Brandenburg House

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Brandenburger Haus
DAV hut  category  I
Brandenburg House
location between Gepatsch and Kesselwandferner ; State of Tyrol , Austria ; Valley location: southwest of Sölden (Ötztal) , Vent district
Mountain range Ötztal Alps
Geographical location: 46 ° 50 ′ 40 "  N , 10 ° 46 ′ 40"  E Coordinates: 46 ° 50 ′ 40 "  N , 10 ° 46 ′ 40"  E
Altitude 3277  m above sea level A.
Brandenburger House (Tyrol)
Brandenburg House
owner Berlin section of the DAV
Built 1909
Construction type hut
Usual opening times End of June to mid-September
accommodation 25 beds, 70  camps , 10 emergency camps
Winter room 12  bearings
Web link Brandenburg House
Hut directory ÖAV DAV

The Brandenburger Haus is the highest shelter in the Berlin section of the German Alpine Club . It is located at an altitude of 3277  m above sea level. A. in the Ötztal Alps in the Austrian state of Tyrol between the Gepatsch- and Kesselwandferner glaciers . The closest place is Vent , 10 kilometers to the east as the crow flies , a district of the municipality of Sölden in the upper Ötztal . The hut was planned and built between 1905 and 1909 by the former Alpine Club section of Mark Brandenburg . Today the Brandenburg House belongs to the "Berlin Section".

history

Construction site of the Brandenburg House in the summer of 1907, on the left below the shell is the construction hut
Brandenburger Haus before 1919, photograph by Waldemar Titzenthaler

As with many comparable refuges, scientific considerations were decisive for the construction of the Brandenburger Haus. The competition between the Mark Brandenburg section, founded in 1899 and the Berlin section, which had been in existence since 1869 and which owned numerous huts, especially in the Zillertal, also played a major role in the construction. In 1903 it was proposed to build the house on the Gepatschferner in order to be able to open up one of the largest contiguous glacier areas in the Eastern Alps for mountaineers. An avalanche-proof southern slope on the Dahmannspitze ( 3401  m ), later named after the architect of the hut, was chosen as the location . At this altitude, construction work is only possible within a few weeks in midsummer. All building material, apart from the stones broken on site, had to be carried up with mules and human strength. In 1909 the Brandenburg House was completed; the construction costs amounted to about 47,000  gold marks . In addition there was another 40,000 marks for the construction of paths. The opening finally took place in the days from August 15th to 18th, first in Vent, then at the hut.

First World War

At the beginning of September 1915, at the beginning of the mountain war 1915–1918 , the Austrian kk mountain troops occupied the hut to hold ski courses. One of the trainers was Luis Trenker , who describes his experiences at the Brandenburg House in his autobiography Everything went well - stories from my life dramatically. The damage to the house caused by military use was considerable. A partially destroyed interior and large amounts of waste were to be lamented. The rubbish thrown into the crevasses in the form of cans, equipment and animal carcasses has only been partially removed since 1980, during the course of the climate-induced glacial melt .

Interwar period

It was not until 1920 that the Mark Brandenburg Section was able to return to the hut for the first time after the war. In contrast to the other damaged and looted shelters of the section, the Brandenburg House survived the war years structurally almost intact. Summer operations could be resumed in 1921, 1495 mountaineers visited the house; that was the highest number since it opened. However, the winter room was no longer opened due to vandalism in the previous year. In 1922/23 only a few guests from Germany visited the house due to the inflation , the travel expenses had risen too much. However, this was compensated for by numerous mountaineers from Vienna, who increasingly visited the Brandenburg House in those years. From 1927 there was public passenger transport in Kaunertal and Ötztal with buses and private cars, which greatly shortened travel times. As a result, the number of visitors to the huts continued to grow, which meant that the Brandenburger Haus was often overcrowded with emergency storage facilities. 3011 visitors were counted in the summer of 1927.

