Baden Baden - Russian History
Baden-Baden has become the best-known German city in Russia and unofficially seems part of Russia itself.
It has been popular with Russians since Czarina Elizabeth came from here with a huge entourage in the 18th century. Since then, many thousands more have come, including the likes of Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy and Turgenev. Dostoevsky wrote "The Gambler" while compulsively gambling at the famous Baden-Baden Casino.
After the better part of a century -- since before the revolution -- the Russians are back in Baden-Baden. In the 19th century, the Russian rich and famous brought this city global fame. It was here, in this narrow valley of neo-classical mansions and supposedly curative waters, that Dostoyevsky lost the money he got from pawning his wife's wedding jewellery, recounting the experience in his novel ''The Gambler.'' Tolstoy used to come here. Turgenev carried on his not-very-secret affair with the Spanish diva Pauline Viardot in his mansion on a hill above town.
''There were other resorts in Europe where the Czars and aristocrats went,'' said Renate Effern, a German historian who has written several books on the Russians in Baden-Baden, ''but only Baden-Baden had Czars, aristocrats, and writers.''
It seems only natural; therefore, that Russians who have money would want to come here again, and, in the past ouple of years, they have been coming in large numbers, staying in the stately hotels or buying villas. Their return to the scene they once helped make famous is a sign of Russia's post-Soviet return to the world, even of the shrivelling away of boundaries that divided East and West during the cold war.
Aside from the Russians, Baden-Baden has -- and has not -- changed. This was once the place where, as one American of German ancestry who came here as a child remembers, rich, elderly women were seen accompanied by well-behaved younger men. Now the super rich of the Middle East come for sybaritic holidays, occupying whole floors of luxury hotels, paying extra so they can have the spas to themselves at night.
During the twice-a-year horse racing weeks, helicopters take the princes and sheiks and their entourages from the lawn behind Brenner's to the racetrack and back, which might fit the definition of vulgar display, given that it is three miles distant.
''Some guests use Baden-Baden like a court,'' said Rüdiger Beermann, press relations manager of the very impressive five-year-old Festspielhaus, Baden-Baden's Festival Theater. ''The place in this sense is unique in Europe. On the one hand there's this operetta life, and on the other hand, with the hot springs and clean air and everything, it's a very healthy life.''
For all the talk here of the returned Russians and the occasional Persian Gulf state entourage, the statistics show that Baden-Baden is still mostly an American destination. The Russians, in second place, are not far behind (Middle Eastern guests are a distant 13th, according to the local tourist bureau).
The hotels are happy about this -- ''They are an excellent clientele,'' Mr. Kleber said -- and at least some observers of the scene maintain that there is something both dignified and touching in the nostalgia that brings the Russians here.
''I see Russians carrying Turgenev's novel 'Smoke,' which is set in Baden-Baden, looking for the villa where he lived,'' said Mr. Beermann, who lives in an apartment next to the former Turgenev villa. ''There is a German fear of the Russian mafia, some stories about them, but the people I've seen are culture-loving, literature-loving people who seem to be on their once-in-a-lifetime trips to Baden-Baden.''