Healing mud of Waldfrieden

Waldfrieden means "Forest World". Not far from this East Prussian village was the manor of the Kruger couple. In the early 1900s, Frau Kruger, trying to cure her husband's shoulder, which was aching from rheumatism, discovered the healing power of the mud of a nearby swamp. Some time later, a doctor from Hamburg, having done a chemical analysis, showed that the mud from the Waldfrieden swamp contained radium. At the insistence of his wife, the head of the Kruger family, with his own cured hands and the help of his sons, built a simple wooden hut on the edge of the swamp and placed in it a couple of tubs filled with healing mud. The first to come to the Krugers to improve their health were neighbors and acquaintances. And then even residents of Insterburg began to come to relax and take mud baths. The cost of treatment was initially 50 pfennigs. In 1912, the first hospital was built. From the Waldfrieden station of the narrow-gauge railway that connected Insterburg with Gross-Skaisgirren (now Bolshakovo), a horse-drawn tram pulled by the mare Olga delivered patients to the hospital along the rails, and later a small diesel locomotive, also named after the mare "Olga", and this mini-railway itself was called "Olgabahn".

Transport map of the Waldfrieden resort.

From the railway station to the mud baths, guests were transported via the Olgaban in a small carriage pulled by a tiny diesel locomotive. Circa 1930.

After the First World War, the Kruger mud baths received the status of a resort and became known as Moorbad Waldfrieden. A building with 140 beds, several buildings with auxiliary and operating rooms were built here, and treatment was carried out under the supervision of doctors. Moorbad Waldfrieden was a unique institution of its kind and enjoyed great popularity not only in East Prussia, but also in Germany. In 1930, more than 13,000 sessions of healing mud baths were held here.

During World War II, the hospital was destroyed, and the village of Waldfrieden was practically unharmed, was populated and renamed Fyodorovo. But soon it was abandoned, and not a brick remains of the twenty houses and buildings of Waldfrieden and the hospital. Everything is overgrown with self-seeding, as is the swamp with its healing mud. Now you can only get there by SUV or tractor...

healing mud of Waldfrieden — Buildings of the Waldfrieden mud baths. 1936.

Mud bath at the Waldfrieden spa. Late 1930s.

Remains of the mud baths foundation. November 2020. Photo by Y. Bardun.

(based on materials from genwiki.genealogy.net and www.museumseisenbahn.de)