The Alps

by Stephen O'Shea

  The town of Obersalzberg no longer exists. In 1945, British Lancaster bombers and, subsequently, dynamite-laden American GIs, took care of it. In its heinous heyday, the settlement grew to scores of buildings, including Hitler’s house, the Berghof; the homes of Martin Bormann, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, and Albert Speer; plus an SS barracks, a hotel and bar, a kindergarten, a theater, a brothel—all the amenities necessary to make Obersalzberg a self-contained complex from which a drug-addled Hitler could govern without the nuisance of expert advice from the technocrats in Berlin. He could just kick back at the Berghof and listen for hours as Martin Bormann, his lapdog-turned-Svengali, lectured him on the niceties of terror, murder, war, and hatred.

  In 1937, a decision was made to build another structure, this one eight hundred meters higher in elevation than the Nazi compound at Obersalzberg. Bormann supervised all aspects of the construction. The structure was sited on a rocky summit ridge known as the Kehlstein—hence its name, Kehlsteinhaus. (The English and French moniker for the place, The Eagle’s Nest, was coined as a joke by a visiting French ambassador.) The whole project—tunnels, approach road, infrastructure, the chalet itself—took just thirteen months to complete, a staggering engineering feat celebrated in the visitors’ center gift shop. Bormann, knowing the inefficiencies of Nazi slave-labor practices, paid the workmen handsomely, at more than twice the average day rate, and supplied them with good food, women, and decent lodgings. The place was officially inaugurated on 20 April 1939, Hitler’s fiftieth birthday. The international press was invited to be overawed at the ribbon-cutting, but not the German media. Hitler kept the existence of his mountain folie (which cost, in today’s currency, 150 million euros) a secret from his beloved Volk, not wishing to tarnish his carefully cultivated image as a man of the people.

  The crush of tourists is such that we are issued time-stamped tickets for the bus ride up to the Kehlsteinhaus. I and the hostile German family from the parking lot have to cool our heels for about an hour before the moment of delivery arrives. I board the bus, well appointed with panoramic windows, and sit across the aisle from an English couple. Our driver is the late Bob Hoskins. The Englishman studies the stamped ticket in admiration and says, “They wouldn’t do this in Italy.”

  His wife counters, “They wouldn’t do it in England, either!”

  She and I smile; he does not.

  The recorded multilingual spiel informs us that we are to travel 6.6 kilometers up one of the most beautiful mountain roads in Europe. Steep and scary it most certainly is. At the mother of all hairpin turns, nervous laughter breaks out among the passengers. Prior to the banalization of air travel, the views out our windows were reserved for the gods. The depth of the abyss is amazing. I close my eyes tightly. It’s not that I’m afraid of heights, I’m afraid of Nazis.

  The coach reaches its destination and we walk into a large plaza seemingly suspended in space. We are then directed to a 120-meter-long tunnel cut into the mountain, illuminated by pompous sconces, before turning right into a domed stone chamber—part Pantheon, part Raiders of the Lost Ark. The brass doors of an elevator await. We are then whisked up a further 124 meters into the Kehlsteinhaus.

  The interior of the aerie is something of an anticlimax. There are tables set out everywhere for diners. Even the famed, off-white octagonal room—designed to wow foreign dignitaries—looks more like a college dining hall nowadays. Hallways, Hitler’s study, Eva Braun’s hideaway—all are smothered in wooden tables awaiting steins and sauerkraut. Even with this screen of foodie extravagance, the visitor eventually notices that the chalet is stupendously impractical as a seat of government. There were no bedrooms, cabinet meetings were never held here, and Hitler, an acrophobe prone to altitude sickness, came up to the Kehlsteinhaus just over a dozen times, and then only for short visits, preferring the terra firma of his Berghof far below. In short, it was a colossal waste of money. During the war, the chalet became the personal precinct of Eva Braun, who enjoyed sunning herself on its many outdoor terraces. (American soldiers on leave in the postwar era did the same, as the house was a rest and recreation center for them until it was handed back to the Bavarian government in 1952.) In the only notable occurrence to have taken place here in wartime, the wedding reception of Braun’s sister was held in the Kehlsteinhaus’s octagonal room on 5 June 1944—the eve of D-day.

  Outside, the aerie is an entirely different story. The views take in a circus of mountains in Austria and Germany as far as the eye can see. And the eye can see far—more than 150 kilometers on a clear day. Today is one such day. Can I be moved by this view, knowing the identity of the hideous owner of the Kehlsteinhaus? The mountains, I know, are blameless. I see the glacial lake of Königsee tucked in the valley thousands of meters below, a pearl of the Alps if ever there was one. Opposite, to the right, rises a mountain called Untersbergmassif, a limestone breadbox of menace. Just days earlier, it was the darling of the German-language sensationalist press. A spelunker in its Riesending Cave complex had been disabled by a rockfall a kilometer deep into the mountain and rescuers took almost ten days to extract the poor fellow. More benign are the Untersberg’s associations with popular culture. It served as the arresting Bergfilm opening to The Sound of Music, with Julie Andrews warbling “The Hills Are Alive” in one of its mountain meadows (on the German side of the mountain, no less), and then as the escape route of the von Trapps in the film’s closing sequence. More venerable are the local legends that have Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and/or Charlemagne sleeping within the mountain.

  Perhaps these associations can drown out Adolf. Perhaps not. I climb the hundred meters or so from the Kehlsteinhaus to a large iron cross planted atop the ridge. Although the Christian connections to this site are tenuous at best, the improved vista from this, the highest spot of the Kehlstein promontory, can inspire almost religious sentiment. Far, far away, puffy white clouds dance over the peaks, their shadows racing across rocky summits. At the green base of the circus of mountains, villages and towns can be made out, red and pink in the midday sun. The grandeur of the Alps is on display.

  On heading to the elevator once back in the Kehlsteinhaus, I finally manage to find an exhibit that does not involve menus. To my dismay, it deals almost exclusively with the engineering prowess involved in constructing the chalet, opening the approach road, and getting water and electricity up the mountain, as if that were the only thing to contemplate at this place.

  On the bus ride down, I don’t want to attract derision by closing my eyes, so I read more from the guidebook. On its first page the author, Bernhard Frank, states baldly, “At a time of a resurgence of Neo-Nazism we want and must emphasize the tyranny of the Third Reich. The reader should on no account get the impression that the NS dictators on the Obersalzberg were the harmless and ‘nice neighbours’ of the local population.” The explicit mention of Neo-Nazis puts me in mind of Reinhard’s fear of visiting present-day Saxony, where harmless hippies like him have endured beatings. Yet the skirting of the obvious at the Kehlsteinhaus still rankles somewhat. Surely, the Bavarian government doesn’t expect visitors to get their information on the site’s Nazi past solely from a glossy guidebook purchased at a souvenir shop?

  On my way back to the parking lot, I notice a handsome modern building off to the right, about a hundred meters distant. Directional signs point to the elongated two-story chalet, indicating that the structure is the Dokumentationszentrum Obersalzberg. When I enter by its glass doors, I realize that I have been wrong about Bavarian historical reticence, for this is a comprehensive museum about the Nazis and their cruelties. Opened in 1999, the sixtieth anniversary of the outbreak of war, the museum strikes me as a museum for Germans, particularly Germans in high school, who doubtless take obligatory class trips here to learn of their country’s shameful past. Although an English audioguide can be rented, the exhibits are exclusively in German. My suspicions about its mission of political hygiene for the young are confirmed when I later pull thi
s from its website:

  The Dokumentation Obersalzberg fulfils its purpose with a permanent exhibition which is accompanied by special exhibitions, lectures and events as well as a comprehensive education programme. It serves to explain and discuss the National Socialist past. In this way it should be possible to counter old and new right-wing extremism which draws its appeal, especially for young people, from the reactivation of ideological fictions and political slogans of National Socialism.

  The deftly curated space opens with the travails of the locals. On a video, an old woman relives “the circus” when Hitler came to the Berghof in the early days. He arrived simply, with little security. (He had come to Obersalzberg in the 1920s under the pseudonym of Herr Wolf and wrote part of Mein Kampf here after his release from prison for the failed Beer Hall Putsch.) “People lined the small country lanes, hoping for a smile, a handshake,” she remembers. “People wouldn’t wash their hands afterwards. Or they would collect gravel from where he had trod. It was pathetic.” The old-timer then goes on to detail the expropriations brought about by Bormann in the mid-1930s when Obersalzberg became a giant building site. Her father was visited by Bormann and was told, “Either sell your farm or get sent to Dachau.” His thirteen children prevailed upon him to sell.

  From there the museum goes into a no-holds-barred presentation of Nazism, Hitler’s dictatorship, and anti-Semitism, all accompanied by wrenching photographs of public hangings, trains headed to the death camps, maps, even a heartbreaking photo album of Auschwitz, open to a page showing the last moments of life for a group of women and children, milling about near a spinney of trees as if ready to picnic but in reality just instants from being ushered into the gas chamber. I am dumbstruck. There are no skeletons hiding in the German closet; they are all out there, like a punishing slap in the face. Other countries still hoard their skeletons—think of the Smithsonian Enola Gay controversy in the early 1990s—but Germany has chosen to own up to its past in the most public way possible. The Germans are grown-ups.

  Toward the end of the exhibits stands the ultimate rogues’ gallery. Photographic portraits of the men most responsible for the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, accompanied by biographical notices detailing their misdeeds. The presentation of these bastards, on translucent glass panels, strikes me as a touch too tasteful, but that is the only discordant note in what has been a symphony of sickness. From there, a long passageway leads downward, lined by panels painstakingly presenting the events of the war chronologically. Interestingly, the curators make no attempt to disguise their disgust at the Allies’ carpet-bombing campaign on German civilian targets in the closing years of the war, a campaign that many historians now consider a war crime. Apparently, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The passageway then enters a labyrinth of underground bunkers, rooms, and corridors, a subterranean city hastily dug after the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 intimated that the Nazi thousand-year Reich might have a much briefer shelf life. I do not stay long—a group of German tourists, all using Nordic walking poles as at Bad Wiessee, makes standing in the concrete bunker complex akin to passing time inside a popcorn-making machine.

  Outside in the sunlight, I gun the Mégane downward, eager to get off the Nazi mountain. The last of Bavaria’s excesses has proved the most distressing. I almost miss Neuschwanstein and Oberammergau.

  9. SALZKAMMERGUT AND THE GROSSGLOCKNER

  SALZBURG IS THE MOST GLORIOUS salt lick in all of Europe. A city of passageways, yellow and pink pastel façades, then sudden squares of baroque splendor, the place inspires reverie even in the rain. I feel like buying a white wig. Ernst has rejoined me for this leg of my journey. We stroll the old town on the left bank of the River Salzach, its profusion of statuary, fountains, churches, mansions, and topiary-rich parks attributable to the wealth derived from the salt mines in the surrounding mountains—­hence its name, Salzburg (Salt Fortress). Ruled for centuries by bishop-princes, who erected the gigantic medieval Hohensalzburg Castle on a hill overlooking the town, it was incorporated into the Habsburg holdings only in the early nineteenth century.

  Architecture is not the city’s only draw. Its musical heritage brings millions of visitors here every year. Salzburg was the birthplace and hometown of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a fact that the city beats tourists over the head with. Mozart is everywhere in Salzburg, his face adorning every conceivable kind of knickknack. To walk the shopping streets is to slalom past life-size cardboard likenesses of him, propped in place before stores selling Mozart memorabilia. Costumed salesmen and saleswomen approach visitors with boxes of Mozartkugeln, dark chocolate balls with nougat and pistachio marzipan in their interior. Apparently these chocolates are a venerable tradition in the city, dating all the way back to 1890.

  Then there are the von Trapps of musical and film fame. They serve as Salzburg’s other mascot. A common sight here is a group of tourists, usually Japanese and American, being herded from one Sound of Music sight to the next. “This is where Liesl and Rolf kissed.” “This is where Maria and the children sang, ‘Do-Re-Mi.’” The group is then ushered onto a bus for a trip to the hinterland for more of the same, as Trappologist tour guides point out the inconsistencies between the real-life story and the movie. Even my guidebooks to Austria feel obliged to have sidebars relitigating the musical’s distortions.

  In the late afternoon we explore a less tony neighborhood on the left bank of the River Salzach. On passing a commuter rail station, where Salzburgers of modest means must go to travel home, away from the expensive center of town, we find ourselves in a weary crowd—the women wearing dirndl dresses, the men in dusty lederhosen and felt hats. No yodel is heard. These people are leaving the old city’s land of tourist make-believe, where they pose as Alpine peasants in hotels, shops, restaurants, and horse-drawn carriages. Their shift is over, their smiles of Herzlich Wilkommen (a warm welcome) have vanished. They are a bedraggled lot, grimy and sweaty in the gray, muggy day.

  Ernst declares that the producers of The Sound of Music were right to shoot their movie here. “The place is a movie set,” he says, then indicates the commuters. “These guys are the extras.”

  Which is—and is not—true. For one thing, the city hosts a world-class music and theater festival in the summertime. Ever since its founding in 1920 by poet and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, theater and film director Max Reinhardt, and composer Richard Strauss, the five-week Salzburg Festival has remained a highlight of the European cultural calendar. In 2006, to celebrate Mozart’s 250th birthday, it staged all twenty-two of his operatic works.

  Salzburg is also home to several universities, which may account for the youthfulness of the people crowding the old streets. The city center, which was restored after suffering significant damage from repeated Allied bombing raids during World War II, remains one of Europe’s most splendid baroque neighborhoods, seemingly all spires and domes. Its churches house extravagant profusions of painting and statuary. We enter the cathedral and see, to our surprise, several dozen people, kneeling alone and engaging in silent prayer.

  “At least this is authentic,” Ernst whispers in the candlelit dimness.

  The sight of the faithful tempers our scorn for the city’s commercialism. We take a pew in the back of the sanctuary and contemplate the elaborate stucco statuary and the colorful ceiling frescoes depicting the Passion of Christ. Even Zwinglian Ernst seems cowed into silence. On leaving the cathedral, we head toward the river, crossing a vast square called Residenzplatz. The reason for its name takes up one whole side of the square—the Salzburg Residenz, the former palace for the city’s bishop-princes, soberly looks out over the expanse, its gray façade and three stories of windows giving no hint of its sumptuous interior, which now houses an art gallery. Mozart gave his first concert here, at age six.

  We cross the Salzach and find our way to Steingasse. The baroque vanishes in favor of the medieval. This tiny, cobbled lane, once home to butchers, potters, and dyers (professions needing the
waters of the nearby Salzach), also constituted the main trade route into and out of the city—a rather amazing reminder of how cramped urban life was in the Middle Ages. Today the lane is a quiet place, with children walking their bicycles into recessed doorways. A plaque indicates that Steingasse is the birthplace of Joseph Mohr, who in the early nineteenth century wrote the lyrics to the carol “Silent Night.” Another building, at number 24, sports a red lantern and lettering that reads LA MAISON DE PLAISIR. This is the oldest operating brothel in Salzburg, dating back to Mozart’s era.

  We finish our tour near dusk at the Mirabell Gardens, a park with carefully trimmed topiary and formal flower beds laid out in the French fashion. Groups of statuary represent mythological figures—Aeneas, Paris, Pluto, Hercules, among them—and fountains abound. And, yes, the Mirabell’s horse fountain is where Julie Andrews and her charges sing part of “Do-Re-Mi.”

  Dominating the park is the Mirabell Castle, a large yellow affair as big and baroque as the Salzburg Residenz. The original castle on this spot—it was entirely overhauled in the eighteenth century—was commissioned in 1606 by Prince-Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau as a trysting spot for him and his mistress, Salome Alt, the beautiful daughter of a Salzburg merchant. When the pope refused to issue a dispensation allowing the smitten bishop to marry Alt, von Raitenau realized that, for the sake of propriety, she would have to be housed somewhere other than his official residence within the walls of Salzburg—hence Mirabell, which at that time stood outside the walls of the city. He must have spent a lot of time there: From the start of their relationship in 1593 to his death in 1617, Alt bore him fifteen to seventeen children. Historians disagree on the exact number. And, given my very recent travels, I am interested to learn that the wedding of Eva Braun’s sister, on the eve of D-day, took place in the Mirabell’s Marble Hall, still a place of choice for Salzburgers ready to tie the knot.