Berlin hut
| Berliner Hut DAV refuge category I. |
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| location | Schwarzensteinalm in the upper Zemmgrund; State of Tyrol , Austria ; Valley location: Mayrhofen , district of Ginzling | |
| Mountain range | Zillertal Alps | |
| Geographical location: | 47 ° 1 '28 " N , 11 ° 48' 47" E | |
| Altitude | 2042 m above sea level A. | |
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| owner | Berlin section of the German Alpine Club | |
| Built | Opened in 1879 | |
| Construction type | Refuge | |
| Usual opening times | June 15 to September 30 | |
| accommodation | 75 beds, 102 camps , 20 emergency camps | |
| Winter room | 14 bearings | |
| Web link | Website of the tenant | |
| Hut directory | ÖAV DAV | |
The Berliner Hütte is a listed alpine club hut that, with over 180 overnight accommodations, is the largest of its kind in the Zillertal Alps in the Austrian state of Tyrol . It belongs to category I and offers rooms and mattress dormitories . The original hut was built in 1879 by the Berlin section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club (DOeAV) and, after various extensions, was transformed into a multi-storey house with ancillary buildings. The “Piece of Berlin in the Alps” was the first and, until 2013, the only refuge in Austria that received the status of a monument , because “[t] he hut is unique among the Alpine Club huts - an impressive testimony from the time of the German Empire and whose capital also had to present itself with glamor in the high mountains. "
The Berliner Hütte is the oldest and most famous refuge in the Zillertal Alps. Its opening marked the beginning of a broad-based scientific research into the Alps and the development of tourism, after land surveying and military cartography had largely been completed in the first half of the 19th century. By the construction of paths and other huts, the German and Austrian Alpine Association finally created an infrastructure for mountain hikers that still exists today by the end of the 19th century and laid the basis for flourishing tourism in the region.
Surroundings
“While the Berliners were generous in building their houses, you have to call them almost ingenious when looking for a location. Framed by a wreath of frozen primeval rock peaks, the hut at the foot of the Hornkees in a central location, ideal for high tourists, glacier hikers and hut hikers ... "
The Berliner Hütte is located at an altitude of 2042 m above sea level. A. at the upper end, the end of the valley of the Zemmgrunds in Zillertal Alps National Park . At its dedication, the hut was still close to the edge glacier tongues of Hornkees and Waxeggkees who met here at the time. Several three-thousand-meter peaks are in the area and - at an altitude of 2472 m , an hour and a half walk away - the Schwarzsee on the Berliner Höhenweg , which leads from the Berliner Hütte to the Greizer Hütte .
Access and transitions
Access to the hut on the valley side begins at the Breitlahner inn (bus stop) near Ginzling (in a side valley above Mayrhofen ) and initially leads over a road through the Zemmgrund . At an altitude of around 1880 m , this path ends at the Waxeggalm and becomes an alpine path . According to the literature, the walking time is around three hours. Since this access in the area of a gorge below the southwest flank of the Ochsner ( 3106 m ) is at great risk of avalanches in winter and spring , the hut can be reached via the Schwarzenstein saddle from the east or the Nöfessattel from the south on ski tours .
The Berliner Hütte is a stage destination of the Berliner Höhenweg , which leads over a total of 70 km through the Zillertal Alps.
From the west, the Berliner Hut can be reached in around six hours from the Furtschaglhaus . The crossing over the Schönbichler Horn ( 3133 m ) is the highest point of the high trail. The Höhenweg leads eastwards over the Schwarzensee and the Nördliche Mörchenscharte ( 2872 m ) to the Greizer Hut . Here, too, the walking time is around six hours.
From the Berliner Hütte you can descend on a quite demanding path in around six to seven hours over the Melkerscharte ( 2812 m ) through a narrow valley, the Gunggl , to the Maxhütte inn and on to Ginzling. To the south, it is possible to cross the Zillertal main ridge to the Chemnitzer Hut, which is already in South Tyrol , in about five to six hours as part of an alpine tour , only with appropriate equipment and glacier experience.
Summit and day tours
Several summit and day tours are possible from the Berliner Hütte, some as high-altitude tours. To the northeast of the Schwarzensee lies the Zsigmondyspitze ( 3089 m ), which can be reached in three and a half hours . The Schönbichler Horn (☃☃) in the west and the Kleiner ( 3198 m ) and Großer Mörchner ( 3285 m ) in the east can be reached in four hours. The Schwarzenstein ( 3363 m ) to the southeast can be climbed in four to five hours and the Third Hornspitze to the south , also known as the "Berliner Spitze" ( 3253 m ), in four hours. The highest peaks that can be reached from the Berliner Hütte are the Turnerkamp ( 3418 m ) to the south , the Kleine ( 3405 m ) and the Große Möseler ( 3480 m ). The walking time here is six to seven hours.
