History

The springs


Ownership of the Rogaška springs throughout the years


  1. The priest of the Holy Cross
  2. In 1676, Baron Peter Courty built the first inn beside the spring. A crate containing 250 2.5 litre bottles cost 3 Forints in Rogaška; in Vienna, the price of a single bottle reached or exceeded 1 Forint. Because of the water’s high price, impostors soon appeared.
  3. Because of a dispute with Baron Courty, the Austrian Emperor Leopold I gave the right to sell the water to the Viennese merchant Frank as a token of his gratitude for sacrifices made during the Turkish siege of Vienna.
  4. In 1706, Leopold I sought to bring order to the market. He gave the right to distribute the water to Henckl, a Viennese city councillor, but because of disagreements in Rogaška, the situation in the market remained in disorder.
  5. In 1721, Emperor Charles VI gave the right to sell the water to the Viennese Pharmacists’ Society, who held the concession until 1782. During their concession, the first technical intervention occurred – the spring was walled and given the shape of a fountain, which it had until 1860. In 1732, after the work was complete, a monument to Saint John of Nepomuk was erected beside the spring. The Emperor also fixed the price of a bottle of mineral water at 36 kreutzers. Merchants had to pay 6 kreutzers to the state treasury.
  6. In 1774, Empress Maria Theresa, Emperor Charles IV’s successor, decreed that a small piece of paper with the current year and a mark which was to be changed each year must be put on every bottle. The price of mineral water was published in the newspaper Wiener Zeitung.
  7. After 1782, a period of regression in the development of Rogaška occurred. Emperor Joseph II disbanded the Viennese Pharmacists’ Society, as a result of which ownership came into the hands of local owners.
  8. A new era in the development of Rogaška began in 1801, when the spa became property of the province. Working with Kugelmayer, the prelate of Admont, the Governor General Count Attems put considerable efforts into modernising the buildings and spring technology. The spa once again flourished in 1810, when Count Attems and others were joined by Archduke John of Austria.

In 1804, the spa began to be served by its first on-site doctor, Dr Fröhlich, who in 1805 also became the spa’s director. In 1812, the first walled bottling plant was built, and in 1838 500,000 bottles were sold at a price of 9.5 kreutzers a bottle. The water could be purchased in all the Austrian provinces, in Italy (Aqua di Cilli) and Greece and even in Egypt.

Four springs were known in the first half of the nineteenth century: Ferdinand’s Spring, Gothard’s Spring, The Spring of the Woods and the Main Spring, over which the ovular Tempel pavilion was built in 1819. Later, during various maintenance works, two more springs were discovered: Joseph’s Spring and Moritz’ Spring.

Between 1830 and 1860, all of the important buildings were built; they can still be seen today. This period marks the height of the spa’s fame. Around 2,000,000 bottles were filled and sold each year. Guests came from all of Europe and the Viennese Court, and were entertained by the renowned artists of the time, for example by Franz Liszt in 1846.

Because of the steadily increasing demand for Rogaška mineral water, which was the result of extensive advertising, the quantity and quality of the water collected from the shallow catchments and springs could no longer meet the needs of the market. In 1908, under the leadership of the Czech geologist Dr Knett, a 40 m x 8 m x 8 m drainage was constructed at the edge of the spa park. In it, natural mineral waters with different levels of mineralisation were collected at different levels. The water with the highest mineral content was named after the nearby Donačka mountain, and Donat was born.

After World War II, from 1952 to 1954, around 1,500,000 litres of water were bottled each year at Rogaška. Because of a decline in the quantity and quality of the water, the needs of the spa and the market dictated that a new and permanent supply of quality mineral water be found. Under the leadership of Professor Bać of Sarajevo and in collaboration with the Geology Survey of Ljubljana, deep drilling commenced in the central section of the spa park in 1952. The drilling marked a new beginning in the research and collection of subterranean waters in Slovenia. By 1958, 41 wells had been drilled. The deepest reached a depth of 87 m. Of course, the deeper wells caused the shallower ones to run dry; nonetheless, the drilling managed to secure an adequate supply of quality water for the spa and for consumers. Without pumps, 60m3 could be exploited from the wells per day.

From 1958 to the present, extensive geological, hydrogeological and geophysical studies were conducted under the leadership of professor Bać and Anton Nosan of the Geological Survey of Ljubljana. These served as the basis for several positive wells for collecting the mineral water and CO2 which today provide the spa and bottling plant with an adequate supply of mineral water of the Donat Mg type.

Under socialism
A period of development followed in socialist Yugoslavia, lasting from 1945 to 1990. This period was marked by the development of medical and spa tourism.

...Today
In the 1990s, as war raged through the former Yugoslav republics and Slovenia achieved independence, crisis struck the spa. Corporate restructuring ended with the company being split into smaller pieces.

The company Rogaška vrelci d.d. was formed in March 1991 on the basis of a legal decision on the organisation of the company into a holding company and the founding of new companies through the division of assets.

Thus the Rogaška vrelci bottling plant got a new owner in 1995, Kolinska d.d., and this marked the start of a new period of development.

In 2005, Droga d.d. and Kolinska d.d. merged to form a single company, DrogaKolinska d.d.

The most recent change in ownership occurred at the end of 2010, when DrogaKolinska d.d. came under the ownership of the Croatian company Atlanticgrupa d.d.