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Embedded in the imposing mountain scenery of Watzmann, Untersberg and Kehlstein, the Obersalzberg is a mountain ridge covered by lovely meadows and forests about 1000 meters above Berchtesgaden.

Apart from its spectacular view of the Bavarian Alps, probably only a few people would know the mountain today if Adolf Hitler and his entourage had not seized it to declare the area a so-called Führer's restricted area and use it as the second seat of government.

While Hitler's presence on Obersalzberg is well known to many, the historical landscape remains diffuse to this day and requires explanation.

Much is not here as it seems at first glance, because after profound changes today both the knowledge of the time before the Nazis and their brutal remodeling has largely been buried.

“There is hardly any other place where the Nazis committed the landscape, staging and crime are so closely interwoven as in Obersalzberg,” says Sven Keller.

The historian is head of the documentation center there, which, under the direction of the Institute for Contemporary History, has been trying to educate people about the site and its Nazi past since 1999.

Source: WORLD infographic

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Keller and his colleagues know only too well that the misconception about Obersalzberg has long been that the Nazi leadership only spent nice vacation days in their holiday homes - which many extremely private and idyllic-looking photos should also lead you to believe.

Adolf Hitler consciously chose Obersalzberg as the location

How close together idyll and crime were in this place can be seen from historical photos, the history of which is explained in the documentation center.

All the alleged keyhole glimpses into the private life of the Führer are productions by Hitler's personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, who made a significant contribution to the establishment of the Führer myth with the millions of photos that were distributed at the time.

The Obersalzberg was deliberately chosen as a place in front of an imposing mountain backdrop to stage a natural and popular-looking guide, who liked to patted braided children's heads, went for walks with dogs and happily shook hands with the people who, as if on a pilgrimage, went up to the Berghof made a pilgrimage.

“What the pictures don't show is the fence with which the Führer's restricted area was completely cordoned off,” says Keller.

Hitler surrounded himself with so much luxury

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Like a wealthy bourgeoisie, Hitler had himself photographed on his mountain farm on Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden.

Source: picture-alliance / IMAGNO / Austri

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Around one billion Reichsmarks flowed into the property.

Source: picture-alliance / IMAGNO / Austri

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Hitler's study in the Berghof, where he spent around a quarter of his tenure.

Source: picture alliance / akg-images

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Hitler's lover Eva Braun with camera on the terrace.

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images

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The Berghof's dining room.

Source: picture-alliance / Judaica-Samml

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Hitler's “study” in the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin measured 390 square meters.

The room cost around five million Reichsmarks with furnishings - today around 50 million euros.

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images

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Even before he came to power, Hitler preferred limousines with the star.

Source: picture-alliance / akg-images

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On the difficult to access Obersalzberg at around 1000 meters, it was considered a special honor to be welcomed by Hitler or the unofficial landlady Eva Braun in a private setting.

The Berghof, which has been converted into a representative residence, had a panoramic window in the large hall that was not only extremely large at 32 square meters, but could also be completely sunk into the ground in order to bring the imposing landscape directly into the house.

The Nazi leadership also wanted to have their holiday homes built close to Hitler in the most beautiful mountain panorama.

In order to redesign the area, almost all legitimate residents of Obersalzberg were forced to sell or even expropriated by the NSDAP, and their farms, which had been cultivated for generations, were largely demolished.

In addition to Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann and Albert Speer soon also owned their holiday homes here.

Allies bombed the area

Staged as a non-political holiday idyll for the Berghof Society, Obersalzberg, the second seat of government after Berlin, was always a place of political action, where Hitler spent around a quarter of his term in office.

"Right up to the Holocaust and genocide of the Jews, there is hardly a complex of Nazi crimes that is not linked to Obersalzberg," says Keller.

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At the end of the war, the Allies bombed the area across the board.

Then American occupiers used part of the area as a recreation center for their stationed troops.

In 1945 an American soldier stands in front of the Berghof, which SS men had set on fire

Source: pa / dpa / UPI

While in the post-war period the Nazi past of Obersalzberg was best kept silent, clever business people already began to market the historical attraction of Hitler's adopted home with secret tours of Obersalzberg and Nazi devotional sales, which is why American occupation officers urged the majority of the remaining ruins to be marketed bust.

