Marienbad is where the Landauers’ restorative summer holiday brings together the ease of family life, the routines of a fashionable spa, and intimations of the political violence approaching them. Their walks and time at the hotel briefly renew Viktor and Liesel’s intimacy, while the following summer’s graffiti and newsreel place that private refuge within a deteriorating public world.

Setting and the Landauers’ Holiday

The family stays in Marienbad to take the waters, lodging in a suite at the Palace-Hotel Fürstenhof. Viktor has spent summers there with his parents, and the hotel staff’s familiar greeting of him as Herr Viktor makes the visit feel continuous with his earlier life. Their suite overlooks spa gardens where morning mist drifts among the trees; elsewhere, visitors stroll between springs with porcelain flasks, trusting the waters to cure ailments the narration suggests may be little more than ennui. Concerts, including works by Chopin, Dvořák, and Strauss, complete the town’s cultivated holiday routine.

The holiday also brings the Landauers’ public and commercial lives into view. Posters advertise the new Landauer Popular with the slogan “Landauer Luxury in a Popular Package,” presenting smiling families setting out for summer trips. A women’s magazine journalist asks Liesel about motherhood, while a journalist from Lidové Noviny questions Viktor about the economy and the new car. Yet much of the visit remains private: a nurse cares for their daughter, Ottilie, while Viktor and Liesel walk in the woods above the town.

Intimacy and a Small Exclusion

On one walk, Viktor’s doeskin breeches prompt Liesel to call him a handsome Bohemian farmer. Their hike takes them over the Podhorn to the monastery at Tepl. Because she is a woman, Liesel is not allowed into its library and museum and must wait outside while Viktor visits. They laugh off the exclusion and feel superior to what they regard as absurd prejudice; the temporary separation becomes, unexpectedly, a point of renewed closeness between them.

In the woods above the monastery, they kiss and jokingly consider making love outdoors. Approaching walkers interrupt them, and they separate. Back at the hotel, they resume their intimacy in private. The holiday thus moves from a public restriction imposed on Liesel to a moment of affection between the couple, without making the exclusion itself disappear.

Political Signs in the Holiday Town

By the later summer visit, Marienbad’s streets carry a different charge. Red SdP graffiti and black swastikas appear on walls. The markings remain for days despite complaints before workmen paint them out. Their temporary removal does not erase what they signal: the political pressure outside the Landauers’ holiday world is becoming harder to treat as distant.

Viktor and Liesel also see a newsreel at the cinema showing a man in pale grey addressing ten thousand torch-bearing soldiers. The contrast between the polished resort and these signs of political mobilization gives Marienbad a double role in the narrative: it remains a familiar destination for family holidays, but its public spaces register a danger that the Landauers’ private pleasures cannot contain.