Relaxing at the Spa

 

Life is full of thousands of little indignities. Slipping in a bathtub is no joke. But wallowing in a tub full of muck is definitely funny, though it's not an activity you would usually share with strangers, much less friends. In this cartoon postcard a naked man has tumbled out of a mud-filled bathtub and plainly needs some assistance to get up off the floor. 

Once upon a time many people who suffered from assorted disorders and maladies were prepared to endure bodily insults and embarrassing humiliations just in order to find relief from what ailed them. A century ago, taking a cure at a health spa was a recommended therapy but sometimes it got a little messy. This card's message reads:

Gruss aus dem Schlammbad Nenndorf
Greetings from the Nenndorf mud bath

The slapstick humor pictured here was produced by the German artist Arthur Thiele (1860 – 1936), whose clever postcards mocked German society and army life from the 1900s to the 1920s. I've featured Thiel's artwork in quite few stories on my blog as I find his quirky perspective still entertaining and relevant in our modern time. 

 

The card was sent from Bad Nenndorf, a small town in the district of Schaumburg, Lower Saxony, Germany, on 15 May 1911. Since ancient times Nennforf's sulfur springs were feared as the devil's excrement because of their foul odor, considered the most pungent in Europe. In the mid-1700s physicians developed ways to apply the sulfurous spring's mud as a treatment for rheumatism, arthritis and other muscular and skin complaints. In 1787 the Landgrave Wilhelm IX of Hesse-Kassel built a spa on his estate between Gross Nenndorf and Klein Nenndorf. The spa's Schlammbad—mud bath treatments were so successful that in 1866 Bad Nenndorf was designated as the Royal Prussian state spa. Since royal families seem to have had lots of chronic health issues, the restorative regimen at Nenndorf made it a popular holiday destination in the pre-WWI era.

 

 

 

There are many places throughout Europe that have mineral springs which in previous centuries were developed into resorts for their supposedly therapeutic qualities. Mud baths in particular were derived from ancient folk knowledge of treating illness with natural materials that sometimes produced cures, or at least relief. The formal word for this therapy is Balneotherapy from the Latin word balneum – "bath". Ancient Romans were fond of their bath and established many European cities based around natural mineral springs which later became spas for treating diseases by bathing, hence the German word Bad for bath. 

 

 

My next card shows another therapy associated with spas – a massage. In this case a naked fat man is being pummeled by an masseuse using a little too much force. The caption reads: Eine kitzliche Angelegenheit. ~ A ticklish affair.  Another printed title identifies this as Karlsbad,a spa city now known as Karlovy Vary  in the Czech Republic. But before the end of WWI it was part of the Austrian empire as the city is named after Charles IV (1316–1378), the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia who founded the city in the 14th century. The area has numerous hot springs and in the 19th century it became the largest spa resort in Europe, patronized by European aristocracy and other celebrities. 

This cartoon postcard was the work of Viennese artist Fritz Schönpflug (1873–1951) who is another of my favorite artists. This is the fifteenth story where I've featured some of his lighthearted watercolor sketches. The card has a postmark from Karlsbad of 8 July 1912.

 

 

Karlsbad is west of Prague and, roughly as a crow flies, about 250 miles northwest from Wien (Vienna), Austria or 180 miles south of Berlin. Fritz Schönpflug produced quite a few postcard series on spas which I plan to feature in future stories. I don't know if he ever indulged in treatment at one, but  evidently Fritz got special permission to observe some of the unusual ways a person could be embarrassed at a spa.

 

 

 

In this sketch a woman is on rinse cycle after a mud bath. She stands naked in a copper tub while a female attendant uses a garden watering can to wash her off. The caption reads: Wohl, nun kann der Guss beginnen. ~ Well, now the casting can begin. The black blob on the right is an ink stain, which may be why it was never posted.

 

The phrase is ironic and well-known with German speakers as it comes from the 1798 poem "Das Lied von der Glocke" ("The Song of the Bell") by the celebrated German poet Friedrich Schiller. It is considered one the most famous poems in German literature and one of the longest with 430 lines. In the poem Schiller uses the foundry process of casting a great bell as a way of commenting on the risks and conditions of human life. Back in April 2020 my story The Song of the Bell featured a set of humorous postcards that were about this same poem. However there were no naked women in that set.

