Moral economies and commercial imperatives: food, diets and spas in central Europe: 1800–1914

Abstract Nineteenth-century central European spas were important components in the medical marketplace as well as centres of recreational tourism. Histories of the spas emphasize the pivotal role of the mineral waters in spa life. Food and eating practices seldom feature in these accounts, even though some attention has been given to the role of diet in spa medicine and many spa patients suffered from dietary-related disorders. Mealtimes were, however, important social events in the daily routines of spa life; eating practices affected everyone and brought into play issues of social class, gender and cultural identity, just as much the rituals of the pump room and promenade. This essay examines the way that changes in eating practices and the growing importance of diet and nutrition in spa medicine were linked not only to shifts in medical theory and practice, but also to the broader movements and changes taking place in social life and consumer culture. It was at the dinner table that theories of dietetics (the principles of healthy living) conflicted most directly with the values of an urban leisure culture which thrived on the desire and ability of individuals to consume as much as possible. Keywords: healthfood and drinkbathingtouristsconsumptioncentral Europe Notes 1An earlier version of part of this essay appeared in the 16th Conference Proceedings of the European Ethnological as ‘The “Social Pathology” of Tourism: Food, Diet and Therapy in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Spa Culture 1800–1914’, in Sanitas per Aquas: Spas, Lifestyles and Foodways, ed. Patricia Lysaght (Innsbruck: Studium, 2008), 103–18. 2Alan Warde, Consumption, Food and Taste: Cultural Antinomies and Commodity Culture (London: Sage, 1997); Carole Counihan and Penny van Esterik, eds., Food and Culture: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 2008). 3See Priscilla Boniface, Tasting Tourism: Travelling for Food and Drink (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). 4For example, Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food, Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985); Gunther Hirschfeld, Europäsche Esskultur; eine Geschichte der Ernährung von der Steinheit bis Heute (Frankfurt: Campus, 2001). 5But see Sabine Merta, ‘Karlsbad and Marienbad: the Spas and their Cures in Nineteenth-Century Europe’, in The Diffusion of Food Culture in Europe from the Late Eighteenth Century to the Present Day, ed. Derek. J. Oddy and Lydia Petránŏvá (Prague: Academia, 2005), 152–62. 6Karen Callen, Spa: Pamper Body and Soul with Ideas from the World's Best Sources (New York: Ebury, 2002), 44. 7In countries like France and, until recently, in Germany and many of the countries of eastern Europe, the health care system has supported the medical use of the spas, although many are being forced to adapt to changing conditions by catering to the growing market for ‘health and wellness’. 8This process was far from uniform. See, for example, Douglas L. Mackaman, Bourgeois Leisure Culture, Medicine and the Spa in Modern France (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1998), 32–48. 9Rebecca L. Spang, The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 2000); Marc Jacobs and Peter Scholliers, eds., Eating Out in Europe: Picnics, Gourmet Dining and Snacks since the Late Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Berg, 2003); Jill Steward, ‘Exhibiting Food: International Exhibitions as Cultural Crossroads 1851–1914’, in Food and meals at Cultural Crossroads: Proceedings of the 17 th Conference of the International Commission for Ethnological Food Research (Oslo: Novus, 2010), 280–93. 10A. Leonardi, ‘Entrepreneurial Mobility in the Development of the Austrian Kurorte in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Tourism History 2, no. 2 (2010): 99–116. 11Rudy Koshar, German Leisure Cultures (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 22. 12For example, Julie Cassidy, ‘Of Dandies, Flirts and Cockatoos: Shakhovskoi's Antithetical lesson to Coquettes’, Russian Review 65 (2006): 393–416. Ronan Foley, Healing Waters: Therapeutic Landscapes in Historic and Contemporary Ireland (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 3–7. 13Jill Steward, ‘The Culture of the Water Cure in Nineteenth-Century Austria, 1800–1914’, in Water, Leisure and Culture: European Historical Perspectives, ed. Susan B. Anderson and Bruce H. Tabb (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 23–35. 14Elisabeth Mansèn, ‘An Image of Paradise: Swedish Spas in the Eighteenth Century’, Eighteenth Century Studies 31, no. 4 (1998): 511–16. 15Burkhardt Fuhs, Mondäne Orte: einer vornehemen Gesellschaft. Kultur und Geschichte der Kurstädte 1700–1900: Historische Texte und Studien, 13 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1992), 232–4; Marian Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial German (New York: Oxford, 1991), 111; Mirjem Treindel-Zadoff, ‘Next Year in Marienbad: Counter-Sites of Jewish Modernity’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 52, no. 1 (2005): 324–5. 16Karl E. Wood, ‘Spa Culture and the Social History of Medicine in Germany’ (PhD Diss., University of Chicago, 2004), 11. 17Mary Nolan, ‘Pilgrimage Traditions and the Nature Mystique in Western European Culture’, Journal of Cultural Geography 7, no. 1 (1986): 4–20. 18Erna Lesky, The Vienna Medical School, L. Williams and I.S. Levij, trans. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1976), 33. 19Central Europe includes the group of states which in 1871 were combined into the German Empire, the multi-ethnic complexities of the Habsburg Monarchy, which by 1867 split into the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary, and the alpine confederation of the Swiss Republic. 20R. Mosse, Bäder-Almanach: Mittheilungen der Bäder, Luftorte und Heilanstalten in Deutschland, Österreich, der Schweiz und den angrensenden Gebeiten für Ärzte und Heilbedürftige, 8th ed. (Berlin: R. 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