At the end of May 1933, the so-called thousand-mark block against Austria came into effect, with which the new German National Socialist Reich government wanted to weaken the economic power of the country, which is dependent on tourism. As a result, tourists stayed almost completely away from Germany, but the Brandenburger Haus still counted 3,184 visitors in 1933. In 1936, after an agreement between the Austrofascists and the National Socialists, the restrictions ended; this allowed more German tourists to visit the Brandenburg House again. At the beginning of the Second World War , the number of overnight stays sank again, tourism came to a standstill, and in 1945, after the end of the war, the Mark Brandenburg section , which had been anti-Semitic since it was founded in 1899 (Jews were not accepted as members), was dissolved and banned by the Allies.

post war period

The German steelworks in Austria were expropriated and placed under Austrian administration. In 1945, with the approval of the French occupying power, the Tyrolean provincial government appointed the educator and Alpine Club official Martin Busch as administrator and trustee for the non-Austrian hut ownership . In 1949 the Innsbruck Alpine Club , a successor organization to the old DAV (before 1938 DOeAV), applied for a liquor license for the Brandenburger Haus; operations started again by 1953 with 1,556 overnight guests. In 1954 and 1955, however, the numbers fell again and the hut had numerous structural defects. At the beginning of 1956 the Brandenburger Haus, like all the other huts, came back into German ownership. The Berlin section of the German Alpine Club, which was newly founded in 1950, took over the house at a symbolic price, but had to renovate the now almost dilapidated hut in the following years for around 770,000  ÖS (= 110,000  DM  = 55,000  € ). Since the late 1950s, the number of visitors has increased again, and the economic miracle also promoted mountain tourism. The construction work came to an end with the construction of a toilet facility .

The Brandenburg House received prominent visitors in August 1998. The then Prime Minister of Brandenburg Manfred Stolpe and his Tyrolean counterpart, Governor Wendelin Weingartner, made the climb together to present the newly built sewage and composting toilet , which was financially supported by the German state of Brandenburg .

Approaches

Brandenburger Haus (center) from the north towards Weißkugel

Due to the location of the Brandenburg house on a rocky island between Kesselwandferner and Gepatschferner all approach routes lead through high alpine terrain and require the commission of column-rich glaciers. Appropriate experience and equipment are required.

  • From Vent ( 1894  m ) in the Ötztal the path leads over the Rofenhöfe to the Hochjochhospiz ( 2413  m ); from there via the Deloretteweg and the Kesselwandferner in a total of 5–6 hours to the Brandenburger Haus.
  • In the Kaunertal , the ascent begins at the Gepatschhaus ( 1928  m ). From there the path leads in 3 hours to the Rauhekopfhütte ( 2731  m ) and then in a further 2½-3 hours over the cracked Gepatschferner to the Brandenburger Haus.

Tours

The following transitions and summit tours all require climbing glaciers as an alpine tour.

Transitions

  • On the Venter ascent to the Hochjochhospiz , 2 hours
  • On the ascent from the Kaunertal to the Rauhekopfhütte, 2–3 hours, and from there to the Gepatschhaus, a total of 5–6 hours
  • Via the Gepatschferner to the Weißkugelhütte ( 2544  m ) in South Tyrol ( Italy ), 2 hours
  • Via the Guslarjoch ( 3311  m ) to the Vernagthütte ( 2755  m ), 3 hours

Summit tours

cards

  • Alpine Club Map 1: 25,000, sheet 30/2, Ötztal Alps, Weißkugel
  • Alpine Club Map 1: 25,000, sheet 30/6, Ötztal Alps, Wildspitze

Literature and maps

  • Walter Klier , Alpine Club Leader . Ötztal Alps . Munich 2006. ISBN 3-7633-1123-8 .
  • Martin Frey: Hut portrait - 100 years of the Brandenburg House, “mountain hotel” in the eternal ice . In: Panorama - Mitteilungen des Deutschen Alpenverein December 2009, ISSN  1437-5923 , pp. 82–85.
  • DAV section Berlin (ed.): 100 years of the Brandenburg House . Berlin 2009, ( publications of the DAV section Berlin issue 4).

Web links

Commons : Brandenburger Haus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Frey, Klaus Kundt: 100 Years of the Brandenburger Haus , Ed .: DAV Section Berlin, 2009, p. 8 ff.
  2. ↑ Luis Trenker: Everything went well - stories from my life , C. Bertelsmann, Munich 1979, chapter: With Bosniaks in a snowstorm
  3. ↑ Martin Frey, Klaus Kundt: 100 Years of the Brandenburger Haus , p. 12
  4. ↑ Nicholas Mailänder in: Berliner Bergsteiger , member magazine of the DAV section Berlin 2009. 60th year, issue 2, p. 9
  5. ↑ Klaus Kundt: 100 Years of the Brandenburger Haus , p. 17