Dostoevsky in Wiesbaden: the man who lost his fare home

In the late summer of 1865 Fyodor Dostoevsky was stuck in Wiesbaden without money. He had lost his travel funds at the tables and stayed for about two months at the Hotel Viktoria, where his meals were cut back to tea. He wrote begging letters, one of them on 10 August. The money Ivan Turgenev provided covered only his debts. In the end it was a priest, Ivan Janyschew of the Russian church of St Elizabeth, who lent him the fare home; Dostoevsky repaid it. The city's own encyclopaedia, the Stadtlexikon, tells the story, and adds that it was here that the idea for Crime and Punishment began, according to a letter he wrote in 1868.

The first visits

Dostoevsky came to Wiesbaden on his first trip abroad, in June 1862. The Stadtlexikon says he visited the Spielbank then, while German Wikipedia puts his first casino visit in September 1863, so the earliest date is disputed. The 1863 visit is better documented. He spent four days in Wiesbaden, and in a letter of 1 September he reported a win of 10,400 francs, of which, he wrote, he gave back half. A letter to his brother on 20 September describes about 10,000 won, then lost, then 3,000 regained. A letter of Turgenev's claims nearly 12,000, so the sum itself is uncertain.

The line that the writer "won here in 1863 and lost everything in 1865" is therefore too tidy. On the same 1863 trip he also lost money in Baden-Baden in September and in Homburg on 27 October, and English Wikipedia says he lost nearly everything in Wiesbaden and Baden-Baden that year. The win was real; it did not last.

The wheel and the building

The Kurhaus visitor page of the city says that the roulette wheel at which Dostoevsky "waited for the croupier's call" can still be seen. We could not trace it: the page gives no location, inventory entry or provenance, and neither the Stadtlexikon entry on the Spielbank nor the one on Dostoevsky mentions a wheel. There is a further problem with the building. In 1865 the casino sat in Zais's Kurhaus of 1810, which was demolished in 1905; Thiersch's Kurhaus, the one you see today, opened in 1907. Dostoevsky never played in it. Read the claim as the city's tradition, not as a documented object.

The novel

The Gambler was not written in Wiesbaden. In October 1866 Dostoevsky was in St Petersburg and under contract to the publisher Stellovsky, with a deadline of 1 November. He dictated the book to a young stenographer, Anna Snitkina, in 26 days according to the Stadtlexikon and English Wikipedia, finishing on 30 October; one lecture text gives 24 days. They married in February 1867.

The town in the book, Roulettenburg, is fictional. The Stadtlexikon notes that the layout of a Kurhaus, a square and an avenue leading to a hotel suits Wiesbaden, but that Dostoevsky drew a generic spa town, and scholars have named Wiesbaden, Baden-Baden and Bad Homburg in turn. The novel's closing scenes are set in Homburg. The scholar Karla Hielscher has found that the name "Roulettenburg" probably comes from a Russian translation of a Thackeray text, not from a real town.

The last time

Dostoevsky returned to Wiesbaden for the last time in April 1871, staying at the Taunus-Hotel on Rheinstraße (demolished in 1975). He wrote: "Das war wirklich das allerletzte Mal!", "That really was the very last time!". The Stadtlexikon says he never gambled again; English Wikipedia notes that when he actually stopped is debated.

What to see today

The Spielbank Wiesbaden is in the Kurhaus at Kurhausplatz 1; a society room in the Kurhaus bears Dostoevsky's name. On the Neroberg stands the Russian Orthodox church of St Elizabeth, the "Griechische Kapelle", built 1847–55 and consecrated on 25 May 1855. We could not verify its opening times, so check before you climb the hill. For the casino itself, see the Wiesbaden dossier: entry is free, the minimum age is 18, and no jacket rule is published.