Schwertbad Rehabilitation and Balneology Hospital, Aachen

The «Schwertbad» Rehabilitation Hospital is a specialist facility for the treatment of orthopaedic and rheumatic conditions, providing rehabilitation on both an inpatient and an outpatient basis. Its range of indications covers rheumatic and degenerative diseases of the locomotor system as well as the consequences of accidents and injuries. The hospital’s main focus is post-acute follow-up treatment of musculoskeletal disorders, including after joint replacement and spinal surgery.

The «Schwertbad» Rehabilitation Hospital offers both inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation. Where the severity of the condition makes outpatient treatment close to home impossible, the patient can undergo rehabilitation as an inpatient. This form of rehabilitation makes it possible to provide optimal medical and physiotherapeutic treatment and nursing care. In a caring, supportive environment, the patient can concentrate fully on recovery without being distracted by everyday concerns. Inpatient rehabilitation is available for adults and for adolescents alike. We are also able to admit patients who need special care because of advanced age, the severity of their illness or multiple co-existing conditions.
A course of inpatient rehabilitation usually lasts three weeks. Patients are admitted every day, including weekends. In the case of post-acute follow-up treatment, patients are referred directly by the hospital discharging them. Decisions on admission for inpatient rehabilitation are often made at short notice. Please contact the admissions and accommodation office of the inpatient rehabilitation department.

If the nature of the condition, the patient’s state of health and the proximity of their home allow outpatient treatment, patients can complete their course of rehabilitation while living at home. At the outpatient rehabilitation centre of the «Schwertbad» hospital, patients receive treatment during the day and return home in the evening. In this way you remain in familiar surroundings throughout your recovery. Rehabilitation takes place in the outpatient rehabilitation centre, which was built in 2002. The centre is headed by the director of the orthopaedic department, and treatment is delivered by a specialist in physical and rehabilitation medicine. Any concomitant internal medical conditions are treated by the hospital’s own specialist physicians.
Outpatient rehabilitation usually takes 15 treatment days. Treatment is provided from Monday to Friday, from 8.00 to 16.00. Afterwards patients may use our sauna and thermal swimming pool free of charge. Between treatment sessions, patients can rest and unwind after exertion in dedicated relaxation areas. Outpatient admission dates are arranged individually. Please contact the outpatient rehabilitation centre.

Alongside a variety of treatment methods, the «Schwertbad» Rehabilitation Hospital makes extensive use of the famous Aachen thermal mineral water (32° C-34° C). Because the thermal waters of Aachen and Burtscheid are naturally very hot, they are cooled down before being used for treatment.
It is hard to list all the springs of hot saline-alkaline and sulphurous water (some containing free hydrogen sulphide) that were once in use: there were around 10 of them in Aachen and some 25 in Burtscheid. The most famous of the Aachen springs were the Kaiserquelle (55.0° C), Quirinusquelle (49.7°), Rosenquelle (47.0° C) and Corneliusquelle (45.4° C), together with the magnificent Elisenbrunnen drinking-water pavilion. The Burtscheid springs covered a wider temperature range: from the Mühlbadquelle and Pockenbrünnchen (39.7° C) to the Victoriabrunnen (59.9°), the Kochbrunnen (72.5° C) and, finally, the Schwertbadquelle (74.6° C).

The last of these, considered the hottest mineral spring in Central Europe, was the particular pride of the spa. A number of legends surrounded its name («the sword bath»): that quenching weapons in its water made the steel harder, and that the devil himself cured his gout in this very bath.

Because of its high mineral content, the water of Aachen-Burtscheid was indeed used mainly for bathing; for drinking it usually had to be diluted. Around almost every spring a spa and hotel complex was built, bearing the corresponding name. Water was piped from the spring into bath halls with pools, showers and inhalation rooms. Treatment with water and steam (what today would be called a sauna) was supplemented by massage and exercise on the special apparatus of the Zander institutes of mechanotherapy (named after the Swedish physician Gustav Zander, 1835-1920). There was a time when Europe, and even Russia, had no fewer Zander institutes than there are fitness centres today; at Russian spas, it seems, only one such institute has survived – in Yessentuki, where it opened as long ago as 1902.
The large therapeutic pool with thermal water (32° C) is open to all visitors (no doctor’s prescription required) from 17.00 to 20.00 daily except weekends.

The sauna complex offers visitors a Finnish sauna and an Irish-Roman bath, which are open to everyone on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 14.00 to 22.00, on Saturdays — from 10.00 to 14.00, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays — from 16.00 to 22.00. The women’s sauna is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10.00 to 16.00.
The bath complex comprises a Finnish sauna and an Irish-Roman bath, a solarium, a relaxation room, a cold plunge pool and foot baths. Sauna visitors may also use the thermal therapeutic pool (swimwear required).