History

Kirchner's Inn

Today’s hotel was first mentioned as a tavern under the name “Kirchner’sches Gasthaus” (Kirchner’s Inn). The brewer Johann Michael Kirchner from Gossmannsrod, who had already been running an inn on the Altenstein since the 1830s, leased the house as a tavern in 1856. Two years earlier (1854), the building – house no. 46, opposite the Fountain Temple – had been bought by the Liebenstein tailor Georg Bodenstein. At that time there was a sour spring in the cellar of the house, which had already been channelled to the main spring at the Fountain Temple in 1818. In 1859 Kirchner exchanged the house, which he had since purchased, for a former smithy owned by Johann Hopf directly opposite the school, where he set up an inn.

Hotel Schneider

Under Kirchner’s children the inn fell into debt, and in 1884 it passed into the ownership of Mr Otto Schneider. He modernised the house by buying neighbouring plots, carrying out several extensions and conversions, and refurbishing the guest and service rooms. Thanks to its exceptionally obliging, friendly and nature-loving host and its many guests, Hotel Schneider was well known and popular far beyond Bad Liebenstein.

From 1922, Otto Schneider’s son Karl Schneider ran the hotel together with his sister Grete. In 1933 Karl Schneider had the old part of the hotel demolished and a new building erected, which was ceremonially opened at Easter 1934. In the 1930s Hotel Schneider was considered the best hotel in Liebenstein.

During the Second World War the hotel served as a reserve military hospital, and afterwards as a VVN home and as a state hospital of the SVA (social insurance institutions of the GDR).

Hugo Gefroi

In 1960 the town’s spa administration acquired the hotel and ran it as one of Liebenstein’s 10 sanatoriums under the name “Hugo Gefroi”.

After German reunification, Mr Kiebele, managing director of the m & i specialist clinic in Bad Liebenstein, acquired the former sanatorium and had it converted into a modern hotel with shops and an underground car park. After his unexpected death, his widow was unable to keep the hotel.

Hotel Herzog Georg

Mr Jetschin then acquired the hotel in 2006 and ran it under the name Hotel Herzog Georg until 2014. When the hotel was up for sale again in spring 2014, the Brenn family acquired it and has been running it as a family business under the name Herzog-Georg-Hotel since May 2020.