Raffelberg brine bath

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Raffelberg saltwater pool with access
Entrance hall Solbad Raffelberg
Raffelberg salt bath, 1915.

The Solbad Raffelberg is a former farm and former brine bath in the Speldorf district in Mülheim an der Ruhr . Today the Theater an der Ruhr and the Raffelbergpark are located there .

middle Ages

In 1486 Johann Graf zu Limburg and Herr zu Broich leased the Raffelberg, house and farm, to the couple Diderich up dem Grimberge and Elsken for life.

Brine bath

In 1855 came the miners mine Alstaden the sinking warm to 26 ° C, saline source - relics of an ancient sea. The brine containing iodine quickly became popular with the miners. They built tubs on the spot and bathed before the shift. When a considerably larger spring was finally discovered in 1884, a brine bath was built a little later on the colliery site.

When the plans became concrete to relocate Alstaden from Mülheim to Oberhausen , it was decided to relocate the brine bath to Speldorf . The city of Mülheim founded the joint stock company Solbad Raffelberg with resident companies and on April 16, 1908 bought the 30 acre (75,000 m²) Gut Raffelberg, where a children's sanatorium had been located since 1888.

After a construction period of 13 months, the bathing facility opened under the protection of the goddess Hygieia on May 15, 1909. The brine was pumped through a 2.5 kilometer pipeline from the colliery to Speldorf. The architects Arthur Pfeifer and Hans Großmann were responsible for the design of the entrance pavilion, and Karl Helbing, the Mülheim building officer, was named for the other buildings. Around 37,000 m² of forest was cleared for the Raffelberg spa gardens designed by the garden architect Walter von Engelhardt . On December 31, 1911, the Kursaal with 800 seats was opened.

When the Alstaden colliery closed on March 31, 1973 and there was no brine, the first step was to use artificial brine. However, since this was not very well received, the Concordia colliery in Oberhausen had natural brine brought in by tanker.

The brine bath was closed in 1992 due to the decline in the number of treatments.

The plant today

The Theater an der Ruhr, founded by the director Roberto Ciulli , has been located in the old Kursaal since 1981 .

In the buildings today u. a. a real estate company, an architecture office and a restaurant.

In the vicinity are the hydropower plant , lock and weir Raffelberg, the racecourse of the Mülheimer Rennverein, the Ruhrschifffahrtskanal and the Kaiserberg motorway junction . The old brine bath is the theme point of the route of industrial culture (theme route 12 - past and present of the Ruhr ).

location

  • Address: Akazienallee 61 - 69, 45478 Mülheim an der Ruhr

literature

  • Karl Helbing: The Raffelberg salt bath near Mülheim ad Ruhr. In: Neudeutsche Bauzeitung. Volume 6, No. 2, 1910, ZDB -ID 243578-0 .
  • Heiner Schmitz: The Raffelberg salt bath. 1909-2009. Self-published, Mülheim an der Ruhr 2008, ISBN 978-3-00-026561-7 .
  • Erich Bocklenberg: The Solbad Raffelberg. In: Geschichtsverein Mülheim an der Ruhr (ed.): Witnesses of the city's history. Architectural monuments and historical places in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Klartext, Essen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89861-784-0 , pp. 208-215.

Web links

Commons : Solbad Raffelberg  - Collection of images

Coordinates: 51 ° 26 '  N , 6 ° 49'  E