The Obersalzberg is a restricted area

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The leader Sperrgebiet Obersalzberg was a restricted area in the period of National Socialism the one-time salt Berger (today Berchtesgaden ) district Obersalzberg to protect Adolf Hitler's Berghof and the building of additional NSDAP -Sizes in the neighborhood. The Kehlsteinhaus was also part of the restricted area. Together with the nearby Reich Chancellery Berchtesgaden, the Obersalzberg prohibited area forms a place where numerous crimes against humanity were planned and ordered.

To the subject

The term Fuehrersperrgebiet is used in numerous articles and book publications u. a. of the Institute for Contemporary History , which is in charge of the scientific and museum-related management of the Obersalzberg documentation , consistently used for the clearly designated and delimited sub-area in Obersalzberg from 1933 to 1945.

Classification

The restricted area was divided into three districts:

  • District I: Inner Leader Area
  • District II: restricted area
  • District III: Kehlstein area

From 1933, District I essentially comprised the Berghof and an outbuilding. It was accessible through three gates from District II. When Hitler was present, the gates were guarded by the SS escort command , which, together with the RSD, also took over patrol duty. Otherwise the normal SS replaced the escort unit.

From 1935/36 District II enclosed District I and also had 3 gates to the outside and included the area of ​​the former village in Obersalzberg, including the Bormann House. Here, at the main entrance from the direction of Berchtesgaden, when the Führer was present, an official from the RSD was in charge of the control; otherwise, as at the other gates, workers' posts.

The Kehlstein area formed District III from 1939. It could be reached through a gate from District II, which was occupied by a worker post.

history

Pension Moritz around 1900

In 1923, Adolf Hitler came to Obersalzberg for the first time under the code name “Wolf” to visit Dietrich Eckart at the Obersalzberg mountain spa facility run by Bruno Büchner (formerly Pension Moritz , later Pension or Volkshotel Platterhof ). Eckart was wanted with an arrest warrant for insulting the Reich President. Having despite his coup attempt had been released after six months early from prison in December 1924, Hitler dictated Max Amann in the summer of 1925 the second part of Mein Kampf among others in the mountain spa Obersalzberg belonging wooden hut, which later by his followers to fight Häusl transfigured has been. In 1928 Hitler rented the Wachenfeld house in Obersalzberg , into which his half-sister Angela Raubal and her daughter Geli moved. Up until then Obersalzberg was only a vacation home that Hitler had visited repeatedly, but in the summer of 1933 he bought the Wachenfeld house from Margarete Winter-Wachenfeld and had the property converted in two construction phases into the representative Berghof residence by mid-1936 . Later he showed himself in front of the house with an idyllic mountain backdrop and used it for media-effective productions “as a politician close to the people, a friend of children and nature, a good neighbor, great statesman and lonely visionary”.

Acquisitions and expropriations

Berghof , 1934
Göring house under construction, Obersalzberg 1934
Still from Eva Braun's private film recordings: Adolf Hitler welcomes guests at the Berghof

After the takeover of the Nazis in Germany Obersalzberg experienced the biggest structural changes in its history.

The Berghof , Hitler's residence and core of the restricted area, initially a simple house in the style of a summer resort, developed into a representative building through several renovations according to plans by the architect Alois Degano and the dictator himself. The center of the building was the conference room with a retractable panorama window that gave a view of the Untersberg .

The houses of the NSDAP politicians Martin Bormann , Hermann Göring and Albert Speer as well as the guest house, SS barracks, manor with greenhouse and underground bunker are grouped around the Berghof . When buying up under the direction of Hitler's Reich Leader and Secretary, Martin Bormann, the previous owners were first offered prices above market value. If they did not want to sell, they were pressured to sell their land. The photographer Hans Brandner, who was not satisfied with the price offered for his property, was taken to the Dachau concentration camp for two years that same night . A total of 57 landowners, mainly mountain farmers with their old fiefs, bought or expropriated land. Most of the existing buildings were removed and the character of the place completely changed.

The basic structure of the Hotel Zum Türken , which was expanded into the security service's quarters , as well as parts of the Pension Moritz founded by Mauritia Mayer , which was expanded to Platterhof by the former aviation pioneer Bruno Büchner , and its branch, the Hoher Göll guest house .

On a suggestion of Hitler through Bormann on the ridge of the Kehlstein today each year approximately 500,000 visitors frequented the Eagle's Nest building. However, Hitler only visited it about ten times because the trips there are said to have been too risky for him.

The massive air attacks by the Allied forces on large parts of Germany prompted the NSDAP to intensify the expansion of the air raid protection systems in Obersalzberg, and a widely branched bunker system was created deep in the rock.

Government affairs and representation

Hitler receives Chamberlain , preparing the Munich Agreement

Hitler often stayed in Obersalzberg for several months a year and also ran government business from there. A few kilometers from Obersalzberg, in 1937 the Reich Chancellery Berchtesgaden was established as the second seat of government in the Bischofswiesen district of Stanggaß . In total, Hitler spent almost a third of his reign there, that is to say almost four years in total.

