Entrance pavillion to the bathing house with ceramic figures by Gustav Weidanz, with the salt water well in the foreground, 1960

Entrance to the bathing house, around 1930

View of the waiting roof of Wittekind saltwater spa, paintings by Ewald Manz, chandelier by Karl Müller, around 1925

Cubicle with murals by Karl Völker, around 1925

Solbad Wittekind

Wittekindstraße 12, 12a, 13, 13a, 14, 14a, 15

Built:

1845/46, 1855, 1923–25

Architect:

Wilhelm Jost, Friedrich August Stühler

Wittekind Saline Bath is idyllically situated in the north of Halle. The saline spring is more than a thousand years old and has been the centre of a spa and baths business since the nineteenth century. Between 1923 and 1925, head of municipal planning Wilhelm Jost replaced the old Swiss-style buildings with a lavish new building: a symmetrical semi-circular bath house with two rectangular side wings and an oval pavilion in the middle with a conical roof. He also built an administration building and a semi-circular colonnade with a music pavilion in the middle. The focus of this complex of buildings was a forecourt with a saline fountain. Artists of the city of Halle and from the Burg Giebichenstein School of Applied Arts equipped the bath with high-quality furnishings, lighting, sculptures and murals. Wittekind Saline Bath is a consummate example of artistic synthesis in art deco and decorative Expressionist style, very much in the spirit of the ‘New Building’ of the 1920s.