Why German casinos sit in spa towns

The six casinos in this guide stand in Baden-Baden, Wiesbaden, Bad Homburg, Bad Wiessee, Lindau and Berlin. Five are in spa or resort towns, and the sixth, Berlin, was founded in 1975 as a city casino. The reasons are partly commercial and partly legal.

A concession that paid for the resort

In the nineteenth century a gaming concession could pay for a resort. The Baden-Baden Kurhaus was largely funded by casino money. In Homburg the concessionaire had to build a Kurhaus and a park. In Wiesbaden the 1810 Kurhaus lease came with the gaming monopoly. When France banned its casinos in 1837, the German spa casinos gained international importance.

Timeline

The ban of 1872–73

After 1866 Prussia annexed Nassau and Hesse-Homburg and granted a grace period of six years. The imperial law "betreffend die Schließung und Beschränkung der öffentlichen Spielbanken" took effect on 1 January 1873. The last play was in Baden-Baden on 31 October 1872, in Wiesbaden on 30 December and in Homburg on 31 December. (We could not retrieve the statute itself, so we do not give its date.) Earlier, on 8 January 1849, the National Assembly had abolished gaming banks; Wiesbaden received a Kurtaxe as compensation and play resumed in 1849–51.

The return

On 3 October 1933 Baden-Baden reopened as the first concession after the ban, held by a French group. Carol Nachman was part of it; he was forced out in 1935 because he was Jewish. We could not identify the statute behind the 1933 reopening. A Reich Spielbanken-Verordnung of 1938, amended in 1944, lived on as state-level law after the war. After the war Wiesbaden reopened on 29 October 1948 according to the Stadtlexikon, or in 1949 according to the city's history page and German Wikipedia, so the year is disputed. Bad Homburg reopened on 7 April 1949, and Baden-Baden on 1 April 1950; the casino celebrated its 75th anniversary on 5 April 2025, but sources also differ on this date.

Why the states decide

In its decision BVerfGE 28, 119 of 18 March 1970, which arose from a Bad Homburg case, the Federal Constitutional Court held that casino law is public-order law and not economic law. That left it with the states. Until the early 1970s all twelve German casinos were in spa or seaside resorts. City casinos came in the mid-1970s, and Spielbank Berlin, founded in 1975, was the eighteenth in Germany (see Potsdamer Platz and Spielbank Berlin).

Bavaria still ties casinos to spa and recreation towns by law. Article 1(2) of its casino act allows casinos only in municipalities with state spas or a recognised Heilbad, Kur- or Erholungsort, and Article 2(2) gives the permit only to the Free State, for state-run operation.

Who runs them today

The six are not under one model. Baden-Baden is state-owned through a Land holding company and has been part of the BW Spielbanken company since 2003. Hesse works with concessions: Wiesbaden's operator has held the concession since 1991, with a new ten-year concession from 1 January 2026, and Bad Homburg's operator is a municipal company since 2013. Berlin's casino is run under a private concession, reported as running from 2018 to 2032. Bavaria's casinos are state-run. So it would be wrong to call all of them "state monopolies". We could not read the Hessian, Baden-Württemberg and Berlin statutes, so for those three states our description rests on secondary sources.