The Kehlsteinhaus on the Obersalzberg caught fire without warning and was almost completely destroyed. The building, put up by the Nazis as a reception house for Adolf Hitler and later run as a popular mountain restaurant, burned through the night into Saturday. Parts of the roof collapsed. Police images show the ruin, and early estimates put the loss in the millions.
Up to 200 firefighters and other emergency workers fought the blaze for hours in cold, snow and storm winds above 1,800 metres. Some crews were cut off and built igloos against the cold and drifting snow. Firefighting was broken off shortly before 03:00 on Saturday. Flames metres high broke out again in the night into Sunday, and the operation was only provisionally ended on Sunday.
Police arrested a suspect despite the conditions. Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann of the CSU, later applauded the operation and praised it. Investigators quickly concluded that the man was mentally ill. The Traunstein prosecutor’s office commissioned a psychiatric report and asked for him to be placed in a forensic facility for mentally ill offenders. An investigating judge granted the request. The 33-year-old German, who lives in Berlin but has ties to the region, was taken to a closed psychiatric hospital on Saturday.
Prosecutor’s spokesman Rainer Vietze said investigators would not give much detail on possible motives, because many of the man’s statements do not appear reliable in light of his apparent illness. Rumours about an alleged background spread on social media, and the authorities confirmed none of them. Early findings indicate that nobody was inside when the fire started and that no one was injured. On Saturday the site could at first be entered only in heavy breathing apparatus, which made the search harder.
Herrmann said the historically important house, visited by tens of thousands of people each year, is to be rebuilt and that a ruin could hardly be left standing. The Free State of Bavaria owns the restaurant at 1,834 metres. It is run in usufruct by the municipal Berchtesgadener Landesstiftung. Historians are to be involved in the reconstruction. Bartl Wimmer, chairman of the Zweckverband Bergerlebnis Berchtesgaden, said the damage certainly runs into the millions and that firefighters at times worked at risk to their lives. Rain and snow hampered the operation.
Herrmann also said there were problems getting enough water to the fire. Crews had to climb 700 metres of elevation on the steep Kehlsteinstraße, a firefighting helicopter could not be used, and water trucks shuttled up and down. The house near the Austrian border is normally reached by the Kehlsteinlinie buses used by tourists from Germany and abroad. The last 100 metres are covered by a lift through the mountain or on foot. Deutsche Bahn says the ascent takes 20 minutes and passes through five tunnels. The area was widely cordoned off.