Excerpts from the History and Evolution of Berchtesgaden

Berchtesgaden, its beginnings
and the founding of the prince-provostry

From 1102 until its secularisation in 1803, Berchtesgaden was a prince-provostry and thus independent of its bigger neighbours, Bavaria and Salzburg. Initial settlement proved to be so difficult that the Augustinians at first pulled out of the area.   A second attempt was necessary in order to open up this land flanking the Watzmann and Lake Königssee.

As the result of a Golden Bull, the people of Berchtesgaden received the consent of Frederick Barbarossa to mine for ore and salt. The rich  salt deposits made Berchtesgaden economically independent and consequently led to it amassing great wealth. Yet time and again, the riches and salt resources of Berchtesgaden aroused the interest of both neighbours, a fact attested to by its changing hands several times between 1803 and 1810. Even France lorded over the salt of Berchtesgaden for one year, though in 1810 the Berchtesgadener Land was annexed once and for all into Bavaria. When salt mining was in its heyday, the salt was transported for 300 years, from 1619 to 1912, via a brine pipeline to as far afield as Traunstein.

Geographically, the Berchtesgaden valley lies in south-eastern Bavaria and is bordered on three sides by the Austrian province of Salzburg.

Berchtesgaden -
from summer spa to tourist heaven

At the end of the 19th century it wasn’t only the Bavarian kings who visited Berchtesgaden and its sights, but also an array of artists, industrialists and authors such as Ludwig Ganghofer, Carl von Linde and Siegmund Freud.  They laid the foundations of tourism, a sector which, along with salt-mining and woodworking, developed rapidly into a third economic pillar for the region.

After World War II, Berchtesgaden naturally wanted to build on its tourism successes from before the war.  Very bold and grandiose ideas from the pre-war era, such as construction of a “Watzmann cable lift” were no longer pursued.

IApril 1949 saw the founding of the Berchtesgaden Lift Co. and thus the start of construction for the cable lift from the village of Berchtesgaden to the top of the Obersalzberg came palpably closer. Today’s Obersalzbergbahn still reflects the original concept of the lift which was built in 1950: It consists of two pairs of gondolas.  One pair travels between the valley and the mid-station and the other between the mid- and summit stations. This means that passengers must transfer lifts at the mid-station.

The Days of National Socialism (Nazis)

The beauty of the Berchtesgaden Valley was to have fateful consequences when, after 1923, the ascendant National Socialist, Adolf Hitler, discovered both the town and the Obersalzberg, in particular, for himself. As his star rose, so did the pressure on Berchtesgaden and its inhabitants. By and by, the native population was dispossessed or their property purchased from them at token prices. Berchtesgaden natives such as  brewery owner,  Rudolf Kriss soon became regarded as opponents of the regime and were handled as such. Over time the Nazi regime constructed the so-called Alpine Fortress with an extensive bunker system and prestigious buildings. The Kehlsteinhaus is the only fully preserved building still available for today’s tourists to visit.

More and more of Hitler’s followers - derisively nicknamed “pilgrims” by the locals - streamed into Berchtesgaden in the hope of catching a close-up view of their “Führer”.

After bombardment of the Obersalzberg on April 23, 1945, the Americans began to use the Platterhof (Hotel General Walker) and the Berchtesgadener Hof for their own purposes, which they continued to do until the end of the 90’s.Today the Platterhof has been torn down, a former guesthouse has been remodelled to create the “Dokumentation Obersalzberg”, while the departure point for buses to the Kehlstein is now located at the site of the former hotel. The only fully preserved house from those times is the Kehlsteinhaus. The “Dokumentation Obersalzberg” is a permanent exhibition which impressively documents the days of National Socialism.

The Berchtesgadener Land District Today

The Berchtesgadener Land district we know today has its roots in two local government reforms. In 1920 the Inner Berchtesgaden was apportioned the monastery – prince-provostry.  1972 saw two further additions: the formerly independent city of Bad Reichenhall and the bigger, southern portion of a dissolved district of which Laufen, a town on the Salzach River, had once been the seat. Some years later, there would actually be a district of Bad Reichenhall.  To this day we are reminded of these developments by vehicle license plates – on vehicles now of historical interest in their own right – which bear the district identification LF for Laufen and Rei for Bad Reichenhall.

The Berchtesgadener Land of today encompasses 840 square kilometres and extends from Lake Königssee to the Salzach River in Laufen. The administrative centre of the district is Bad Reichenhall.