Long-distance hiking trails
The Berliner Hütte is an important base for hikers on the Zentralalpenweg , an Austrian long-distance hiking trail from Hainburg an der Donau to Feldkirch
Geology of the site
Central gneiss zone
The Berliner Hut is exactly on the here northeast-southwest running border where the so-called central gneiss zone , with extremely hard granites and metamorphic gneisses and made of soft, easily erodible shale existing Lower Schieferhülle , with a high proportion of mica and other minerals meet. The central gneiss zone was created after the deep rock solidified through tectonic pressure and renewed crystallization, the so-called Tauern crystallization . This tectonic uplift is known as the Tauern window and is responsible for the unusually high mountains in the area. From a geological point of view, the Zillertal Alps and the Hohe Tauern are seen as a unit.
Lower slate shell
The rock protruding west of the Berliner Hut consists of garnet - chlorite - biotite slate . In particular, the dark red crystals of the garnet group, which reached the size of a nut, were commercially mined near the hut for the manufacture of jewelry and abrasives until the 1930s. Even today, the area is popular with mineral seekers who are primarily looking for the mineralogical varieties of quartz , especially rock crystal.
Glacial erosion
In the immediate vicinity, south of the hut, the erosion of the subsurface caused by the flow of glaciers can be clearly observed due to the retreat of the glaciers, due to global warming since 1850. Straight Cut rock in the form of ground floors of the compact granite gneiss occurs to a great extent to light and forms large, flat and completely smooth stone surfaces. In addition, the erupting glacial erosion , which shows up on blocks up to 5 meters in size, can be seen. Here the glacier river has broken out the protruding edges and corners of the subsoil and transported them further. Due to the sudden rapid melting of the ice, the path was only short, so that the eruptions can still be clearly identified in the immediate vicinity.
history
First hut
As early as 1875, the Berlin section, which at the time only had 47 members, discussed the construction of a hut. They were looking for a place that could serve as a resting place and starting point for long hikes in the Tyrolean Alps. Originally supposed to be built in the Vermuntertal , a side valley in the Montafon in the Silvretta , after a visit to the Zillertal an agreement was reached on the Schwarzensteinalpe . However, the Berlin section was not allowed to buy the property because it had no legal capacity . In 1877, Enno Schumann, a member of the three-person hut commission, bought the site privately.
From February to September 1878 the building permit was obtained, logging rights were acquired and the shell of the hut was completed. The work under the supervision of the master builder Johann Hotter from Mayrhofen was completed in the summer. Hotter erected a building that was typically compact at the time and made of stones found on site as dry masonry , which was designed for self-sufficiency, i.e. not a restaurant. This first hut had a footprint of only 6 meters by 10 meters and was divided into a ladies' and gentlemen's bedroom and a kitchen-cum-living room with wooden walls made of pine wood .
On July 28, 1879, the Berliner Hütte was inaugurated as the first refuge in the Zillertal Alps. After just two years, the property and the building were free of debt thanks to a high level of frequentation by paying visitors. Well-known mountaineers such as the brothers Emil and Otto Zsigmondy visited the hut and undertook numerous tours from here. In 1882, the original Almsteig was expanded into a mule track , which brought more visitors, as it made the ascent much easier because the luggage could now be transported with mules. The response was so lively that the hut was managed by a tenant from 1883.
Luxurious extensions before the First World War
The management of the hut increased the number of visitors to such an extent that an expansion of the small hut was inevitable. In July 1885 the first extension built for 2,240 guilders was inaugurated under the motto Dem Sturme Trutz, the hiker's protection . But the newly created accommodation capacity was quickly exhausted and further extensions were necessary. In the years 1888 and 1889 an extension was built for the mountain guides , the kitchen and dining room were expanded and the hut roof was covered with wooden shingles. However, all of these smaller extensions were not sufficient as the demand continued to grow.
The Berlin Section was officially allowed to acquire the property on which the hut was built from Enno Schumann in 1886. In 1890, the section board decided to fundamentally expand the hut and acquired an additional 600 m² of building land in the area. The construction work was once again up to Johann Hotter, the planning and management of the council carpenter Friedrich Schwager took over . The three-storey so-called Logierhaus was built from 1891 to 1892 - a sleeping house with a floor area almost as large as that of all previous buildings. The new building should finally cover the needs of the quarter. A half-open veranda ( arcade ) connected the lodging house with the existing components and was used as a bowling alley in the following period . For a total of 37,753.61 marks, the section set up a room above the kitchen in addition to the new building, the dining room was enlarged, a heated drying room for shoes and clothing and a toilet block were built, and a water pipe made of drilled wooden pipes was laid. After that there was a six-year construction period.
