1 · Position
Friedrich Weinbrenner turned the Promenadenhaus into the Kurhaus in 1824, with Corinthian columns, a paired-griffin frieze and neoclassical interiors. A casino was there from the beginning, but it was ordinary until the mid-1830s, when gambling was forbidden in France and the players simply crossed the border. Marlene Dietrich later called it the most beautiful casino in the world.
2 · ⚑ The invention that matters
Jacques Bénazet took the concession in 1838 and introduced roulette. His son Édouard succeeded him in 1848 and understood something his father had not: that a successful casino should not be only gambling. He brought actors and musicians to Baden-Baden, and when new gaming rooms were added in 1855 they were designed and decorated by the best available architects and artists. That is the integrated resort, proposed in 1848 — and everything in Part I Volume 10, from Wynn to Melco to Sands, is a restatement of Édouard Bénazet's conclusion.
3 · ⚑ Dostoevsky, and a dispute the Library does not settle
*The Gambler* is attributed by some sources to Dostoevsky's visits to Baden-Baden and by others to Wiesbaden, where he is also documented in the 1860s and where a roulette wheel is said to be kept as a memento of his ruin. Both claims are made confidently and the Library records the dispute rather than choosing, per §18.5. What is not in dispute is that the novel was written to pay gambling debts.
4 · Candour
A house whose fortune was made by another country's prohibition has a fragile founding, and the record shows it: the wealthy thinned during the First World War, the clientele changed after it, and the casino needed reopening in 1933 and again in 1950. The Library records that the most beautiful casino in Europe is also a business that has twice had to start again.