One of the few monuments of the Nazi era that has not been destroyed today is the Kehlsteinhaus, the so-called “Eagle's Nest”, which is spectacularly located on a rocky promontory at 1834 meters and is now operated as a mountain inn.

The underground tunnels and bunkers in Obersalzberg have also been made accessible again.

The documentation center fights against fake news

Anyone who also wants to know where which buildings were up until 1944 and which of them can still be seen today will find a detailed landscape model in the documentation center.

Sven Keller and his team also know that they have to make the documentation, which has had more than three million visitors so far, fit for the future, as more and more visitors on site are also using their own smartphones.

The Obersalzberg Documentation Center was opened in 1999 as a place of remembrance

Source: Magrit Kohl (3)

A large-scale extension is to be opened by the end of 2022.

In the future, you could also imagine your own app, with the help of which historical outdoor locations can be identified and correctly classified, says Keller.

After all, one does not want to leave that to those who, for the thrill of looking for traces of the dark atmosphere of the past, find out more about obscure sources on the Internet.

Masonry can still be seen on the former Berghof grounds, which are not remnants of the former Hitler house, as some wrongly believed.

It is a retaining wall that was not blown up at the time to prevent the slope from sliding, explains Keller.

Narrow corridors lead to extensive underground bunkers in Obersalzberg

Source: pa / dpa / Peter Kneffel

Only recently the waves of horror hit when the inn "Zum Türken" was offered for private sale in the immediate vicinity of the Berghof.

As reported incorrectly in some media, it was not Hitler who resided here, but his Reich Security Service, which was responsible for personal protection.

Bavaria had a luxury hotel built

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The Free State of Bavaria quickly realized that on-site only clarification was needed when the US Army finally withdrew from Obersalzberg in 1995 and the Free State has since been solely responsible for its further use.

What you definitely don't want there are right-wing pilgrims.

However, in order not to leave the area unused and to better channel interest in the historic site, the Free State devised a two-pillar model for political and tourist use and created two new buildings for this purpose: the documentation center and a luxury hotel, which is now owned by managed by the Kempinski hotel group.

A luxury hotel welcomes overnight guests within walking distance of the Obersalzberg Documentation Center

Source: Magrit Kohl / p + o

After more than 15 years of experience with the two-pillar concept, Bartl Wimmer, chairman of the association for the Berchtesgaden-Königssee tourism region, believes this approach has been successful: Today Obersalzberg shows how the most terrible chapter of German history can be confronted.

The “Kempinski Hotel Berchtesgaden” is a meeting place for people of different nationalities who look forward to Berchtesgaden summit experiences.

“And right there where Hitler made numerous of his inhuman decisions, the Obersalzberg documentation reveals the barbarism of the Nazi regime.

Supporters of National Socialism will no longer find a place here. "

An insider tip for vacationers until the 1920s

You will look in vain for historical interpretations of the Obersalzberg, especially in the luxury hotel.

Staff at the concierge desk refer those interested in history to the documentation center, which is a ten-minute walk away.

"We are aware of the history, but with the two-pillar model we have a clearly defined touristic mandate," says hotel manager Werner Müller.

Therefore the house is run like a normal hotel;

after all, the guests come for the natural beauty and the amenities of the house.

Obersalzberg itself was even an insider tip for tourists until the 1920s.

If you are looking for idyllic nature, you will find it in the Berchtesgadener Land, as here in Ramsau

Source: Getty Images / fhm

Indeed, tourism on Obersalzberg is not a completely new idea, as Mauritia Mayer opened the “Pension Moritz” here in the 1870s, making her a pioneer of tourism in the area.

Above all, cultural and business celebrities made up the majority of the guests at the time.

Today, the Kempinski Hotel is intended to help ensure that Obersalzberg is again what the abused mountain was before the Nazi era - a popular tourist region.

And so it is only logical for the cosmopolitans to return to the mountain that Nazi henchmen once wanted to shape for themselves according to their ideas.

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Information:

Documentation Center Obersalzberg: obersalzberg.de;

Kehlsteinhaus: kehlsteinhaus.de;

“Kempinski Hotel Berchtesgaden”: kempinski.com, double rooms from 275 euros;

Tourism region: berchtesgaden.de

This article was first published in March 2021.

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