A large contingent of the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler was housed in barracks adjacent to the Berghof. This led to the introduction of severe restrictions on access to the area and other security measures. The Berghof became something of a German tourist attraction during the mid-1930s. Most of the original buildings were demolished. By 1935–36 Party Secretary Bormann had all residents of Obersalzberg either bought out or evicted, and the area evolved into a retreat for high-level Nazis with a cinema, a school for young children, an SS barracks, and an underground shooting range. Security zones Īround Hitler's home, several Nazi leaders such as Hermann Göring, Martin Bormann and Albert Speer acquired residences. It was presented to Adolf Hitler in 1939, on his 50th birthday, but he only visited the site on 14 occasions, because of a fear of heights among the reasons Eva Braun used it more frequently. Īmong other buildings in the area was the Kehlsteinhaus ("the house on Kehlstein mountain", called the "Eagle's Nest" by English speakers) atop the summit of the Kehlstein, a rocky outcrop, that was used for Nazi Party meetings and to host dignitaries the building had no beds. The house became known as the Berghof or Mountain Court in English. The first included window shutters and a small office, followed a year later by a winter garden and stonework finally, the most extensive in 1935–1936 when the once modest chalet was finally transformed into the sprawling landhaus with a series of extensions, a bowling alley in the cellar, and a giant window that could be lowered to provide a panoramic view. Several months after the Nazi seizure of power ( Machtergreifung) in January 1933, Chancellor Hitler purchased Haus Wachenfeld and began making a series of three important renovations. Hitler, Bormann, Göring and Baldur von Schirach at Obersalzberg, 1936 It was in a cabin on the premises where, after his release from custody in 1925, he dictated Part Two of Mein Kampf, which earned him large royalties. The scenic landscape and sweeping mountain views also attracted Adolf Hitler, who in 1923 visited his fellow party member and anti-semite, Dietrich Eckart at the Obersalzberg boarding house, shortly before the Beer Hall Putsch and his imprisonment at Landsberg. When he acquired the property in 1928, he renamed it Platterhof inspired by Richard Voss' novel Zwei Menschen. The Obersalzberg boarding house was leased to the former racing driver Bruno Büchner in the early 1920s. In the late 19th century German intellectuals like Mayer's close friend Richard Voss, artists such as Johannes Brahms, Ludwig Ganghofer, Joseph Joachim, Ludwig Knaus, Franz von Lenbach, Peter Rosegger and Clara Schumann as well as industrialists like Carl von Linde began using the area as both a summer and winter vacation retreat. In 1877 Mauritia Mayer, a pioneer in Alpine tourism, opened the Pension Moritz boarding house in Obersalzberg. With Berchtesgaden it was secularised in 1803 and passed to the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1810. The area was annexed by Austria in 1805 and then ruled by France in 1809–1810. From 1517 the Petersberg gallery was built, the first of the Berchtesgaden salt mines which became the economic base of the Prince-provostry. The area was part of the provostry's eight localities (so-called Gnotschaften) mentioned in the first land register of 1456 and was ruled by the Augustinian abbey. The rectangular layout and some components still exist. It was destroyed in 1834 but rebuilt and named the "Old Salt Works". Salt mining at Pherg is documented since the 12th century and a major salt mine opened in 1517. The name of the settlement area derives from the rock salt deposits in the former Prince-Provostry of Berchtesgaden. All of the Nazi era buildings (except the Kehlsteinhaus, which still exists and now serves as a restaurant and tourist attraction) were demolished in the 1950s, but the relevant past of the area is the subject of the Dokumentationszentrum Obersalzberg museum, which opened in 1999. Located about 120 kilometres (75 mi) south-east of Munich, close to the border with Austria, it is best known as the site of Adolf Hitler's former mountain residence, the Berghof, and of the mountaintop Kehlsteinhaus, popularly known in the English-speaking world as the "Eagle's Nest". Obersalzberg is a mountainside retreat situated above the market town of Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, Germany.
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