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The last quarter of the 19th century were years of rapid industrial expansion
in Central Europe and generated a veritable building boom that also extended
to Baden. Signs of it can be seen today in the many public buildings and
villas built in the then fashionable eclectic historical styles and also
in Secessionist style. A by no means exhaustive list would include the
following: parish school, the town hall extension, the hospital, the sanatoriums
(Kurhaus & Kuranstalt), the secondary school, the theater, the Sommerarena,
a large number of new hotel buildings (Sacher, Grüner Baum, Esplanade,
Herzoghof, Central, Ebruster, Bristol, Julienhof, Cortella, Clementinenhof,
Quisisana, Silvana) and an array of large villas. Together, they assured
exclusive summer holidays and the finest in bathing facilities and earned
Baden a reputation as an international health resort. The suffix on its
name in German "Baden bei Wien" (Baden near Vienna) signifies
not only its physical location, but also its sociological affinities.
After all, the crème de la crème of Viennese society spent
their summers in Baden, had villas or apartments here, and brought their
social and intellectual life along with them. As a result, Baden developed
an urbanity found nowhere else in small cities of this size. As M. G.
Saphir put it: Baden is "a miniature Vienna in watercolors."
World War I took the city out of its high society role and put it back
onto the world political stage. In 1916 the supreme command of the army
was moved to Baden, and Emperor Karl I took up quarters here in 1917 and
1918.
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With his arrival, the glory
and responsibility of an official imperial residence returned to the city
once again, overshadowed of course by the imminent decline of the Habsburg
Empire. In the years between the two World Wars, people wanted Baden to
resume its place as an international health resort and coined the term "Karlsbad
of Austria", associating it with the German name of Bohemia's most
venerable health resort. And indeed Baden did become the most significant
health resort in Austria in those years thanks to four major projects: the
construction of the beach baths (1926), the Beethoven Temple (1926), the
pump room (1928) and the opening of the gambling casino (1934). With its
6000 hotel beds, the city recorded 750,000 overnight stays a year. On the
outbreak of World War II, Baden became a military hospital center and remained
that throughout the war. A bombing attack on 2 April 1945 caused extensive
damage in the last hours of the war. On 3 April 1945 the Red Army occupied
the city, which now became the main headquarters of the Russian occupiers.
In the years that followed there were always large numbers of soldiers in
Baden who took up their quarters in sections of the city that were blocked
off from the general population. The tourist facilities were thought to
be especially well-suited for this purpose and lost their previous function.
When the ten years of occupation ended, they showed definite signs of wear.
During this decade Baden fell behind developments in the rest of the Austrian
tourist sector. There is probably no other period in the city's history
when its natural treasures, the springs, were utilized so little commercially
for so long a time.
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