Bad Salzelmen can look back on more than 800 years of
salt production history. In Elmen
brine was already mined in the 12th century. With the "white gold" the Pfänner, or later also called
Salzgrafen, gained great influence on the town. As a
Pfännerschaft, they were not only a commercial association, but also spoke the law as authorities. Parts of the
town wall from the 14th century, the former
town hall from the 15th century and the
Johanniskirche from the middle of the 15th century still bear witness to the wealth and power of the
Pfänners. Today the
Salzlandmuseum is located in the town hall. In 1680 the town of
Groß Salze went to the
Brandenburg-Prussian Duchy of Magdeburg.
Groß Salze as a so-called
Immediatstadt was directly subordinated to the government of the duchy and lay in the wood circle. Between 1756 and 1765, the
graduation house was built with a total length of 1837 metres, making it the largest ever built. The "Königlich Preußische Saline" (Royal Prussian Salt Works) was the largest state enterprise in
Prussia at that time. In 1776 the 32 meter high brine
tower was built near the graduation house. It served the brine production by means of a Dutch "wind art". The
saltworks were connected to the port of
Schönebeck by a company railway. The discovery of the
healing effect of brine by
Johann Wilhelm Tolberg marked the beginning of the history of the spa town of Bad Salzelmen.
Germany's first brine
spa was opened here in 1802. In 1815
Ernst Leopold Fabian was appointed salt inspector. The brine was extracted by underground flushing. The
caverns thus created ("Graf-Moltke-Schacht") were later used as underground
inhalation rooms and during the last years of the
Second World War to store, among other things, museum collections of the
Berlin State Museums and
archives of the
Deutsche Akademie and the
Prussian Privy State Archives. The extraction of brine for the purpose of salt production was stopped in 1967, but the brine is still the basis for the spa operation. 300.4 metres of the original graduation house are still preserved today, which serve as an open-air inhalatorium. An inhalatorium is attached to the graduation house in a south-westerly direction. The "brine park" with the recreational pool "Solequell", the spa centre "Lindenbad" and the "Kunsthof" (partly in the brine tower) are today attractions for those seeking relaxation and spa guests. The rehabilitation clinic Bad Salzelmen, built in 1995, is the centre of modern rehabilitation medicine in the area of brine treatment. ==Notable people from Bad Salzelmen==