From salt works to spa town

…the salt in the soup… that was obtained many years ago and for many years in Bad Sulza. If you look at old drawings and maps, there were an infinite number of places in Sulza where brine was dug and drilled. The first written evidence of salt boiling in the town dates back to 1064. In this year, King Henry IV granted the ruling Count Palatine Frederick of Saxony the right to boil salt.

Throughout the centuries of salt history, attempts to extract the “white gold” have been more or less successful. The technical development and skill of Baron von Beust, a Europe-wide expert in the field of salt boiling, enabled the Sulza salt works to flourish. Until 1967, table salt was still produced in Bad Sulza, which was even exported to Scandinavia. Today, numerous buildings and sites still remind us of this time, so many that their number here is probably unique.

Doctors recognized centuries ago that brine is also good for your health. Saltworkers were also much less likely to suffer from respiratory diseases. And so it was only a matter of time before numerous salt-boiling towns also developed into health resorts. This also happened in Bad Sulza. And this development, it is said, goes back to the poet prince Johann Wolfgang von Goethe himself.