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The mediation of mountain guides available at the hut for tourists also increased the attractiveness and increased the number of visitors again. Many others wanted to benefit from the flow of visitors and so in 1895 investors or speculators turned to the owner of the Schwarzensteinalpe to the east to build a hotel in the vicinity of the hut. This, however, offered the property to the Berlin section, which in the same year acquired the 491 hectares of pasture land for 11,400 marks. The purchase made the next major expansion of the Berliner Hütte possible. Again based on plans by Friedrich Schwager, a new extension was built east of the old building in 1897, which was inaugurated in 1898. Its 5-meter-high ceiling on the ground floor and stately windows deviated significantly from the usual building conventions of alpine shelters. Another dining room, the so-called ladies' salon with 82 seats, an apartment for the tenant family, 27 rooms with 81 beds and a mattress dormitory for large groups of people were set up for around 17,000 marks . In 1898 the hut got its own telephone connection via an overhead line that led up from Ginzling, in 1900 a darkroom for the development of photo material, in 1906 even its own post office and in 1908 a shoemaker's workshop. Soon a lack of sleeping and eating places became noticeable again. From 1909 to 1910, the so-called main house was built under the direction of Erich Köhn as a link between the lodging house and the ladies' salon. For this purpose, older components had to be removed for the first time, because the smelting facility should not get out of hand and the space should be better used. The construction work was again the responsibility of the Hotter family, this time Ludwig Hotter from Hochsteg and his brother Kajetan from Mayrhofen. After completion of the work, which required the amount of 90,680.21 marks, the Berliner Hütte offered three dining rooms and over 63 rooms with 100 beds and 20 mattress beds.
In the course of the expansion in 1910, the building conglomerate also received its first hydroelectric power station to generate electricity. Two years later, the electrical lighting system with 200 light bulbs could be put into operation with a 15 to 16 hp Pelton turbine . She ensured that the corridors, stairs and sanitary facilities were constantly illuminated at night. The light petrol gas generator for the lighting was retained for emergencies. In 1913 the dining rooms and ten rooms were heated by an electric heater . These luxurious extensions made the Berliner Hut a showpiece for all German and Austrian Alpine Club huts until World War I , in the Prussian-Wilhelmine sense.
The Berliner Hütte during the world wars
During the two world wars, the Berlin hut was repeatedly seized by military forces and temporarily closed to civilians. In 1915, for example, 600 soldiers were stationed at the Berliner Hütte for ski training. From 1921 to 1925, a memorial column based on a design by the sculptor Ludwig Vordermayer was erected in honor of those killed in the war . The section members who died in World War I were commemorated in 1929 through the Iron Book of the Berliner Hütte . The blacksmith Julius Schramm donated the iron cover with 79 sheets for the 50th anniversary of the hut.
The first expansion after more than 13 years of rest was the expansion of the attic space to another mattress store in 1926. Seven women's and seven men's camps with electric lights and iron stoves were set up for 4,500 marks. Three years later, a large separate shed was built to dry the day linen. In 1932 the old power plant, its water from the could snowfields of southern Ochsner (a 3076 m high mountain of cottage north) related, are not operated any more because of water shortage. It therefore had to be moved.
In the first year after the war, only 394 overnight stays were counted - around 18 percent of the 1913 figures. After that, however, the flow of visitors rose continuously, so that the Berliner Hütte was open to ski mountaineers for the first time in winter (February to April) in 1931 .
However, the upswing did not last long; because in May 1933 the National Socialist foreign policy imposed a travel ban on Austria in advance of a planned coup in Vienna, the so-called thousand-mark ban , which greatly reduced the number of visitors. The hut still had to be repaired and expanded: in 1936, two new bathrooms were built in the main house and shingle roofs were repaired. In 1937 the Berliner Hütte was redesigned. All rooms were provided with double windows, the previous bedrooms and common rooms of the mountain guides were converted into a ski storage room and the shoemaker's workshop - made superfluous by the shoemaker in the valley town of Ginzling - into a lounge and bedroom for ten mountain guides. The wood paneling in the large dining room was restored and at the same time made windproof by introducing a bitumen barrier layer on the south facade. As a final construction measure, the section redesigned the veranda in 1940 into a multi-tiered terrace.
