Fontane Therme Bad Freienwalde

Fontane Therme in Bad Freienwalde, Brandenburg, draws chloride-rich ferrous mineral waters from the Oderbruch depression — a glacially scoured lowland reclaimed from the Oder River by Frederick the Great of Prussia in the 18th century in one of Europe's greatest landscape engineering projects. The thermal complex takes its name from Theodor Fontane, the 19th-century Brandenburg novelist whose 'Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg' documented the exact landscapes and village communities surrounding this spa town in literary accounts that remain the defining portrait of the Prussian provinces. The Oder River flood plain, the historic market towns of Neumark Brandenburg, and the cross-border Oder-Warta National Park shared with Poland create a geothermally, historically, and ecologically rich context for this eastern German mineral spa.