Bad Wiessee
Encyclopedia
Spa town
A spa town is a town situated around a mineral spa . Patrons resorted to spas to "take the waters" for their purported health benefits. The word comes from the Belgian town Spa. In continental Europe a spa was known as a ville d'eau...
on Lake Tegernsee, Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
, Germany. The name "Bad" means for "spa" or "baths", while "Wiessee" derives from "West See", meaning "western part of the lake".
Bad Wiessee is known for its healing sulfur-fountain, discovered by the Dutch oil explorer Adriaan Stoop
Adriaan Stoop
Adriaan Stoop was a Dutch oil explorer. He graduated from Delft University with a mining degree in 1878, was posted to the Department of Mines and arrived in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, shortly thereafter.Realizing he knew little about oil exploration, Stoop requested paid leave for a...
. People spend their holidays in Bad Wiessee because of its quiet atmosphere and its location at the north side of the Alps
Alps
The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....
.
Bad Wiessee is also notorious as the scene of the key events within the Night of the Long Knives
Night of the Long Knives
The Night of the Long Knives , sometimes called "Operation Hummingbird " or in Germany the "Röhm-Putsch," was a purge that took place in Nazi Germany between June 30 and July 2, 1934, when the Nazi regime carried out a series of political murders...
, June 30, 1934, when Hitler and the Schutzstaffel
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
(SS) purged the leadership of the Sturmabteilung
Sturmabteilung
The Sturmabteilung functioned as a paramilitary organization of the National Socialist German Workers' Party . It played a key role in Adolf Hitler's rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s...
(SA), many of whom were staying at the resort.