Hitler wrote around 125 laws and ordinances. And as Chancellor he also received state guests at the Berghof , for example David Lloyd George (former British Prime Minister), Marques de Magaz (Spanish Ambassador), Arthur Neville Chamberlain (British Prime Minister), André François-Poncet (French Ambassador), King Carol II from Romania , Ante Pavelić (leader of the German vassal state Croatia , 1941–1944) and others.

On February 12, 1938, Hitler and the Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg met in Obersalzberg, and several demands were made to him under the threat of invasion. The Berchtesgaden Agreement negotiated in the process was the first step towards the annexation of Austria to the German Reich one month later.

It was considered a special honor for German politicians and party members to be received by Hitler in Obersalzberg in a "private setting". Hitler surrounded himself here with a circle of adjutants, their wives, children and old party friends. Eva Braun , the unofficial landlady, often invited relatives and friends to the "Berg", often also when Hitler was in Berlin, Munich or during the war at the Fuehrer's headquarters in Wolfsschanze .

destruction

The US-American General Dwight D. Eisenhower , the commander in chief of the Allies, gave up his plans to conquer the capital of Berlin because he feared that the SS and other elite troops might entrench themselves in the alleged Alpine fortress . So he had his troops swivel south in order to cut off the retreat of German troops into the actually nonexistent Alpine fortress.

On April 25, 1945, Lancaster bombers of the Royal Air Force dropped almost 1,300 bombs over Obersalzberg, while Berchtesgaden in the valley was almost completely spared. After this attack - with the exception of the Kehlsteinhaus  - all buildings in the Führer's restricted area in Obersalzberg were damaged. Retreating SS guards set them on fire, but this did not prevent the occupiers or the local population from looting the buildings.

Post-war period - the Americans in Obersalzberg

Open chimney in the Kehlsteinhaus - with chipped edges by souvenir hunters among the US soldiers
State of the Führer's restricted area in 1951

Obersalzberg was occupied by an association of US troops and some French on May 4, 1945 after the district of Berchtesgaden was surrendered without a fight by District Administrator Karl Theodor Jacob . Jacob entrusted the head of the consortium of construction companies in Obersalzberg, the engineer Georg Grethlein, with the handover . He and his driver were shot dead by drunken French soldiers the following day while he was trying to negotiate the future of his workforce. US troops called for help from Berchtesgaden restored order. The record collection of Adolf Hitler ended up in the American National Archives. To put an end to looting, the US military administration imposed a ban on access to the former restricted area until 1949. The NSDAP land officially became the property of the Free State of Bavaria in 1947, but the Americans continued to use most of the buildings in Obersalzberg.

After the war, the former Salzbergers made efforts to return to their old homeland; however, the village in Obersalzberg was not rebuilt. Only the Hotel zum Türken was returned to its former owners.

Various buildings were repaired for the US armed forces after the war, such as the Platterhof (Hotel General Walker ), the Atelier Speer (Evergreen Lodge) and the former estate; they served the US Army as a recreation center. The other buildings, such as the Berghof , the SS barracks and the residential buildings of Göring and Bormann, were demolished or blown up in 1952 to prevent any cult. The place of the Berghof is wooded today; Retaining walls are still preserved, as is the bunker that was built between 1943 and 1945.

As part of the regional reform , the independent municipality of Salzberg , to which Obersalzberg also belonged, was incorporated into Berchtesgaden on January 1, 1972 .

New use after 1996

Documentation Obersalzberg

With the withdrawal of the American armed forces and the associated closure of the Armed Forces Recreation Center in Berchtesgaden, the use of the NSDAP properties formerly captured there was also transferred to the Free State of Bavaria in 1996. In accordance with the two-pillar concept of the Bavarian Finance Minister Kurt Faltlhauser ( CSU ), the Bavarian state government decided to build a luxury hotel on this area as well as a center for the documentation of the atrocities committed during the Nazi rule in order to prevent the creation of a pilgrimage site for right-wing extremists and to set up a counterpart to the "commercial exploitation" of the site.

In 1999 the Obersalzberg documentation was opened , and in 2005 the luxury hotel InterContinental Berchtesgaden Resort (today Kempinski Hotel Berchtesgaden).

Removal of parts of the historical network of trails

In 2009, plans of the Bavarian State Forests became known, according to which the historical network of trails in Obersalzberg with black pavement should be adapted to the requirements of forestry and replaced by gravel roads that are load-bearing even for 40-ton transport machines. This hits u. a. at the contradiction of the local SPD association in Bischofswiesen, which considers the building fabric from the Nazi era to be worthy of protection in accordance with the protection of monuments and therefore strives for less radical solutions that only provide for the use of lighter transport machines on sections that are then newly sealed with modern asphalt . However, the SPD particularly emphasizes the tourist importance of the family and handicapped accessible paths, which are popular with cyclists and hikers. The Obersalzberg Institute advocates that the "ensemble character of the Kehlsteinhaus with the historic driveway and the associated network of paths should be preserved because of their political importance as a place of National Socialist power development".

