If it weren’t for its mineral springs, Bad Soden would be just another small town near Frankfurt. But the town’s history is inextricably bound up with these springs. As a 1701 publication by the Frankfurt physician Johann Bernard Gladbach concerning the healing powers of the town’s springs points out, Bad Soden had already made a name for itself. Its first guests were families from Frankfurt who needed a place to stay. And so in 1722 these families commissioned had a guest house built around the hot springs. But it wasn’t until decades later that additional accommodations were built for spa guests – venues whose ads vaunted their “high-ceilinged airy rooms” for the guests, most of whom the ads said suffered from “chest ailments.”

Hotel Concorde – owned and managed by the Weigand family to this day

In 1834 Jacob Sachs and his wife inherited the property on which Hotel Concorde now stands, and built there a two-story home where they took in guests from Frankfurt. In 1872 Ludwig Adam Weigand and his wife Barbara purchased the property. Some 15 years later, the couple yielded to pressure from the town government and sold a large portion of their land to the city for a token 1 mark, because the town urgently needed it for a project involving the expansion of Bad Soden’s train station plaza. Ludwig Adam Weigand then added a small kitchen structure to Gasthaus Weigand (“Weigand Guest House”). In addition to a large dining room and a spacious hall, there was space left in the garden to install an inviting outdoor cafe amidst the garden’s chestnut trees. The Weigands also built a boxing ring, where fabled champions such as Mohammed Ali, Karl Mildenberger and Bonavena trained for their bouts.

In 1908 the hotel was expanded through the addition of a new building facing the train station plaza. The property has remained in the hands of the Weigand family to this day. All of the buildings on the property were ultimately torn down to make way for Hotel Concorde, to which a new section was added on Königsteiner Strasse in 1990.

Following is a list of just some of the luminaries that have sojourned in Bad Soden: