Eagle’s Nest Fire Divides Germans Over Nazi Retreat’s Future
A fire gutted Germany’s Eagle’s Nest mountain retreat in October, leaving a debate over whether to rebuild the former Nazi site or clear its remains. The state of Bavaria supports rebuilding, while historians and others warn against restoring the structure or leaving it vulnerable to extremist visitors.
Germans are divided over whether to rebuild the Eagle’s Nest after a fire gutted the former Nazi retreat in the German Alps on October 23, with Bavaria’s authorities backing reconstruction and others urging the site be cleared.
The fire, which police described as leaving the building “largely destroyed,” has reopened debate over how Germany should confront its Nazi past and whether the ruins could draw visitors seeking to glorify it.
The retreat, known in German as Kehlsteinhaus, was built by the Nazis in 1938 and visited by Adolf Hitler and other senior Nazi figures and their guests. After World War Two, it was designated a historical monument.
The state of Bavaria owns the site. Before the fire, it operated for years as a restaurant and drew tens of thousands of tourists each season, providing an important source of income for the region.
Isabel Heinemann, a professor of contemporary history at Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, said Germany had an “everlasting responsibility to communicate, to deal with our Nazi past.” She warned that a complete reconstruction would put “highly ideologised or highly ideological architecture” back in place.
Some want the rubble removed and the mountain returned to its natural state. “It’s been torched now. It’s been destroyed. I think they should just clear away the rubble and leave the mountain as it should be in its natural state,” said Richard J. Evans, a specialist in Nazi Germany at the University of Cambridge.
Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, and arts minister Markus Blume have spoken in favor of rebuilding. “We can hardly leave a ruin standing there,” Herrmann said.
Sven Keller, head of the Obersalzberg Documentation Centre near the retreat, also opposes leaving the site in ruins, saying that could allow neo-Nazi visitors to hike there undisturbed.
The documentation center survived the fire. It opened in the 1990s amid concerns that the site did not sufficiently address Nazi crimes, and a photo exhibit about the retreat’s history opened inside the Kehlsteinhaus around 15 years ago.
A 33-year-old man with a history of mental illness has been detained in a secure psychiatric hospital on suspicion of arson. Authorities have not commented on a possible motive.
