The year 1808 is traditionally given as the date Marienbad was founded and named. In 1807, the monastery physician Johann Joseph Nehr (1752-1820) completed construction of its first permanent building, the Goldene Kugel (Golden Globe), as both his own residence and lodging for the spa guests. Nehr’s house could not hold all the spa guests, who brought their own food and cots, and the monastery had to open its own spa house, Traiteurhaus, in the next year. In 1812, the year Marienbad became an independent community, a larger guest house was finished by the monastery and several others by private investors.  In the following years, supported – or forced – by the Landesgubernium, the abbey secretary and later Abbot Karl Kaspar Reitenberger (1779-1860) started an extensive town development.

Medal to commemorate the centenary of Marienbad and its founders, the Abbot K. K. Reitenberger and Dr. J. J. Nehr, Münzenpräganstalt Ludwig Christoph Lauer, Nürnberg, 1808, silver-plated bronze, diameter 40 mm. NML Medical Museum, M 328.