Health resorts, casinos, fashionable baths
Wiesbaden about 1910:
Ida’s and August’s first sentimental journey
Dostoyevsky is long dead when Ida and August arrive in the fashionable spa town around 1910 on their time-and-space journey, which is as sentimental as it is virtual. However, 30 years after his death, both can still imagine the Russian writer’s presence here as an inspiring impulse. Dostoevsky traveled to Western Europe several times, staying in German cities with remarkable persistence. At least as fateful as it was destructive is Dostoevsky’s encounter with the game of roulette. This – like all games of chance – was strictly forbidden in Russia, while casinos were among the authoritative amusements in the great German resorts. It is said that Dostoyevsky’s stay in Wiesbaden in 1865 led him to gamble away his travel funds.
The experiences Dostoyevsky had in spas like Baden-Baden, Bad Homburg and Wiesbaden inspired him to write his novel “The Gambler”. The city of Wiesbaden, the spa gardens, the casino, but also the luxurious hotel “Nassauer Hof” provided the author with the model for his literary “Rouletteburg”. This hotel was the first house on the square – as they used to say back then. Centrally located, close to the important places of the fashionable spa town. The Kochbrunnen, the Kurhaus with the casino and finally the spectacular theater of the city are only a few strolling minutes away. Even the train station is not far from here.
German spa towns like Wiesbaden and Baden-Baden seem to attract Russians irresistibly to this day. Ida and August are not Russians. However, both may well have read Dostoyevsky’s novel. And that could be a reason to begin their journey in Wiesbaden to trace the genius loci here. Whether or not Dostoyevsky actually foraged next to the casino and the luxurious hotel on Wiesbaden’s present-day boulevard has been little discussed. In any case, Ida and August use the occasion of their virtual time-and-space journey to stop by the Kochbrunnen: the inner-city place with a source for drinking cures.
Finally, Ida and August visit the new building of the Royal Theater of Wiesbaden. For many years there was a theater where the hotel “Nassauer Hof” now stands. But this performance venue was too small from the beginning, so that a magnificent new building had to be erected at the end of the 19th century. This new building, oriented on great European theater architecture, complements the sophisticated ensemble between the spa complex with the spa house, the casino, the colonnades and finally the hotel “Nassauer Hof”. From the hotel it is only a few steps to the Royal Theater.