The National Socialists left their mark in 1939 with the inauguration of the court of honor with a swastika, which the Nazi authorities placed under a preservation order. Winter cultivation had to be stopped in 1941 due to the war.
Post-war period, monument protection and today's operation
After the end of the Second World War , the victorious powers confiscated the huts of the German Alpine Club, expropriated them and placed them under Austrian administration. Until the Berliner Hütte was returned to the Section in 1956, it repeatedly served as a base for alpine war training, for example for French mountain troops . In the period that followed, no more luxurious extensions were built, but the equipment was adapted to the latest technical standards. In 1967, for example, the Section built a new hydropower plant with around 40 kilowatts of power, which was the first to operate an electric kitchen stove. In 1983 the floor level of the kitchen was adjusted to that of the dining room, for which purpose blasting work was carried out inside the kitchen because of the rocky subsoil.
On April 10, 1997, the Berliner Hütte was the first shelter in Austria to be listed as a historical monument. The Berliner Hütte is "a particularly high-quality example of an Alpine refuge", the Federal Monuments Office justified the decision. For the Berlin section, the hut is also an “expensive budget factor”. For example, residents gradually expanded the Saumweg in Zemmgrund into a driveway with the onset of visitor rushes in the 1960s and 1970s, but deliveries up to the hut continued to be made by horses because the Berlin section did not contribute to the costs of expansion and maintenance therefore there was a ban on driving for the tenants. It was not until 1998 that after 115 years the supply to the Berliner Hütte could be converted by a newly built material ropeway. This change, the fulfillment of the environmental protection and monument protection requirements as well as the self- imposed environmental goals of the Alpine Club, especially with regard to the wastewater treatment, cause high operating costs and high investments in addition to the maintenance of the hut in accordance with the heritage. “The Berliner Hütte is miles away from a lean commercial enterprise”, was the verdict of the Berlin section in 2004. Around 1.2 million euros have been required in the last 10 years for the renovation to meet the requirements of listed buildings.
literature
The main basis of the article is the commemorative publication of the German Alpine Club Section Berlin, which was published on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the Berliner Hütte. All information and quotations are taken from this brochure - unless otherwise indicated by footnotes.
- DAV section Berlin (ed.): The storm Trutz, the hiker protection. 125 years of Berliner Hütte. 1879-2004. (PDF; 15.3 MB) Papers of the DAV Berlin Section, Issue 1, Berlin 2004 (Festschrift)
- Jörg Niendorf: Berlin is in the Zillertal. Berlin oddities: Why the capital has an outpost in the Alps . In: Berliner Morgenpost , May 27, 2007; accessed on June 1, 2014
- Bernd Schröder: Hut portrait - 125 years of the Berliner Hut. In: Panorama - Messages of the German Alpine Club. Vol. 56, No. 5, pp. 38-41, ISSN 1437-5923
- Raimund von Klebelsberg: Geology of Tyrol . Publishing house Gebrüder Borntraeger, Berlin 1935
- Helmut Heuberger, Roman Türk: Gletscherweg Berliner Hütte . Oesterreichischer Alpenverein (Ed.), Innsbruck 2004
Web links
- Official website of Berliner Hütte on the DAV-Berlin website
- Entry on Berliner Hütte in the Austria Forum (in the Heimatlexikon)
- Berliner Hut in the Historical Alpine Archive of the Alpine Clubs in Germany, Austria and South Tyrol (temporarily offline)
Individual evidence
- ↑ 125 years of the “Berliner Hütte” in the Zillertal Alps . In: Die Welt , July 24, 2004; Retrieved July 15, 2007
- ↑ Norbert Wawrzinek: High Alpine Zillertal Round. German Alpine Club, Feucht Section, July 28, 2012, accessed on November 19, 2012 .
- ↑ Georg Biebel: The Zillertal Alps. ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) 1999 (accessed on July 15, 2007)
- ↑ Josef Ritz: The year in the mountains. Glacier tours, ski slopes, summit hikes and high-altitude trails. Feder Verlag, Munich 1963
- ↑ Jörg Robrecht: Berliner Hütte ( memento of January 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) and Bau der Berliner Hütte ( memento of July 16, 2004 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on July 15, 2007
- ↑ The Berliner Hut. For this purpose two pictures (...). In: Der Naturfreund , born 1913, XVII. Jahrhang, p. 157 ff. (Online at ANNO ). .
- ↑ cf. Niendorf
- ↑ Marcel Gäding: The Berliner Hütte was opened in the Alps 125 years ago: the highest building in the city . In: Berliner Zeitung , July 24, 2004.
