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Rudolf Sendig
Rudolf Sendig (1848–1928) turned the little town of Schandau into a spa resort of real standing. He came here as a cook in 1871 and built up a small hotel empire – Villa Quisisana, Königsvilla, Kurhaus, Sendigpark. Up on the Ostrauer Scheibe he had a colony of wooden country houses built from 1903, and so that his guests could get up there in comfort, he paid for the passenger lift that still runs today.
From cook to hotel king
Emil Friedrich Rudolf Sendig was born in Breslau in 1848; his father came from a Dresden merchant family. In 1871 he came to Schandau and worked as a cook at the “Forsthaus” hotel, then at the “Deutsches Haus”. In 1876 he opened his first guest house, and in 1880 the Villa Quisisana was built in the style of the Italian Renaissance – “Sendigs Hotel Quisisana”. In 1882 he leased the new Kurhaus and had the landscape engineer Bertram lay out the Sendigpark; the magnificent Königsvilla followed in 1887/88. Later he also ran the “Europäischer Hof” in Dresden.
Honorary citizen and fountain donor
To mark 25 years of his work in Schandau, Sendig gave the town the Sendigbrunnen fountain on the market square in 1896. The Postelwitzer Straße was renamed Rudolf-Sendig-Straße, and he was made an honorary citizen. He even wrote books about his trade – such as “Im Hotel. Diskrete Indiskretionen” (“At the Hotel. Discreet Indiscretions”, 1920). Sendig died in Bad Schandau in 1928 and is buried in the Trinitatisfriedhof cemetery in Dresden. His Villa Quisisana is now called “Villa Sendig” and, together with the Königsvilla, belongs to the Parkhotel Bad Schandau.
The country houses on the Ostrauer Scheibe
From 1903 onwards, a colony of villas grew up in Ostrau, high above the town – people called it “Neuschandau”. What makes it special is that the houses are prefabricated timber homes, supplied by the Witt company of Osterwieck in the Harz, built in country-house style with wooden cladding, bay windows, balconies and little roof turrets. Sendig had been inspired by Swiss chalets; he himself called them “my lovely country houses”. They line the Ostrauer Ring, and house No. 12 is specifically listed as a protected monument. According to the town, Sendig thereby laid the foundation stone for tourism in Ostrau.
The passenger lift
So that guests could reach his country houses without any effort, Sendig proposed a lift and paid for it himself. The steel Art Nouveau tower was built in 1904 and opened on Holy Saturday 1905 – a good 50 metres tall; in less than a minute the cabin climbs almost 48 metres, and at the top a 28-metre-long bridge leads onto the Ostrauer Scheibe. In the early days it drew its power in summer from the overhead line of the Kirnitzschtalbahn. It has been a listed monument since 1954, and film fans will know it from “The Grand Budapest Hotel”.
The world sports ground that never came
Sendig dreamed even bigger: on the Ostrauer Scheibe he planned a “world sports ground” for international competitions – according to the Parkhotel even with an airship hangar, according to MDR with a landing site for balloons. The losses of the First World War put an end to the plan. Ostrau itself, by the way, is much older: it is first mentioned in 1446 as “Ostre”, was a forest-strip village and became part of Bad Schandau in 1934.
As of: 10/2026
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