Agency Report –
Then, with a deafening noise, rotating blades transform the lumps into a loose pulp, which Koch then heats to 42 degrees using steam.
The guests in the bathhouse next door, which is part of the spa complex in the western German town of Bad Driburg, don’t get to see how the peat, which is taken from nearby wetlands, is mixed and processed for bathing. For them, it’s the peat treatment that takes centre stage, as it has done for over 200 years.
Since 1821, guests at Germany’s only private spa resort have been getting undressed, putting on a shower cap to protect their hair, taking a sip of water and protecting their fingernails and toenails from discolouration with a special cream.
They then step into the hot, black mush and take a peat pulp bath. Sometimes known as a moor bath, the freshly prepared peat pulp awaits in a steel tub behind the door of the small relaxation room.
While mud baths, which involve soaking in warm mud, are popular in other parts of the world, Germany has over 60 certified spas that specialise in peat therapy.
Peat kneading, peat massages, peat baths
They’re a big boost for tourism, with many hotels and thermal baths targeting the health-conscious traveller: there are peat pulp baths, hot and cold peat packs, peat treading and kneading and massages with a peat ointment. Demand is high.
“Peat treatments are popular here,” says Count Marcus von Oeynhausen-Sierstorpff, the seventh-generation owner of the Bad Driburg spa, who converted a listed building complex in the middle of a landscaped park into a “medical spa”. His main target group are “30- to 40-year-olds who are stressed and always on the go” who want to harness the regenerating power of the peat.
They often prefer a short break with relaxation in the spa to a traditional thermal cure with a daily routine, wanting to slow down in nature and quickly recharge their batteries. At the end of the 18th century, however, spa treatments were still a part of the European elite’s summer schedule.
The impact of such treatment is by no means a placebo, and in Germany full peat pulp baths often require a medical certificate or a consultation with a spa doctor due to their strong metabolism-stimulating effect. For this reason the programmes at the Heide Spa in the town of Bad Düben are limited to peat packs and half baths.
‘Try not to move’
The German Spa Association points out that peat pulp baths only develop their healing powers during a holistic treatment or therapy lasting several weeks under medical supervision. It has been scientifically proven to have anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving effects as well as a growth-inhibiting effect on bacteria in a number of rheumatic and gynaecological diseases.
So the primary focus of hotel wellness remains the relaxing effect in an environment far removed from everyday life. Lying back in a tub filled with 42-degree peat pulp is a pleasantly cosy experience. “The warmth of the bathing peat penetrates slowly but deeply into the body,” explains mud therapist Luise Schrader.
This process is called overheating, although only a few people experience it as an uncomfortable heat. Schrader dabs beads of sweat from a guest at Gräflicher Park, adding: “Try not to move too much.”
The result is a feeling of weightless security – as long as you don’t lose your balance, because it’s only by keeping your head on the pillow that your body has support in the warm peat. You feel how floating in the peat bath relieves the strain on your bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments.
But aren’t peat baths an environmental problem in the midst of the climate crisis? After all, peat bogs, formed after the glaciers retreated at the end of the last ice age, are efficient carbon sinks that take up more carbon from the atmosphere than they release.
Little environmental impact
Felix Grützmacher, a peatland conservation expert at Germany’s Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (Nabu), gives the all-clear. “We are facing completely different challenges, including gardening and intensive agriculture on drained peatlands.”
Peat pulp baths and treatments at spas are “not relevant in terms of quantity and thus also not in terms of environmental impact,” he explains. Especially since the peat is returned to wetlands, meaning the CO2 largely remains linked to the wetlands.
After 15 minutes of earthly weightlessness, the guests at the Gräflicher Park Health und Balance Resort in Bad Driburg shower off and quickly realise that their bodies have “done a good job”. Wrapped up in several blankets, they take a lie down: relaxed, pleasantly matte and with rosy skin.
By Karin Willen
