Bad Kudowa

A spa resort situated in the Sudetes, on the western outskirts of the Kłodzko Valley (388 meters above mean sea level). In the inter-war period it was part of Germany.

The first mentions of the healing properties of Kudowa water date back to the 16th century. At the end of the 17th century the owner of the village, Johann Joseph von Stillfried initiated the extension of the sanatorium, financing the first brick-built house with guestrooms as well as rooms for spa treatments1.

The nineteenth-century development of balneotherapy, together with the European romantic tradition which included visits in spas for both health and social reasons, influencing also popular culture2, accelerated the specialization and commercialization of Kudowa. Its legend grew after Frédéric Chopin spent the summer of 1826 in treatment in the nearby village of Duszniki3.

In a novel published in 1950 titled Z Kudowy (From Kudowa), the Polish poet Julia Molińska-Woykowska included an idyllic description of the town: “quiet Kudowa, bearing an indelible mark of a village, filled with Czech people, seemed to me quite redolent of paradise. One must admit, it is not easy to encounter a nook more propitious to rest and more beautiful in its simplicity. A dozen houses thrown into a garden, which may not be extensive but is replete with pretty trees, bordering on the one side with a mountain chain covered with verdure and on three others with a field opening onto neighboring villages. That’s all of Kudowa. But how nice and pretty it is, how glamorous and free. Indeed it seems as if you lived in the quiet and comely cottage of an honest, simple farmer whose saintly soul effuses around you as if God’s breath”4. In turn an established balneotherapist, professor at the Jagiellonian University, Fryderyk Skobel, in an almanach Wieniec in 1857 praised the “acidulous water” from Kudowa for the richness in carbonic acid, “which not only makes the taste of ferruginous watersmore pleasant and more digestiblebut also most peculiarly found external use in modern times”, among other things as a cure for “anemia and weakness of the whole body”5.

Schulz spent August 1922 in Kudowa, which may be established based on his letter to the Germanist Arnold Spaet from 13 March 1934 and Irena Kejlin-Mitelman’s memories. It is not known why he chose this particular spa resort, more than 600 kilometers from Drogobych. Kudowa was a small resort, popular among Galician Jews (at the beginning of the 20th century Jews constituted thirty per cent of all guests6), appreciated mainly for its mild climate and professional cardiological treatments. Some other illnesses, such as neurosis, brain inflammation, hysteria or hypochondria, were treated there as well7. It is possible that the pricing list seemed attractive to Schulz: 1922 is the beginning of hyperinflation of the German mark. Thus probably it was heart disease or perhaps a nervous breakdown? Irena Kejlin-Mitelman, then a twelve-year-old girl remembered from Schulz’s evening conversations with her mother Cecylia, single words, “pronounced in capital letters: «A New Life», «The World is Beautiful and Open», «Your Talent»”8.

It is unknown where Schulz stayed. Perhaps in one of the guesthouses, which were offered mainly to Jewish guests, as for example in Austria9, Löwy or Pod Koroną, famous for their kosher menus. Yet he could have stayed somewhere else, for instance the biggest hotel in Kudowa, Fürsten Hof (situated near Zdrojowy square), where Winston Churchill stayed in 1921. The hotel had atheater hall, billiard halls, a reading room and in the underground, a nightclub.

According to Irena Kejlin-Mitelman, during his stay in Kudowa Schulz did not lead a rich social life. He avoided group meetings and mountain hikes. According to Mitelman, he spent a lot of time in Zdrojowy Park, teaching her to draw (none of the sketches survived); it was most probably closer to the pond called Staw Zdrojowy, far from the bandstand – as it was where “the orchestra could be heard from a distance”10. In Irena Kejlin-Mitelman’s recollections Schulz’s figure often appears on a bench in the garden of the guesthousein which she stayed with her mother. Irena Kejlin-Mitelman remembered that she made a portrait of Schulz (titled Bruno on a bench), which she then gave him at his behest. Yet it is impossible to state which bench it was or if it is still there. If it ever existed, the portrait became lost.

The place, which was connected with Kudowa and which most interested Schulz was the Schädelkapelle – the Skull Chapel. Allegedly influenced by a trip there, Schulz “sketched phantasmagorias of skulls and bones from memory for several days”11.

See also: August 1922. (jo)

  • 1
    Jacek Dębicki, “Nieco o początkach zdrojów leczniczych hrabstwa kłodzkiego”, Pielgrzymy 2001. Informator Krajoznawczy Poświęcony Sudetom, p. 15.
  • 2
    See Historia kultury uzdrowiskowej w Europie, edited by Bożena Płonka-Syroka and Agnieszka Kaźmierczak, Wrocław 2012, and subsequent volumes of the series Kultura Uzdrowiskowa w Europie edited by Bożena Płonka-Syroka.
  • 3
    Chopin’s memories about the stay are not idealized. In a letter to Wilhelm Kolberg from 18 August 1826 Chopin writes: “In the morning, at 6 at the latest when all the sick are gathered atthe fount;poor music: a dozen caricatures playing all kinds of wind instrumentsled by a bassoon player, thin,saddled,snuff-stained nose frightens all the ladies who are scared of horses and he accompanies  slowly the Kur-gästss trolling slowly […]. Such a stroll on the pretty avenue, which joins the Anstalt with  the town usually lasts until eight, depending on the number of cups which everyone needs to drink in the morning, then everyone (individually) goes for breakfast. – After breakfast I usually go for a stroll, I walk until 12, then eat lunch because afterwards one goes to the Brun. After lunch the masquerade is usually even greater than in the morning because everyone is all dressed up, everyone wearing a different costume than in the morning! The music is ugly again, and one walks around like this until the very evening. Like me because I drink only two cups of Lau-brun after lunch so I go back for supper, and after supper to bed” (Korespondencja Fryderyka Chopina, collected and edited by Stanisław Edward Sydow, translated from the French by Jadwiga Dmochowska et. al.,vol. I, Warszawa 1955, p. 69).
  • 4
    Julia Molińska-Woykowska, Z Kudowy, Poznań 1850, p. 1–2.
  • 5
    Fryderyk Skobel, “Chudoba. Wspomnienie z podróży odbytej do zdrojowisk szląskich”, Wieniec 1957, vol. I, p. 414.
  • 6
    Ryszard Kincel, “Hotel Polanów i Bruno Schulz”, Fakty 1988, no. 2, p. 10–11.
  • 7
    Bad Kudowa: erstes Heilbad des Ostens, Glatz 1910, p. 17–18. At the beginning of the twentieth-century about 13,000 guests a year visited Bad Kudowa, and 30,000-40,000 visited Zakopane. Cf. Przewodnik po zdrojowiskach i miejscowościach klimatycznych Galicyi, edited by dr Stanisław A. Lewicki, dr Mieczysław Orłowicz and dr Tadeusz Praschil, Lviv 1912, p. 260.
  • 8
    Bruno Schulz. Listy, fragmenty. Wspomnienia o pisarzu, collected and edited by Jerzy Ficowski, Kraków 1984, p. 47.
  • 9
    Kudowa owes part of its mythology to the Hotel Austria, which as Hotel Bohemia is the main setting of Jan Koplowitz’s autobiographical novel titled Bohemia – mein Schicksal (1978). The author is a grandson of the pre-war owner of the hotel. Based on the book, a Polish-GDR television miniseries was made titled Hotel Polanów i jego goście (Hotel Polan und seine Gäste) (1982). The series was filmed in film the building of the sanatorium Polonia, Fürsten Hof, before the war.
  • 10
    Bruno Schulz. Listy, fragmenty…, p. 45.
  • 11
    Ibidem, p. 47.