Economic development of Berchtesgaden
The economic development of today's Berchtesgaden market can be divided into two phases, whereby the transition to something third is currently being sought.
The first phase was based in particular on Berchtesgaden's position as the main and founding place of the prince provost of Berchtesgaden and the salt mining. However, since the salt mine did not offer work to all residents and the agriculture on the steep slopes of the village did not bring in enough, the woodworking became an important source of secondary income. For centuries, the place exported Berchtesgadener wars that had been successfully made at home .
The decisive upswing, however, was brought about by a structural change at the beginning of the 19th century, which made Berchtesgaden a popular destination for tourists. To this day, the tourist exploitation of its cultural assets as well as the scenic and climatic advantages within the high alpine region are the main source of income for Berchtesgaden. According to the Bavarian State Statistical Office, only a few of the employees in Berchtesgaden who are subject to social insurance contributions work in the manufacturing industry, but more than half work indirectly or directly as independent or employed tourism service providers.
However, the number of guests and their length of stay have been declining since 1991, so that the municipality, as a member of the Berchtesgaden-Königssee tourism region founded in 2005 , wants to set new standards and seek to make tourism more environmentally friendly in the future. There was and is no large industrial enterprise in Berchtesgaden, only smaller operating units. The largest employer is still the salt mine with 135 employees, followed in second place by the spa management (including seasonal workers) with 100 employees.
Until secularization
Among the Augustinian canons that allowed serfdom to the end of the 14th century the Berchtesgaden subjects not own property, but admitted them only fief to which either after Baumann law for a year, as a free pen for several years or for life as Leibgeding been invited to . It was not until the provost Ulrich I. Wulp issued a land letter in 1377 , according to which the fiefs could be acquired against a “debt of redemption”, but on the condition that the subjects had to continue to fulfill their fief obligations. Another passage in this land letter even allowed the current owners to sell parts of it. In the period that followed, this often led to the properties being renamed as upper, middle and lower fiefs. However, if previously the undivided estates were barely enough to support a family, this was even more true of the dismembered ones. Since they were not allowed to leave the prince's provosty, the feudal farmers had to look out for additional income. The salt mine , the saltworks in Marktschellenberg, the forests and the small handicraft businesses could not employ so many, so they mainly switched to the woodworking industry, which soon turned his home- made Berchtesgaden War into a world trade item and caused them to lose out . a. delivered in Antwerp, Cadix, Genoa, Venice and Nuremberg. However, from the 17th century onwards, demand fell, which a. was due to the "conservative style" of the roughly carved Berchtesgaden goods, for which no improvements or renewals were sought. In 1783 an imperial ban prohibited imports into Austria and in the 19th century the Bavarian state prohibited the purchase of wood, which had been cheaper until then. In order to improve the quality of the wood-carved goods, a drawing school was founded in Berchtesgaden in 1840, which was expanded into an industrial and drawing school in 1858 and later called the technical school for wood carving . After serfdom was abolished in 1807, still under Austrian rule, life for the free peasants had not necessarily become easier.
Agriculture
The soil of the place consists mainly of gravelly, grassy and sandy loam, which makes it agriculturally pure grassland. Until 1955, grain was still cultivated in isolated cases, but this was completely stopped because of its unprofitability. The high rainfall and many steep slopes only allowed the small farms in Berchtesgaden to cultivate meadows and pasture for cattle - especially sure-footed but small Berchtesgaden cats - for milk production and young cattle rearing. The farmers have always been forced to take on part-time jobs - in the past mainly in forestry, in handicrafts or as homeworkers, nowadays in particular for tourist services such as holidays on the farm .
