Location: Bavaria Map
Area 210 sq km (81 sq mi)
Berchtesgaden National Park is one of the most beautiful places in Germany and probably in the whole of Europe. Berchtesgaden National Park is situated in the Free State of Bavaria and covers an area of 210 sq km or 81 sq mi in Berchtesgaden Alps. You can joint organized groups that travel between months of May and October or visit the place by yourself. Local salt mines provided local residents with wealth and prosperity, however it was not until World War II than Berchtesgaden became famous. Hitler and his associates like Borman, Himmler, Gering chose this place for their vacation homes in the mountains. The most known building is the Kehlsteinhaus also known as Adlerhost ("Eagle's Nest") that was given by Martin Borman to Hitler in 1939 on his birthday. The house was taken by the American 101st Airborne Division (The Screaming Eagle) in the end of World War II. Today Eagle's Nest houses a restaurant with plenty of history and breathtaking views. Another popular destination in Berchtesgaden National Park is a narrow mountain lake of Konigsee. It is surrounded by beautiful mountains on all sides. Although you can swim here it is fairly cold even in the summer months of the year.
The Berchtesgaden National Park
extends over a large part of the municipal areas of Ramsau near
Berchtesgaden and Schönau am Königssee as well as over a small part
of the southeastern municipality of Berchtesgaden. It is bordered in
the east, south and south-west by the Austrian state of Salzburg.
According to the structure of the main natural spatial units of
Germany, the area of the national park belongs to the
Berchtesgaden Alps in the Northern Limestone Alps.
To the
park, which is located at an altitude of 603.3 (Königssee) to 2713 m
above sea level. NHN (Watzmann) is located in the north of the
approximately 259 km² national park foreland (Alpenpark
Berchtesgaden), which includes the municipalities of Ramsau and
Schönau, Berchtesgaden, Bischofswiesen and Marktschellenberg. The
biosphere reserve or the “Berchtesgadener Land biosphere region”
forms an even larger area.
The border of the national park
runs from Jenner a good 1 km eastwards and then turns around the ski
area northwards to Mannlgrat and over this to Hohen Göll. From here
it consistently follows the German-Austrian border to the Neue
Traunsteiner Hut on the Reiter Alm. From here it encompasses the
entire east of the high plateau and then falls just north of the
Schottmalhorn to the Hintersee. In Ramsau, the border runs just
south of Hintersee and Ramsauer Ache, eastward along the northern
slopes of Hochkalter and Watzmann, back to Jenner, leaving out the
northernmost end of the Königsee.
The highest elevation
within the national park is the Watzmann, the central mountain range
of the Berchtesgaden Alps. Special mention should be made of the
Wimbachgries, a valley that, according to a geological theory, was
created by the collapse of a vault over Watzmann and Hochkalter. It
is filled with a rubble deposit up to 300 meters thick that extends
over a length of ten kilometers. The Funtensee, a mountain lake
where the lowest temperatures in Germany are regularly measured in
winter, is also located in the Berchtesgaden National Park.
The efforts of the "Association for the Protection and Care of Alpine Plants" to designate a protected area led in 1910 to the "Plant Protection District of Berchtesgaden Alps". It was around 83 km² in size and comprised the southern part of the Königssees, the Obersee and the surrounding mountain ranges. During the First World War, plans emerged to carve a Bavarian lion into the Falkensteiner Wall on Königssee as a "war memorial". This led to violent protests and the like. a. of the Bund Naturschutz, which achieved that in 1921 the "Koenigssee Nature Reserve" was established. It included the Königssee, the Hohen Göll, the Bavarian part of the Hagengebirge, the Bavarian part of the Steinernes Meer, the Watzmann, the Hochkalter and the southern part of the Bavarian part of the Reiteralm and covered an area of approx. 200 km².
From 1973 Georg Meister,
who is considered to be the "founding father of the Berchtesgaden
National Park", started planning the national park on behalf of the
Bavarian Minister of Agriculture, Hans Eisenmann. a. its regional
setting. However, the investigation of the state of the forest
there, as suggested by Meister, as well as the introduction of
professional wildlife management and the reduction of the game
population that he felt was urgently required, met with bitter
resistance from hunting associations, local forest masters and the
ministerial bureaucracy, which ultimately prevented his previously
planned appointment as head of the national park.
In order to
finally put a stop to efforts by the municipality of Ramsau, the
Berchtesgadener Land tourist association and the market town of
Berchtesgaden to build a cable car to the Watzmann, the
“Berchtesgaden National Park” was finally enacted on August 1, 1978
by the Free State of Bavaria. It covers the area of the former
Koenigssee nature reserve plus an extension area of almost 10 km²,
resulting in a total area of around 210 km². Hubert Zierl became
the first director of the national park. At the time, the measure
was heavily criticized, especially by the surrounding communities.
