Davos’s positioning as a spa town owes much to German born Alexander Spengler. Sentenced to death in his homeland because of his participation in the 1848 Revolution of Baden, Spengler was forced to fee to Switzerland after the Prussians annihilated Franz Sigel’s 4 000-strong army. Sigel went on to an equally unsuccessful career as a Union General during the American Civil War.
Spengler, who had trained as a lawyer, did rather better, relocating to Zurich where he switched to medicine and qualified as a physician. After graduation, Spengler had the choice of deportation or becoming a country doctor in a rural area – which is how he ended up in isolated Davos 160km and a mountain range away.
After arriving in Davos in 1853, Spengler began appreciating the beneficial effects its cold, dry climate had on people suffering with tuberculosis. In 1868, with a partner, he founded the first clinic in Davos to specialise in treating the lung disease – pioneering what was to become a boom industry for the small town.
Spengler is reputably also the first Swiss to own a pair of skis – which he got from Scandinavia – sparking the second major boom for a town better known today for its ski slopes than sanatoria. Spengler’s skis are preserved for posterity in Davos’s winter sports museum. Two sons, Carl and Lucius, continued the family business in Davos, both becoming well known lung disease specialists. Spengler’s partner in that first tuberculosis sanatorium, Dutchman Willem Holsboer, also played a major role in the development of Davos. Founder of the Rhaetian Railway.
As a country doctor, he was quick to recognise the healing properties of the high-altitude climate of the Davos region, and invested effort in making it more widely known. Together with a Dutchman named Willem Jan Holsboer, Spengler inaugurated the Spengler-Holsboer Sanatorium in 1868.
Holsboer was also the original founder of the Rhaetian Railway, which is now the largest private railway company in Switzerland and the dominant service in Davos’s home Graubunden canton. Holsboer’s initiative in providing Davos’s frst railway link, in 1890, started the mushrooming of the village into a small town.
Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), widely regarded as one of the most important works of German literature, also put Davos firmly on the map.
The plot surrounds the experiences of a tuberculosis sufferer who spends seven years in a sanatorium in the small town and was inspired by Mann’s regular visits to Davos’s Schatzalp, an alpine botanical garden with more than 800 different species of plants from around the world. Today, however, Davos’s fame stems primarily from the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, which has been held there since 1971.
In conjunction with BrightRock, we have taken to sharing the stories from our recently published World Economic Forum starter pack, ‘A Veterans Guide to Surviving Davos’ PDF with you – To download the full document, follow this link.