( → See also the section on alpine pasture and livestock farming: Historical framework conditions under the Berchtesgaden cat )
Development of tourism
| Number of guests from 1876 to 1934 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| year | Spa guests | Passers-by | total | |
| 1876 | 1,653 | 2,679 | 4,332 | |
| 1886 | 4,742 | 8,609 | 13,351 | |
| 1896 | 5,409 | 12,558 | 17,967 | |
| 1906 | 9,569 | 22,013 | 31,582 | |
| 1911 | 22,212 | 22,736 | 44,948 | |
| 1916 | 13,737 | 4,981 | 18,718 | |
| 1926 | 54,658 | 24,277 | 78,935 | |
| 1931 | 65,769 | 25,772 | 91,541 | |
| 1932 | 64.001 | 19,448 | 83,449 | |
| 1934 | 142,773 | 22,493 | 165.266 | |
| Numbers 1876–1933 after Walter Brugger, Heinz Dopsch, Peter F. Krammel: History of Berchtesgaden: Stift, Markt, Land, Volumes 2–3, 2002, pp. 1150f., 1934 after Der Grosse Brockhaus: Handbook of Knowledge in twenty volumes , Supplementary Volume, 1935, p. 95 | ||||
Berchtesgaden owes the decisive upturn to the improvements in traffic conditions. Under the first regent after the secularization , the Salzburg Elector Ferdinand , the only road connection to Berchtesgaden was expanded so that on summer days “a whole column of wage coaches” could carry their passengers from Salzburg to Berchtesgaden and on to the Königssee . The artists, scholars and kings were followed by "thousands upon thousands of people who are enthusiastic about the Alps and who are looking for relaxation". When the railway line from Munich via Freilassing to Salzburg was finished and the excursion destinations Berchtesgaden, Bad Reichenhall and Salzburg were viewed as a unit, “mass tourism” began to develop. This was followed by the railway connections Freilassing – Reichenhall (1866), Reichenhall – Berchtesgaden (1888) and from Salzburg in 1907 a rail line over the Drachenloch to Berchtesgaden. With the connection between Berchtesgaden and Königssee (1908/1909), Berchtesgaden and the Königssee were connected to the “big wide world” via the rail network.
On July 7, 1871, the Berchtesgaden Beautification Association was founded as the first association in the region to promote tourism. From 78 members in the year it was founded, the number of members rose to 427 by 1928, although the association split in 1906 and the "outer communities", with the exception of the then still independent community of Gern, founded the Berchtesgaden-Land tourist association . The Berchtesgaden Beautification Association was called Berchtesgaden Tourism Association from 1922 .
According to Brugger and the Großer Brockhaus, the number of guests within the tourist association showed great growth rates from 1876 to 1934. In 1876, 1,653 spa guests and 2,679 passers-by were counted. After that, the number of spa guests, apart from the years of World War I and the first years after, rose continuously to 64,001 until 1932 and even to 142,773 in 1934, while the number of passers-by had leveled off at an average of 22,000 between 1901 and 1934.
| Development of overnight stays by guests from 1948/49 to 1980/81 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fiscal year | summer | winter | all in all | average stay in days |
| 1948/49 | 248.181 | 83,322 | 331.503 | --- |
| 1949/50 | 400,803 | 83,642 | 484,445 | 7.3 |
| 1950/51 | 615.467 | 110.267 | 725.734 | 6.9 |
| 1951/52 | 807.654 | 112.211 | 919.865 | 6.7 |
| 1952/53 | 1,018,064 | 109.208 | 1,127,272 | 7.1 |
| 1953/54 | 1,107,299 | 130.934 | 1,238,233 | 7.2 |
| 1954/55 | 1,058,815 | 121,788 | 1,180,603 | 7.1 |
| 1960/61 | 1,616,396 | 214.018 | 1,830,414 | 8.0 |
| 1964/65 | 1,929,742 | 315.973 | 2,245,715 | 8.7 |
| 1970/71 | 1,880,697 | 443.785 | 2,324,482 | 8.6 |
| 1974/75 | 2.130.001 | 642.452 | 2,772,453 | 10.2 |
| 1980/81 | 2,255,736 | 602.205 | 2,857,941 | --- |
| Figures 1948 / 49–1980 / 81 for the Berchtesgadener Land Tourist Association according to Hellmut Schöner : Berchtesgaden through the ages . Supplementary Volume I, 1982, p. 146 | ||||
From 1933 onwards, a tourism association emerged on a voluntary basis after decades of competition . It tried to protect the common interests of the Berchtesgadener Land with the municipalities of Berchtesgaden, Schönau am Königssee, Bischofswiesen, Marktschellenberg and Ramsau. As of 2003, the Berchtesgadener Land tourist association changed its name to the Berchtesgaden-Königssee tourist association . Since January 2005 it has been part of the newly founded marketing company Berchtesgadener Land Tourismus GmbH as one of a total of three regional special-purpose associations , which for the first time started marketing tourism across the district.
Even after the war, the number of overnight stays in the Berchtesgadener Land tourist association had a rapidly increasing trend, according to Helmut Schöner , who recorded the period from 1948 to 1981. In the five marketing years from 1948/49 to 1952/53 alone, they increased almost fourfold to a total of 1,127,272 with an average of seven days' stay. The two-million mark was exceeded for the first time in 1961/62, and in 1974/75 the number of overnight stays in the winter season had increased from 83,322 to 642,452, the highest increase compared to 1948/49. It was the result of "a long, determined work of all those involved in tourism" to achieve the high occupancy during a short summer high season also for the winter months. The share of the winter half-year in the total rose according to Schöner from 1972 to 1981 from 18.13 to 20.87% with a high in 1975 to 23.7%. The lowest visitor numbers were recorded in the months of November and February until 1981.
