Jean Georg Haffner (1777 in

Colmar Colmar (; ; or ) is a city and commune in the Haut-Rhin department and Alsace region of north-eastern France. The third-largest commune in Alsace (after Strasbourg and Mulhouse), it is the seat of the prefecture of the Haut-Rhin department ...

Alsace Alsace (, ; ) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in the Grand Est administrative region of northeastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine, next to Germany and Switzerland. In January 2021, it had a population of 1,9 ...

– 20 April 1830 in Danzig) was a medical doctor and the founder of the first spa located in

Zoppot Sopot (; or ) is a seaside resort city in Pomerelia on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in northern Poland, with a population of approximately 40,000. It is located in Pomerania Province and has the status of county – the smallest city in ...

(Sopot). Johann (Jean) Georg Haffner came to the

Free City of Danzig The Free City of Danzig (; ) was a city-state under the protection and oversight of the League of Nations between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) and nearly 200 other small localities in the surrou ...

in 1808 as a major of Napoleons's

Grande Armée The (; ) was the primary field army of the French Imperial Army (1804–1815), French Imperial Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Commanded by Napoleon, from 1804 to 1808 it won a series of military victories that allowed the First French Empi ...

. He was garrisoned there with the French army in which he served as a surgeon. In Danzig he married in 1808 Regina Karoline Bruns, widow of Johann Christoph Böttcher. Since 1811 he was practicing in the town as a civil medical doctor too. He was also running a swimming bath. In addition, he carried out injections against

cowpox Cowpox is an infectious disease caused by Cowpox virus (CPXV). It presents with large blisters in the skin, a fever and swollen glands, historically typically following contact with an infected cow, though in the last several decades more often ...

. When the French troops withdrew from the region in 1814, Haffner remained in Danzig. In 1823 Haffner obtained the license and the exclusive right to establish and operate a spa type of seaside resort in Zoppot from the

Prussia Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...

n authorities. The land along the beach, which was needed to realize the project, was handed over to him on the basis of hereditary leasehold. He built and financed himself a spa hotel and a number of bath pavilions. The spa type of recreation and health centre founded by him had triggered off Zoppot's later development into a famous and noble spa resort.

Literature

* ''Altpreußische Biographie'' (Christian Krollmann, ed.), vol.1, 1941, p. 305. {{DEFAULTSORT:Haffner, Jean Georg 1777 births 1830 deaths People from Colmar French military personnel of the Napoleonic Wars Prussian physicians