Badenweiler is a health resort and spa in the Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald district of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, historically in the Markgräflerland. It is 28 kilometers by road and rail from Basel, 10 kilometers from the French border, and 20 kilometers from Mulhouse. The nearest big city on the German side of the border is Freiburg, about 30 kilometers away. Badenweiler lies at the western edge of the Black Forest. It is sheltered by the Blauen, 1,164 m, and the climate is excellent. Its parish church was built at the foot of an 11th-century castle which belonged to the margraves of Baden and was destroyed by the French during the wars of Louis XV. Many visitors come to Badenweiler for the warm mineral springs, with temperatures of 21 °C, others for its whey cure, and still others on account of its equable climate and picturesque surroundings. There is a Kurhaus and a park of 15 acres containing a historic arboretum, as well as a grand-ducal castle. In 1784, well-preserved Roman baths were discovered there.
The site where the present Protestant St. Paul's church is standing is a historic site that was a religious place of worship already in Roman times. The Romans built here in the year AD 145 a large podium temple of which very little remains. The temple stood on a "pile structure". The temple builders drove sharpened oak piles into the loamy soil to secure the ground for this heavy building. The temple was Gallo-Roman with a classic-Italic main front placed on a monumental podium. On the ruins of the Roman temple a Christian church was built in the twelfth century. The church was in a bad state when it was demolished in 1892 and rebuilt as a Neo-Romanesque building between 1893 and 1898. In the course of the digging Roman walls and wall fragments of preceding church buildings were discovered and included in the construction of the new church. In the previous church's tower six 14th-century frescoes were discovered which are now in the choir of the present church. They show a so-called Dance of the Dead where living and dead meet. Three skeletons are bearing the inscription: "We were what you are, what we are you shall be." This is addressed to three living whose garments are corresponding to the fashion of the rich in the 14th century.
Personalities
The Russian writerAnton Chekhov died there on 15 July 1904. From Badenweiler, Chekhov wrote outwardly jovial letters to his sister Masha describing the food and surroundings. Badenweiler became one of Chekhov's hometown Taganrog's sister cities in 2002. The American poet, novelist, and journalist Stephen Crane died there on 15 June 1900 of tuberculosis.
