Madame Szymanowska and Goethe – a burning love?

Just why Szymanowska sought Goethe’s friendship is not known. At any rate, on 8 August she and her sister travelled to Marienbad. At this time, Marienbad in the Austrian Crown land of Bohemia, was an aspiring spa town that was still very much under development. In 1808, on the initiative of the Tepl Premonstratensian monastery, the first bathing house had been built on the sulphurous “Maria” source fourteen kilometres west, which, with its surrounding healing springs, had been known since the Middle Ages. Following publications by the monastery doctor about the healing effect of the sources, a health resort, initially consisting of half-timbered houses, was set up in 1813 (Fig. 3). In the first season in 1815, seven buildings were available to the guests as accommodation.[18] In 1818, the health resort, which was named Marienbad after the source, was officially recognised. By 1820, classical pavilions had been erected at the fountains and at the viewpoints, parks had been created and prestigious spa buildings and hotels had been built (Fig. 4). However, it was still possible to experience the original idyll of the valley in the Kaiserwald (Fig. 5). In 1824, the site already had forty buildings and had a good reputation as a healing sanatorium for guests who also travelled to take the waters in nearby Carlsbad, which was much older, or to the other sites around Eger.[19]

In the period in question, high-ranking European society consisting of around eight hundred spa guests would frequent Marienbad. In August 1823, for example, to name just a few of the guests from the first eleven days of August when Maria Szymanowska and her siblings arrived, the guests included Ludwig Baron von Mannsbach, government assistant lawyer from Greiz, the Polish Division General Jan Nepomucen Umiński from Poznań, the “true Russian wife of the privy council from Kurland”, Charlotte Baroness von Hahn, Baroness Bernhardine von Aachen from Westphalia, a Kajetan von Szydłowsky, “landowner and knight of the Polish Order, from Warsaw”, Ferdinand Baron von Reiboldt, “Saxon secret finance officer, with wife, née Baroness Pflugk, and daughter, from Dresden”, a Bavarian lieutenant, a tutor from Greiz, a royal Bavarian Judge at the Higher Appeal Court with wife from Munich, merchants and noblemen from Prague and Berlin, the “chamberlain and estate owner” Leopold Count Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau from Vienna, a lawyer with wife from Budweis, a Count von Mycielski, landowner from Poznań, a Baron Skórzewski, “Landowner from Ekelmo (sic!, presumably Chełmno) in Pohlen” and opera singer Anna Milder, who had travelled from Berlin. People had a choice of living in the inns Zum Stern, Zum Prinzen, Zur Goldenen Sonne, Zur Goldenen Krone, Zum Schwarzen Adler, Zur Goldenen Traube, Zum Goldenen Falken, Zum Goldenen Löwen, Zum Weißen Schwan, like Szymanowska and her siblings in Klingers Gasthof, in the Sächsisches or in the Russisches Hause, in the hotels Zum Römer, Zur Stadt Dresden, Zum Grünen Kreuze or in the bathhouse.[20]