ABSTRACT
Some time in late July or early August 1833, Heinrich Laube arrived in Carlsbad, the preeminent spa town of central Europe. With excitement, he noticed ‘the colourful and tumultuous hustle and bustle on the narrow Ergerstrasse. The carriage could hardly push through the throng of people and vehicles’. 1 What he found there was familiar:
I greeted my six-week-friends who come to the spa every year and need friends…they are the furniture of the spas and I greet them with the same excitement as I do the bridges and streets of Carlsbad. They belong to the picture. Without them, Carlsbad is not the same. When I have nothing else to do I engage them. 2
