"In everything rests, acts and rules an eternal law."
Friedrich Fröbel

Our three-sided courtyard located in the historic walls of a ducal domenic estate has a very special historical value. For the Fröbelhof owes its name to the great educator Friedrich Froebel, who once lived here and developed his concept of a pedagogical country life. Furthermore, Froebel is also seen as the inspirer of the Bauhaus style by the development of his toys.

Now read how Henriette Schrader-Breymann, a student of Friedrich Froebel and founder of the Pestalozzi-Froebel-Haus in Berlin, once described with her youthful enthusiasm the location of Fröbels' apartment in our farm :

"... The woman inspector Müller is the tenant of the whole spa and this estate, managed by her son and his young wife; they live in this house. The spa buildings and facilities are only beautiful, and I can not blame the people who live here for their pleasure.

However, I would not like to live in any other house than this, it is located away from bathing in rural silence wherever you go.
 
Close behind the house leads a pretty broad sandy road to a nearby pine forest, and behind this path rises a grassy slope where beautiful, vibrant trees blossom, wearing rich fruits. Under these the high rye stalks nod in the breath of the wind and when you climb up a narrow footpath in the field, along the mountain slope, one rests below slim young birches.

This forest stretches quite a long journey along the field, and we have the most charming walks here. It is always my best hour, when I stroll through the park next to the facilities of the spa hotel to the dark beech hillside at the ruins of the Castle Liebenstein and watch the sparkling waterfalls, which probably fall down from as high as our house. Oh, there are lots of beautiful places here, so many that you could visit a different location every day in its peculiar beauty."

1800  Duke George the I. of Saxe-Meiningen lays the foundation stone for today's Bad Liebenstein, and the Meininger Dukes develop Bad Liebenstein subsequently to a European Prince Spa.

1806 - 1808
the ducal estate was created on ash mountain, the modern "Hotel Fröbelhof".

1808 
The dominium estate takes over the knight estate belonging to the old fields and meadows on the roof and behind the castle. The first inspector of the dominium estate is named Müller (1809).

Until 1876

there is a brewery located at the estate (1847 - brewer Heim, 1857 - brewer Walter , 1872 - tenants Habricht)

In the 80s, 90s   
there is a dining facility at the estate, the "milk garden for good humor," it is touted in promotional brochures.

1849
The founder of the kindergartens, the teacher and avid follower of Pestalozzi, Friedrich Fröbel, lives some time on the estate because Duke Bernhardt II of Saxe-Meiningen offered him a residence in his country after Fröbel had been declared an undesirable person for seditious ideas and actions in the Duchy of Rudolstadt-Schwarzburg. Here on the estate Fröbel designs the idea of a school for kindergarten teachers. He plays with the young children of farmers and day laborers and is initially ridiculed by the spa patients as "old fool".

His toys like spheres, cylinders, cubes and cones have infiltrated the world today. A commemorative  plaque on the building, the historic Fröbel room and the Fröbel exhibition in our home remembers and appreciates him. Today's Heinrich-Mann-Straße was earlier the Fröbelstraße.

1850
Duke Bernhardt II makes available to Fröbel the Marienthal castle as a residence in the neighboring Schweina where the almost seventy year-old Fröbel crowned his life's work with the establishment of the first nursery teacher school in the world, which was run up to the ban by the Prussian state. Friedrich Fröbel died on 6/21/1852 and is buried in Schweina. Fröbel is regarded today as one of the fathers of modern art and architecture.

1899
Closure of the estate. The fields behind the castle will be planted with forest. After the Second World War, the forest is cleared again.

During World War I
the Fröbel house is home to the storage of the wine company Stiesy & son from Schmalkalden.

1919 -1929
the buildings of the former estate are used by the Red Cross as a sisters' and children's convalescent home.

1924
the world-famous architect Walter Gropius, director of the Bauhaus in Weimar, is planning a Frederick-Fröbel-Haus in Bad Liebenstein, opposite to the current hotel. Because of political "weather change"  the Bauhaus representatives left Thuringia in 1925 and the plans remain unrealized. Gropius then built the Bauhaus Dessau in 1926.

1944 - 1945
In World War II Bad Liebenstein is a hospital city, so the Fröbelhof serves as a hospital. The resort itself suffered no damage. In April 1945 the Americans brought an end to the Nazis. From July 1945 Bad Liebenstein belonged to the Soviet occupation zone. Because of the Law of 05/30/1947, the spa is public property and shall be called the "People's spa Bad Liebenstein".

1950 - 1952
created by new construction and remodeling of the estate and later "Agnesheim" the Heinrich Mann Sanatorium served as a convalescent sanatorium of "working people of intelligence". Eponym to the sanatorium is the writer Heinrich Mann, who was born on 27 March 1871 in Lübeck, brother of Thomas Mann, his best known work "Professor Unrat" (1905), filmed under the title "The Blue Angel" with Marlene Dietrich. Followed are the works of "The Little Town" (1909) and "The Subject" (1918).

In February 1933, Heinrich Mann's expulsion from the Prussian Academy of Arts was enforced. He emigrated via Paris and Nice, Spain and Portugal in 1940 to California. In 1949 he accepted the appointment as President of the newly founded German Academy of Arts in East Berlin. His first task in August 1950 will be the inauguration of the then newly built "Heinrich-Mann-Sanatorium", predecessor of todays Heinrich Mann Hospital. Heinrich Mann died in March 1950 in Santa Monica, California and was buried on 15 March in Berlin.

The sanatorium is a facility attached to the Government Hospital in Berlin. The patients come only from this support setting. The circle of privileged spa guests include VIPs from politics and business, artists and ambassadors with their family members. Rebuilding and new developments follow in the coming years.

1991
In 1991, the Heinrich-Mann-Sanatorium is taken over by Dr. Becker Hospital Society Cologne, Mrs. Marie-Louise and Dr. Ernst Becker by the Treuhand.

1995 
Beginning of the restoration of the historic old building (Fröbel House) and the initial booking of the restored Fröbel House

Autumn 1997: Opening of "Fröbel House" as a "Hotel Fröbelhof", including escorts and relatives of patients.

01/01/2010
Family Silvana Faccin and Klaus Müller from Bad Liebenstein buy the "Hotel Fröbelhof" from family Dr. Becker, and continue with a new Hotel philosophy.