Bad Soden

Bad Soden (also: Bad Soden am Taunus) is a town and spa in the Main-Taunus-Kreis, Hessen, Germany. It had a population of 22,563, up from 21,412 in 2005.

Information
Bad Soden is a residential town for commuters working in Frankfurt am Main and other surrounding cities. It is known for its various springs, which contain carbonic acid gas and various iron oxides. The waters are used both internally and externally, and are widely exported. Soden lozenges (Sodener Pastillen), condensed from the waters, are also in great demand. Bad Soden has a well-appointed Kurhaus, an Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church, and a hospital. It also has a residential building by the architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Bad Soden has two Districts: Altenhein am Taunus and Neuenhein am Taunus.

Mayors
Mayors from 1893:


 * 1893–1912: Georg Busz
 * 1912–1920: Friedrich Höh
 * 1920–1923: Niederschulte
 * 1925–1937: Alfred Benninghoven
 * 1937–1939: Jakob Rittgen
 * 1939–1945: Karl Bohle
 * 1945–1948: Kuno Mayer
 * 1948–1957: Gilbert Just
 * 1957–1967: August Karl Wallis
 * 1967–1973: Helmuth Schwinge
 * 1973–1977: Hans-Helmut Kämmerer
 * 1977–1985: Volker Hodann
 * 1985–1986: Hans Jörg Röhrich (official by the government)
 * 1986–1992: Berthold R. Gall
 * 1992–2004: Kurt E. Bender
 * 2004–2018: Norbert Altenkamp
 * 2018–present: Frank Blasch

Notable people

 * Elvira Bach (born 1951), artist and painter, she was born in Neuenhain (Taunus) and lives in Berlin since 1970
 * Otto Frank (1889–1980), father of Anne Frank, worked in Bad Soden before moving to the Netherlands with his family
 * Peter Lang (1878–1954), member of the parliament of the People's State of Hesse in the Weimar Republic
 * Christian Seybold (1695–1768), artist of the era of Baroque; was baptized in Neuenhain (Taunus), lived until 1715 in Soden
 * Georg Thilenius (1868–1937), ethnologist and anthropologist
 * Sabine Winter (born 1992), table tennis player, was born in Bad Soden
 * Edward Wunderly, physician and Milwaukee, Wisconsin politician, was from Bad Soden

Twin towns – sister cities
Bad Soden is twinned with:
 * 🇫🇷 Rueil-Malmaison, France (1975)
 * 🇦🇹 Kitzbühel, Austria (1984)
 * 🇨🇿 Františkovy Lázně, Czech Republic (1992)
 * 🇯🇵 Yōrō, Japan (2004)
 * 🇺🇸 Franklin, United States (2016)

References in Literature
In Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, the Scherbatskys retire to Bad Soden to cure Kitty's illness.

In Ivan Turgenev's "Spring Torrents," Dimitry Sanin takes a trip with his future lover, Gemma, and her current fiancé to Soden, "a small town about half an hour's distance from Frankfurt".

Featured heavily in Part 3 of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.