Unfavorable turnaround
Until the 1990s, the focus was mainly on mass tourism as an economic factor. According to the tourist associations, the number of guest arrivals in 2003 for the entire district was 578,082, the number of overnight stays 3,696,851 and the average length of stay 6.4 days. Guest arrivals reached their peak in 1991 with 692,381 guests. The enormous increase of around 10% (from 1990 to 1991) was explained by the first influx of tourists from the new federal states. Since 1991, with the exception of the period from 1998 to 2000, the numbers have been steadily decreasing.
In 2003, the accommodation establishments in the Berchtesgaden market with nine or more guest beds recorded 413,716 overnight stays with an average length of stay of 5.0 days, while in 2008 they increased to 440,751 overnight stays, but the average length of stay was only 4.3 Days. The trend for accommodation establishments with fewer than nine guest beds is even clearer, according to which 169,325 overnight stays were counted with a stay of 7.2 days in 2003, but only 148,954 overnight stays with a stay of 6.4 days in 2008.
| Overnight stays in the Berchtesgaden market | ||
|---|---|---|
| from 2003 to 2014 | ||
| Accommodation establishments with nine or more guest beds | ||
| year | Overnight stays | Stay in days |
| 2003 | 413.716 | 5.0 |
| 2004 | 417.256 | 4.8 |
| 2005 | 449.257 | 4.5 |
| 2006 | 453,585 | 4.3 |
| 2007 | 433.205 | 4.3 |
| 2008 | 440.751 | 4.3 |
| 2009 | 431,653 | 4.0 |
| 2010 | 464.509 | 3.8 |
| 2011 | 512,495 | 3.6 |
| 2012 | 536.299 | 3.5 |
| 2013 | 534.784 | 3.4 |
| 2014 | 525,889 | 3.3 |
| Overnight stays in the Berchtesgaden market | ||
|---|---|---|
| from 2003 to 2008 | ||
| Accommodation establishments with fewer than nine guest beds | ||
| year | Overnight stays | Stay in days |
| 2003 | 169,325 | 7.2 |
| 2004 | 156.345 | 6.8 |
| 2005 | 157.089 | 6.8 |
| 2006 | 148.930 | 6.7 |
| 2007 | 148.042 | 6.5 |
| 2008 | 148,954 | 6.4 |
| 2009 | 140.964 | 6.1 |
| 2010 | 146.923 | 5.8 |
| 2011 | 144.301 | 5.9 |
| 2012 | 146.298 | 6.1 |
| 2013 | 152.043 | 6.2 |
| 2014 | 145.314 | 5.7 |
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ statistik.bayern.de Bavarian State Office on population figures. PDF file, p. 9 of 27
- ↑ oete.de ( Memento of April 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) PDF documentation of ecological tourism in Europe pp. 61 f., 64 f., 70 f. of 117 pages
- ↑ Hellmut Schöner : Berchtesgaden through the ages . Supplementary Volume I, 1982, p. 340
- ↑ Hellmut Schöner: Berchtesgaden through the ages . Supplementary Volume I, 1982, pp. 145, 197
- ↑ Hellmut Schöner: Berchtesgaden through the ages. Supplementary Volume I, 1982, p. 20
- ↑ Manfred Feulner : Berchtesgaden - history of the country and its inhabitants . Pp. 206-207
- ↑ Hellmut Schöner (ed.), A. Helm : Berchtesgaden in the course of time . Keyword: tourism p. 89 f.
- ↑ Numbers 1876-1933 after Walter Brugger, Heinz Dopsch, Peter F. Krammel: History of Berchtesgaden: Stift, Markt, Land, Volumes 2-3, 2002, pp. 1150f., 1934 after Der Grosse Brockhaus: Handbuch des Wissens in zwanzig Volumes, supplementary volume, 1935, p. 95
- ↑ Hellmut Schöner: Berchtesgaden through the ages. Supplementary Volume I, 1982, p. 145
- ↑ oete.de ( Memento of April 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) PDF documentation of ecological tourism in Europe p. 63 f. of 117 pages
- ↑ Hellmut Schöner: Berchtesgaden through the ages. Supplementary Volume I, 1982, pp. 146-147
-
↑ a b c Information on overnight stays from 2003–2008 based on an older version at the time
statistik.bayern.de Bavarian State Office on overnight stays from 2009–2014. PDF , p. 15 of 27.