After the Bavarian State Forests had to stop their project in 2009 due to objections to the protection of monuments, it became known in May 2010 that they had only started to remove the tar , which they now called "toxic", in some sections, in consultation with the Berchtesgadener Land district office , because he exceeds pollutant limits by a factor of seven. In the opinion of the District Office, these sections were also not monuments within the meaning of the Bavarian Monument Act. In January 2017, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are considered to be carcinogenic, are named as pollutants in tar . Detailed planning should take until spring 2017.

literature

  • Ulrich Chaussy , Christoph Püschner: Neighbor Hitler: Führer cult and destruction of homes on Obersalzberg . 6th expanded edition. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86153-462-4 .
  • Ulrich Chaussy: Obersalzberg - From the mountain farming village to the Führer's restricted area. Contemporary witnesses report. DVD. Editor: Institute for Contemporary History , Munich 2004.
  • Florian M. Beierl: Hitler's Mountain. History of Obersalzberg and its secret bunker systems. Publishing house Beierl, Berchtesgaden. 3rd edition 2010. ISBN 3-929825-05-8 .
  • Volker Dahm , Albert A. Feiber, Hartmut Mehringer and Horst Möller (eds.): The deadly utopia. Pictures, texts, documents, data on the Third Reich . 6th revised edition, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-9814052-1-7 (publications of the Institute for Contemporary History on Documentation Obersalzberg).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Obersalzberg 1933 - 1945 - Second seat of government of the Third Reich and place of propaganda , article by the Institute for Contemporary History with illustrations, online at obersalzberg.de .
  2. ↑ Press spokesman for the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments on a visit to Obersalzberg ( Memento of December 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) , article with an exemplary use of the term Führer's restricted area .
  3. ↑ a b c d Dagmar Rutenbeck: Dealing with the perpetrator location. The debates about Obersalzberg, Villa ten Hompel and Ordensburg Vogelsang. ( Memento from December 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Master's thesis for the University of Lüneburg from 2006. For the Führer's restricted area, see pp. 32–51, online at obersalzberg.org
  4. ↑ a b c d Hellmut Schöner (ed.): The Berchtesgadener Land in the course of time . Supplementary volume I, Berchtesgaden 1982, p. 379.
  5. ↑ NS-Residenz Obersalzberg: Der Höhenwahn. on einestages.spiegel.de
  6. ↑ Joachim Fest: Hitler. A biography. 2002, pp. 445-447.
  7. ^ Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin: The Obersalzberg as a place of contemporary history.
  8. ↑ Politics am Obersalzberg ( Memento of November 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), website 12 of 14 pages of the Obersalzberg documentation on Hitler's ordinances, online at obersalzberg.de
  9. ↑ Politics am Obersalzberg ( Memento of January 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), website 13 of 14 pages of the Obersalzberg documentation on Himmler's note about his meeting with Hitler on June 19, 1943 in Obersalzberg about "gang warfare and security situation", online at obersalzberg. de
  10. ↑ Austrian State Archives : Berchtesgaden Agreement ( Memento from May 23, 2018 in the Internet Archive ), online at oesta.gv.at
  11. ^ Gregor Dallas: 1945: The War that Never Ended . Yale University Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-300-10980-1 ( google.de [accessed August 16, 2020]).
  12. ↑ "Place of the perpetrator" and historical investigation . Lecture by Dr. Volker Dahm (employee of the Institute for Contemporary History ; Munich-Berlin, technical director of the Obersalzberg documentation) on the occasion of a symposium in two parts (December 5 to 7, 2002, January 16 to 17, 2003), to be read in the conference proceedings p. 198– 210, quotation p. 199 f. ( online ( memento of April 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) at ns-dokumentationszentrum-muenchen.de; direct link to the PDF with 1652 kB on the accessed page).
  13. ↑ About us , last section u. a. on extensions and sponsorship, online at obersalzberg.de
  14. ↑ SPD local association Bischofswiesen: SPD wants to preserve the Kehlstein stripes , online at bischofswiesen.sozi.infoTemplate: dead link /! ... nourl  ( page no longer available )
  15. ^ Round table on dealing with the historical Kehlstein area , report of the local history association Berchtesgaden eV from May 22, 2009 on round table discussions of the members of the Obersalzberg Institute eV, online at heimatkundeverein-berchtesgaden.de .
  16. ↑ Economic efficiency against monument protection. Report in the Berchtesgadener Anzeiger from June 3, 2009.
  17. ↑ The Battle of Tar and History. Report in the Berchtesgadener Anzeiger on May 22, 2010.
  18. ↑ Obersalzberg: Road asphalt carcinogenic. News from January 21, 2017 on Radio Salzburg , online at salzburg.orf.at .
  19. ↑ Ulrich Chaussy , Christoph Püschner: Neighbor Hitler: Führer Cult and Destruction of Home at Obersalzberg , look into the book, online at books.google.de

Coordinates: 47 ° 38 ′ 1 ″  N , 13 ° 2 ′ 31 ″  E