tissimo, accessed on October 28, 2012 .
  15. ^ Johann Wendt: The healing springs to Kissingen in the Kingdom of Bavaria. Breslau 1837, p. 10 (digitized version) .
  16. ↑ Official obituary: Bolzano, Ferdinand (✝ 1.5.1838). Würzburg University Library, accessed on October 28, 2012 . [Official Obituary]
  17. ↑ Königlich-Baierisches Intellektivenblatt for the Grand Duchy of Würzburg No. 95 and 96 of August 5, 1817, p. 2280 (digitized version) .
  18. ^ Ewald Wegner : Friedrich von Gärtner and the Bad Kissingen (= Mainfränkische Studien. Volume 25). Friends of Mainfränkischer Art and History, Würzburg 1981, p. 9 (excerpt) .
  19. ↑ Johann Baptist Scharold: Memories from the history of the spa fountain ... to Kissingen. 1838, p. 69 (digitized version) .
  20. ↑ Johannes Wetzler: Kissingen, his healing springs and institutions. Volume 1, 1845, p. 14 (digitized version) .
  21. ↑ Johannes B. Friedreich: Notes on Bavaria's baths and healing springs. Nuremberg 1827, p. 81.
  22. ↑ Lease agreement between the royal family and Peter Bolzano for the lease of the mineral fountain in Bad Bocklet. State Archives Würzburg, archive no. 631.
  23. ↑ Conradus J. House: Bocklet and his healing springs. 1831, p. 3 (digitized version) ; Gottfried Eisenmann : The healing springs of the Saalthales. 1837, p. 9 (digitized version) .
  24. ↑ Announcement of June 9, 1826 in: Intellektivenblatt for the Unter-Mainkreis (Würzburg) of June 13, 1826, p. 992 (digitized version) .
  25. ^ Johann Wendt: The healing springs to Kissingen in the Kingdom of Bavaria. Wroclaw 1837.
  26. ^ Johann Wendt: The healing springs to Kissingen in the Kingdom of Bavaria. Breslau 1837, p. 9 ff. (Digitized version) .
  27. ^ Advertisement dated February 20, 1849 in: Chemisches Zentralblatt , Volume 1, Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft, 1849, p. 192 (digitized version) .
  28. ↑ Münchener Conversations-Blatt of May 31, 1831, p. 606 (digitized version) ; Advertisement by Peter Bolzano , Würzburg, in: Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung , April 1828 (digitized version) ; Johann Adam Maas : Kissingen and its healing springs. 1830, p. 21 (digitized version) .
  29. ↑ Gottfried Eisenmann: The healing springs of the Saalthales. 1837, page 11 f. (Digitized version) .
  30. ↑ Mainfränkisches Jahrbuch für Geschichte und Kunst , Volume 59, Friends of Mainfränkischer Kunst und Geschichte, 2007, p. 297 (excerpt) .
  31. ↑ Bayerische National-Zeitung of July 18, 1839, Volume 6, p. 471 (digitized version).
  32. ↑ Joseph Schneider: Natural history-topographical-statistical description of the high…. Fulda 1840, p. 134 (digitized version) .
  33. ^ Würzburger Anzeiger of April 12, 1853 (digitized version) .
  34. ↑ Nuremberg Peace and War Courier of April 18, 1855 (digitized version) .
  35. ↑ Peter Kolb: Lower Franconian History: From incorporation into the Kingdom of Bavaria to the beginning of the 21st century. Vol. 2. Echter, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-429-02374-2 , p. 211 (excerpt) .
  36. ^ Bad Kissingen and its guests in the 19th and 20th centuries. In: Thomas Ahnert, Peter Weidisch (eds.): 1200 years Bad Kissingen, 801–2001. Facets of a city's history. Festschrift for the anniversary year and accompanying volume for the exhibition of the same name. Special publication of the Bad Kissingen city archive. TA Schachenmayer, Bad Kissingen 2001, ISBN 3-929278-16-2 , p. 97.
  37. ↑ Universal Lexicon of the Present and Past 1857–1865 ( online ).