 

 

A second postcard from Fritz Schönpflug's same series shows another woman who has just started on the soak cycle. Unfortunately her attendant has failed to account for volume and mass and the mud bath has overflowed the tub. Someone will have to clean that up. I don't think it smelled very nice either. 

 

This card was never mailed so there is no postmark but Schönpflug's signature has 909 which stands for 1909 in the dating custom of the time. There is no printed caption but someone penciled in a handwritten comment which ends in an exclamation mark. I'm sure it would be very funny if I could only understand the German words.

 

 

 

My next spa sketch by Fritz Schönpflug is not about a mud bath, (I hope!) but it is about another bathing experience at a spa. Here a woman of generous proportions in a bathing costume stands as a young man fastens a rope around her waist. He is dressed in light stripey shirt, sailor's trousers, sandals, and a sun hat. He also holds a stout staff suitable for poling a gondola. She looks less apprehensive and more charmed by his attention.

The front of the card has a place and date written in ink: Marienbad, 7/9/11. The postmark confirms this as it was sent from Marienbad on 7 September 1911 to a Monsieur C. P. Coumarians in Lausanne, Switzerland on Lake Geneva. Marienbad is the former German name for Mariánské Lázně another Boemian spa town in the Karlovy Vary Region of the Czech Republic. It is about 25 miles southwest of Karlsbad. Marienbad's mineral water springs were first developed in the 13th century by the monks of to the Teplá Abbey. However the town was not established until 1865 when it became popular with Europe's aristocracy and wealthy patrons who were seeking a resort a bit less crowded than other spas.

 

 

 

There are 100 mineral springs in and around Marienbad, and over half are tapped for dispensing mineral water to visitors. The water has a high concentration of carbon dioxide and iron with an average temperature of 7–10 °C (44.6–50°F) formed by interactions in deep fault lines that run beneath the region. Marienbad's water is believed to cure disorders of the kidneys, urinary tract, respiratory and circulatory systems, and a host of other afflictions and infirmities. It sounds like a fabled magic elixir that cures all sickness and disease. 

 

Apparently you can swim in it too

 

 

This final picture postcard is a variation of the previous cartoon. A young woman wearing a bathing costume stands patiently as a man ties a rope around her torso. She has a more slender figure than the woman on the other postcard and the man sports a straw hat and seems less like a beach life guard and more like a cab driver. He also looks like he enjoys his work.

 

This picture was not drawn by Fritz Schönpflug but by a contemporary, Ferdinand von Řezníček (1868–1909). Born in Sievering, (now part of Vienna) Řezníček first expected to follow his father, General Josef Řezníček, and pursue a military career. But his passion was in art and in 1888 he moved to Munich to study painting. He became a well-known illustrator/cartoonist for several German satirical magazines. 

 

This postcard was published by one of these magazines called Simplicissimus. It is number 5 in Series XI and has a postmark dated 2 October 1910 from Plauen, Germany which is southwest of Dresden and near the Austrian border.

 

 

I only recently discovered Ferdinand von Řezníček's postcards and have now acquired several that share a theme of dance. This particular image was different but it intrigued me enough with its strange suggestive metaphors to buy it too. It was only a few weeks later that I stumbled across Schönpflug's picture and recognized a connection. I'm not sure whose picture was first but one of the artists was having a little artist-to-artist fun copying the other. I hope to present more of Ferdinand von Řezníček artwork in a future story. Here is another example of his work that is unrelated to spas but demonstrates his subtle style. It's entitled "At the Opera."

Ferdinand von Řezníček (1868–1909)
"At the Opera"
Source: Wikipedia

As to what is going on with the woman and the rope, I have no clue other than what the two artists drew. Is the woman about to enter the deep end of the spa's pool? Is the attendant supposed to fish her out with the rope and pole? Maybe she's not jumping into fizzy mineral water but stepping into stinky hot mud. What does that cure? Is there a fire hose ready nearby?

 

As usual too many questions and very few answers.

 

 

 

I think the only appropriate way to finish this story
is to listen to The Hippopotamus song
as sung by the British comic duo who made it famous,
Michael Flanders and Donald Swann.

 

 

 

Mud, mud, glorious mud.
Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood.
So follow me, follow,
Down to the hollow,
And there let us wallow in glorious mud.

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where running aground is not always a bad thing.