There are clear indications that a motorcyclist caught in the area set fire to Hitler’s former tea house on the Obersalzberg. On Saturday afternoon the Traunstein public prosecutor’s office said the 33-year-old German is likely mentally ill.
Prosecutor Rainer Vietze told a press conference in Berchtesgaden that a short psychiatric assessment had reached that conclusion. The man was brought before an investigating judge in Rosenheim. The judge granted the prosecution’s request and, still on Saturday, ordered the man into a closed psychiatric facility. He lives in Berlin but has connections to the region.
Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann of the CSU, thanked police for their intervention on the Obersalzberg. The suspected arsonist had ridden toward the emergency crews on a motorcycle along the narrow, steep Kehlsteinstraße, and stopping him was not easy. According to dpa, he also tried to flee on the motorcycle.
The fire caused enormous property damage. Bartl Wimmer, chairman of the Bergerlebnis Berchtesgaden special-purpose association, said the loss certainly runs into the millions. Herrmann had already stressed that the house is well insured and that possible insurance claims would be examined. Rebuilding will take some time. The Free State of Bavaria owns the building, and historians are to be involved because of its difficult historical associations.
The Kehlsteinhaus was built in the 1930s by the National Socialists as part of the complex used by Adolf Hitler on the Obersalzberg. It is now a freely accessible mountain restaurant. Abroad the destination is known as the Eagle’s Nest.
The restaurant was closed on Friday. Early findings by police and the fire service indicated that nobody was injured. On Saturday morning the site could still be entered only with heavy breathing protection, which made the search harder. Firefighting that began on Friday evening continued through the morning.
The house stands at 1,838 metres on the Obersalzberg, close to the Austrian border, and is hard to reach. It is normally served by the rail buses of the Kehlstein line. Deutsche Bahn says the climb takes 20 minutes and passes through five tunnels. The area was cordoned off over a wide radius.
The building has been a mountain restaurant since 1952. It was completed in 1938 inside what was then a sealed residential and government area of the Nazi leadership, closed to the public. An exhibition there covers the building’s history.
On its website the Bergerlebnis Berchtesgaden association says the house, built in 1937–38, was meant in the Nazi period to serve as a political reception place away from the public, under the name tea house then in use. In practice the Kehlsteinhaus remained of little importance and was often used by the Nazi entourage gathered on the Obersalzberg for rest and private celebrations.