Wiesbaden
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a town of Prussia, province of Hesse-Nassau; until 1866 capital of the independent duchy of Nassau; on the S. W. spurs of the Taunus Mountains, 377 feet above the sea; 6 miles N. of Mainz. It is well built, and of splendid hotels. The chief buildings contains a large number gs are the Gothic Protestant church (1853-1862), a noble edifice with five lofty towers, containing colossal marble statues of Christ and the four Evangelists; the Roman Catholic church (1844-1849), in the Romanesque style; the English church (1863-1865); the synagogue, in the Oriental style; the Schloss (1837-1840); the museum, with a picture gallery, a collection of antiquities, a natural history collection, and a library of 100,000 volumes; the Pauline palace (1842), in Moorish style; the government buildings (1842), in the Florentine palatial style; the Greek chapel, erected by the Duke of Nassau as a mausoleum for his first wife, Elizabeth Michailowna; and the Kursaal, the principal resort of vis visitors, the largest lan hall of which is 132 feet long, 60 feet wide, and 48 feet h high. Connected with the Kursaal by a long iron Trinkhalle is the Kochbrunnen, the principal of the 22 medicinal springs of Wiesbaden. Its waters have a temperature of 156° F. The second spring is that in the garden of the Adler Hotel, 147° F. Wiesbaden is one of the most frequented spas in Europe. The springs of Wiesbaden are spoken of by Pliny as the "Fontes Mattiasi," and on the Heidenberg, N. of the town, traces of a Roman fortress were discovered in 1838, which seems to have been connected with the town by a wall, the Heidenmauer ("heathens' wall"), in the ruins of which votive tablets and incriptions have been discovered. Pop. scriptio about 110,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's wrote in 1921 that Wiesbaden was a town of the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau with about 110,000 people; Prussia and its provinces were abolished after the Second World War, and in 1945 Wiesbaden became the capital of the new state of Hesse, which it remains, with roughly 280,000 inhabitants. The "synagogue, in the Oriental style" praised here — the Michelsberg synagogue — was burned by the Nazis in November 1938 and is commemorated today by a memorial on its site. The town escaped the worst of the wartime bombing, so much of the architecture listed above survives, including the Marktkirche with its five towers and the Kurhaus; the American military has been a fixture since 1945, and the US Army's European headquarters sits at the Clay Kaserne on the city's edge. The hot springs still run at the Kochbrunnen, but Wiesbaden is now better known as a government and business city than as one of Europe's most frequented spas.
Written for this edition, 2026.