A new permanent exhibition is dedicated to the history of Viennese bathing and hygiene culture in the original shower cubicles of the former “public baths” on the Wieden.
Today you would probably call it a pilot project. At that time, in December 1887, it was called “Probe-Douchebade”.
With this, opened in a former poor house in the Mondscheingasse in the new building, they wanted to try out whether the Viennese would even come to shower publicly and cheaply. Well they came. (Even if initially almost only men.) On some days more than 1000 bathing cards were issued.
Which is why the municipal council decided to set up a so-called “public bath” in every district in order to enable the population to have hygienic personal hygiene at least once a week, which was not possible in their desolate living conditions. Because the public baths were so well attended that they often ran out of water, so it was not uncommon for the shower to only drip, these facilities were given their Viennese name: The Tropferlbad.
The Wieden district museum is now devoting a new permanent exhibition to the history of drip baths, which is also one of (poor) hygiene, the diseases caused by it, but also improvements in the health system and water supply in the city. What is special: The house in Klagbaumgasse, which houses the district and chimney sweep museums, was itself a drip bath from 1893 to 1978.
Exhibition in the shower cubicles
Which is why the new exhibition has now been placed directly in the original men’s shower room, the only surviving part of the bathroom, on the first floor. Exhibits and display boards are mostly found in the individual shower cubicles.
For the art historian Alina Strmljan, who curated the exhibition together with the district museum director Philipp Maurer, it was “a wonderful curatorial task” to be able to realize the exhibition about dripper baths in such a place and “to understand the place as a historical source”.
Lack of hygiene
The idea for the exhibition came about through conversations with young people, who were amazed that the comfort of a bathroom in (almost) every apartment is a relatively recent achievement: in Vienna, new apartments only got bathrooms as standard from the 1950s, while old buildings did even longer often only shower niches in the kitchen.
Before that, especially before and around the turn of the century, the hygienic possibilities of the rapidly growing Viennese population in their own four walls were often limited. With disastrous consequences, such as the spread of tuberculosis. Which is why Vienna took up the idea of the Berlin doctor Oscar Lassar, who propagated public shower baths as a simple method of improving hygiene.
Absolutely with success. The drip baths, the first after the “test douche bathing” were created in Margareten and Favoriten, where the hygiene of the population, especially workers, was particularly bad, were overrun.
Which is why the visit was strictly regulated, which numerous historical signs in the exhibition tell about. “The bather is not entitled to stay in the shower room for more than 30 minutes,” can be read in bathing regulations.
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Showers were taken in shower rooms that were strictly separated according to gender, and there was no privacy – for example through curtains or cubicle doors. Men received a kind of loincloth with their entry ticket, which they also had to wear in the shower, while women received a shower apron that also covered their upper body. Both can also be tried out in the show: the Hybrid lingerie label has re-tailored the bathing aprons from back then.
Women were less likely to use the drip baths, says co-curator Strmljan. “It was assumed that the women were too modest” to undress in public. Which is why many dropperl baths were subsequently given individual changing rooms and it is therefore bathing rooms “1. class” and “2nd class”. However, this did not significantly increase the proportion of women.
From 1919, Red Vienna increasingly focused on the construction of indoor, outdoor and family pools. But dropper baths also continued to open, these became more comfortable and were also equipped with saunas or baths.
In the 1970s, most of them closed – more and more Viennese now had their own showers at home. The last Dröpferlbad was not opened as a shower bath until 1997 (!) in a municipal building in the 16th district – and it still exists today.
At a glance
“In the drip bath. Stories of Health and Hygiene” in the Wieden district museum (4. Klagbaumgasse 4.) in the originally preserved shower room of the former drip bath there. In the opening week (Thursday, September 29th and Friday, September 30th, open from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., public guided tour at 2 p.m. and during the Long Night of Museums on Saturday.
Regularly open Tues (10 a.m. to 12 p.m.), Wed 4.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. Admission free. www.bezirksmuseum.at