As of 2012, Bad Nauheim has a population of 30,788. The town is approximately north of Frankfurt am Main, on the east edge of the Taunus mountain range. It is a world-famous resort, noted for its salt springs, which are used to treat heart and nerve diseases. A Nauheim or "effervescent" bath, named after Bad Nauheim, is a type of spa bath through which carbon dioxide is bubbled. This bath was one of several types of hydrotherapy used at Battle Creek Sanitarium and it was also used at Maurice bathhouse, in Bathhouse Row in the early 1900s, during the heyday of hydrotherapy. The Konitzky Foundation, a charitable foundation and hospital for those without means, was founded in 1896 and its building occupies a central place next to the Kurpark.
History
On September 29, 1945 General Dwight D. Eisenhower reassigned General Patton from his beloved 3rd Army, the army he successfully led from the Battle of Normandy, to Czechoslovakia as Eisenhower could no longer keep General Patton in position as the Military Governor of Bavaria. General Patton was assigned to command the Fifteenth Army, actually a group of historians given status as an Army, with its headquarters in Bad Nauheim. On December 9, 1945, General Patton left Bad Nauheim for a hunting trip near Mannheim; he died after a car crash during the trip. The Grand Hotel in Bad Nauheim was also the location of the Gestapo-led internment of around 115 Americans who were working in the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, December 1941. The group would leave Bad Nauheim on May 12, 1942. In addition, during World War IIAdolf Hitler had a command complex in nearby Langenhain-Ziegenberg called Adlerhorst, "the Eagle's Nest". Bad Nauheim was used as a residential area for American occupation forces after World War II. Despite its proximity to Frankfurt am Main and Hitler's command complex, Bad Nauheim was totally spared from Allied bombing. American occupants from that time were told that President Roosevelt had loved the town so much from his days there that he ordered it spared. The novel The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford is set in part at Bad Nauheim.
Before the Holocaust there was an on-and-off Jewish presence in Bad Nauheim since around 1303. Before the Holocaust nearly 400 Jews lived in the town, making up nearly 3% of the population. On Kristallnacht the schoolhouse was desecrated and ransacked as well as Jewish stores, businesses and the synagogue. Many Jews were taken that night to concentration camps. Some were let out. Of those let out many were rearrested. By the end of the Holocaust there were just three Jews remaining in Bad Nauheim. For the most part those who were not murdered had left the country.
The Sprudelhof
This complex is recognized as the largest center of Art Nouveau in Germany.
