Die vier Temperamente

In the late 1970s, the rural pool went from success to success. The concept worked, the spa grew rapidly, but thanks to the good preparatory work it remained within the given limits. Looking back, we can say that it was the broad shoulders that maintained the policies here. In this way, the temptation to sacrifice one or the other urban sin in favour of a supposedly even better (short-term) economic efficiency was resisted.
An important milestone of this period was the construction of the Chrysanti pool. Barely three years had passed since Hanns Weber, then managing director of ZV, told an interested journalist that the Hofbad, the "primordial cell" of Rott Valley Terme, was no longer able to accommodate all its guests. The Chrysanti bath was built. If the Hofbad was equipped with a small bathing hall flooded with light, something completely different had been thought up for its counterpart. It should become a Turkish bath, with a certain mysticism, and yet the bathing facility should also reflect the lightness of being.Well, the Chrysanti swimming pool was created, and it can only be reached from the generous open-air area and the outdoor pool of over 240 sqm by climbing down a few steps. The bathing hall was kept very dark in reddish-brown brick tiles, also in the central octagonal basin with the striking dome above it. This also resulted in a mystical dark water colour. Around this central basin four corner basins were arranged, which, at that time, featured different water temperatures of 28 to 38 degrees. Incidentally, today the temperature is 36 degrees. But because there was this difference, the artist Joseph Michael Neustifter also created a picture of four different temperaments, to which he assigned four allegorical nymphs with their own characteristics. He created the Gentle, the Smart, the Cheeky and the Frivolous, sitting in stylised water, made of bronze.
All four ladies were traditionally spotlighted by the overhead lighting that falls from the dome onto the corner basins.
As is a good custom, there was also an unusual story about the inauguration of the swimming pool. Water music was offered, with the musicians sitting on a raft floating in the pool, which was lowered just enough to give the impression that the actors were floating on the water. Which of the four nymphs would have inspired this idea? But as Hans Putz, then mayor and co-founder of Rott Valley Terme, knows, there was a small catch: "I still shudder when I remember the point on the programme when the strings played for the first time, and after a short time the piece literally went under because of the problematic acoustics at that time.