How Baden-Baden Came by Its Name

The German town of Baden-Baden acquired that name officially in 1931. Before that, it was simply called Baden. Baden was a bathing spa in Roman times, and accordingly called Aquae like Bath. Both have the same meaning as Baden. How did this tautological weirdness come to pass?

Baden-Baden

The town of Baden became the capital for the newly styled Margraves of Baden in 1112 when Count Hermann of Breisgau acquired it together with its Castle Hohenbaden (‘Higher Baden’) during a land swap between his family (the House of Zähringen) and the neighboring Hapsburg and Hohenstaufen families. Taking his father’s title as Margrave of Verona, he combined the title with the name of the castle to define his new lands as the Margravate of Baden.

Baden was a provincial small town that had lost any importance it ever had after the Romans had left. Count Hermann of Breisgau as the new owner now brought back into history. To distinguish it from its geographical near neighbor Baden im Breisgau (today Badenweiler) and from the important other two Baden, Baden in Aargau (today in Switzerland, then part of the Hapsburg lands), and Baden near Vienna, it was customarily called Baden in Baden.

Under Salian law, families with more than one son split the inheritance between them whereby the elder son's descendants would be known as the senior line. When such an inheritance split occurred in 1515, the younger brother took the title of Margrave of Baden-Durlach after the Margravate of Baden and the town of his main residence (Durlach is today part of Karlsruhe). The older brother took the title of Margrave of Baden-Baden following the same principle. The two parts of the country were reunited in 1771 and the name went back to Baden.

People are lazy, and when Margrave Leopold made Baden in Baden a sought after spot for summer residences and health seekers following his accession in 1830, people soon dropped the ‘in’ between Baden and Baden. During the 19th century, Baden Baden got to mean the town, and not the historical Margravate of the previous century. The official renaming of the town from Baden to Baden-Baden in 1931 was just the acceptance of this fact.

What we end up with is a town with the added on name of the county which was named after the castle which got its name from the town. I nice tautology if ever you got one. And if you want to drive someone really crazy, you might want to point out to them that the tautology of the town of Baden-Baden (name of town followed by name of county) is not identical to the one of the Margraves of Baden-Baden (name of county followed by name of town).

Further reading
Robert Koch: With System Against Disease
Graffiti in the Church
Count Welf and His Descendants