Georg Pingler
Georg Pingler (born December 26, 1815 in Montabaur , † July 27, 1892 in Königstein im Taunus ) was the founder of the spa in Königstein and the medical councilor and personal physician of Duke Adolph von Nassau .
life and work
Pingler attended grammar school in Koblenz and Weilburg and studied medicine in Heidelberg and Würzburg .
In 1850 he was transferred from Usingen to Königstein as a medical assistant by the Nassau government . His endeavors to be able to help the poor Koenigsteiner population with a cheap but effective treatment brought him to hydrology .
Vincenz Prießnitz (1799–1851) and Sebastian Kneipp (1821–1897) were the pioneers of their time who revitalized the therapies with their cold water applications. Prießnitz, born on the Graefenberg , founded a world-famous hydrotherapy institute there, to which numerous sick people and schoolchildren from all over Europe flocked. In 1839 120 doctors stayed on the Graefenberg to get to know his healing methods. Pingler stayed with him for four months.
After his return, he used this learned water healing method on the residents of Königstein and the surrounding area. As a Nassau official, Pingler was also required to report regularly to the ducal authorities about his activities. His superior colleague Dr. Ferdinand Küster from Kronberg, himself the operator of a spa and bathing establishment in the Kronthal , reported to the State Ministry that his treatments did not correspond to the “service instructions”.
But Pingler was able to assert himself and continue his water treatments successfully. On July 24, 1851, his cold water facility, the so-called Prießnitzbad, was put into operation at the lower end of the Billtal . From 1852 Königstein was allowed to use the title “Bad”; that was the beginning of the spa business for Königstein.
During a typhus epidemic in 1853, he treated 85 sick patients exclusively with cold water; only one child died. Pingler knew the bioclimatic conditions of the Taunus south slope and treated with hydrotherapy as well as climatic therapy. He knew about the value of the mild autumn and the value of the winter cures through the “clear sky” and the “refreshing cold”. The cold water treatment was adapted to the seasons and the weather.
Pingler became medical advisor and personal physician to Duke Adolph von Nassau-Weilburg . At the suggestion of the government, the meeting of the estates approved 3,000 guilders for the "raising of the cold water facility" in 1859 . In the explanatory memorandum, the importance of the hydrotherapy treatment and the need to support the hydrotherapy institute are explained in detail. Since the institute could not exist from private funds, support from the general state treasury was a matter of course. The grant enabled Pingler to raise three new springs. In 1863 he founded the Curverein in Königstein , which among other things took care of walking paths and benches.
Pingler was the popular "water doctor" for the Königstein population. Since the range of his patients ranged from nobles to the poor Königstein, he ran the settlement of the Congregation of the Poor Maidservants of Jesus Christ in Königstein in a hospital led by him. The sisters of this community came from the same office as he, and their work was not only familiar to him, but also through his work for the association work of the Nassau medical profession. Contrary to contemporary training practice, they were given medical training, which was done by a member of the Thewald family (/ Thewalt). His nephew, also from a Westerwald family, Dr. med. Joseph Thewald (1852–1927), also mentioned in a document in the Thewalt version, later Privy Sanitary Councilor, Grand Ducal Luxembourg Councilor and personal physician of the Nassau-Luxemburg family , only continued the Prießnitzbad for a short time; he was not interested in the hydrotherapy treatment. As early as 1881, the Königsteiners wanted to erect a monument to him; However, Pingler asked to refrain from doing so. Both doctors later received graves of honor from the city of Königstein and each was named the namesake of a street.
But on September 21, 1913, the inauguration of the "Pinglerbrunnen" took place on the site of the former tree nursery and Germania monument (until 1912) Bleichstrasse / Herzog-Adolph-Strasse and Limburger Strasse. Sculptorschichtel from Frankfurt depicts the portrait of Pingler, framed with a laurel tendril (attribute of Aesculapia). Below we can see a lion's head holding a bowl in its mouth. A snake winds around it and stands with its head over the bowl.
Pingler was the doctor of the Frankfurt poet Friedrich Stoltze . He immortalized him by name as one of the main characters in his autobiographical novella "Escape from Königstein".
source
- Ellengard Jung, www.hochtaunus.de
- Our hospital. 125 years of poor servants of Jesus Christ in Königstein. Contributions u. a. by city archivist Heinz Sturm-Godramstein, Königstein 1984.
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Pingler, Georg |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German doctor, founder of the spa in Koenigstein |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 26, 1815 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Montabaur |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 27, 1892 |
| Place of death | Königstein im Taunus |