The local communities made the management of the national park by
the district administrator of the Berchtesgadener Land district the
most important prerequisite for approval. Over time, however, the
national park succeeded in gaining greater acceptance among the
local population.
The national park forms the core (139 km²)
and maintenance zone (69 km²) of the 467 km² large biosphere reserve
Berchtesgaden.
Tensions arose again in recent years when responsibility for the
national park was withdrawn on the initiative of the SPD, against
the decision of the district council, district administrator and
district office. The municipal national park advisory board intended
as a replacement is criticized by the district administrator and the
municipalities in the national park area as having insufficient
capacity to act due to its purely advisory work. The expansion of
the core zone of the national park into the area of centuries-old
cultural landscapes with alpine farming and old mountain inns such
as the historic Wimbach Castle is also under discussion. There is
also increasing criticism of the significantly poorer funding
compared to the Bavarian Forest National Park. On the occasion of
the 25th anniversary of the national park, the Bavarian state
government promised to build a house of mountains. While the mayors
of the five national park and national park apron communities
suggested a renovation of the deficit spa house, the local Junge
Union, among others, preferred a house of the mountains directly at
a national park entrance such as the Hintersee. The state government
finally decided in favor of the Berchtesgadener Hof in
Berchtesgaden, which had been vacant since the Americans left.
In 2006 another conflict arose over the national park, the
so-called centimeter dispute, about the expansion of an agricultural
path. To separate forest and pasture, an open pasture was created
for an alpine farmer on the initiative of the national park. The
expansion of an agricultural path leading to this new open pasture
led to controversy about nature conservation and agricultural needs.
The farmer, supported by local nature conservation associations such
as the DAV Berchtesgaden and the regional heads of politics, took
the position that he absolutely needed a path widening to 2.50 m to
3 m for his agricultural vehicles, while some other nature
conservation associations argued that a New or substantial expansion
of a road in the national park area is not permitted or is not more
than justifiable up to a path width of 2 m. The dispute about the
relatively short road, which is currently also in the petitions
committee of the Bavarian state parliament, is so vehement because
the nature conservation associations fear that this could become a
precedent for softening nature conservation concerns in favor of
economic concerns. However, the Bavarian State Chancellery countered
this with the assurance that each such case would also be dealt with
separately in the future. The local population and politics, on the
other hand, bothers the great influence from outside.
Based on the
guidelines of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and
Natural Resources and Section 24 of the BNatSchG, the Berchtesgaden
National Park has defined the following goals: protection of all
nature, scientific observation and research into natural and
near-natural communities, education and recreation of its visitors.
The most important goal is the protection of the whole of
nature, to which the other goals have to be subordinate. This is no
longer just about protecting individual plants and animals in the
sense of classic species protection. Rather, all plants and animal
species are strictly protected. Since nature is largely left to its
own devices, processes such as erosion are also protected and can
take place undisturbed. In order to be able to integrate cultural
landscapes, the national park is divided into a completely protected
core zone and a maintenance zone, which may take up a maximum of 25%
of the area. By setting up the maintenance zone, “cultural biotopes”
or individual species can now be protected.
The main research
areas in the Berchtesgaden National Park are on the one hand basic
research and on the other hand application-related research. You
want to understand existing environmental problems in order to be
able to solve or avoid them. Usually this means ecosystem analysis.
Another important part of the research is long-term environmental
monitoring. In Central Europe, for example, natural processes that
are hardly influenced by humans can almost only be observed in
national parks.
Through environmental education, the park
would like to convey the national park concept, i.e. the importance
of protecting untouched nature. It is of particular importance that
the park is also accepted by the local population. Furthermore, the
environmental education is intended to encourage visitors to use
natural resources in a sustainable manner. Furthermore, one of the
goals of the national park is the relaxation of its visitors.
Since these goals sometimes contradict each other (for example by building paths for visitors in the core zone) and since nature in Central Europe is no longer pristine (the missing large carnivores are replaced by human hunters), a national park plan was drawn up. This serves as a guideline for the measures to be taken.
The larger mammals are represented in the national park by roe deer, red deer, chamois and Alpine ibex, although the latter was only reintroduced in the 1930s. The smaller species include alpine marmots, mountain hare and snow vole. Among the 100 species of birds that breed in the park, the golden eagle, the rough owl, the pygmy owl, the hazel grouse, the black grouse, the capercaillie, the ptarmigan, the common raven, the jackdaw, the common jay and the wallcreeper are characteristic. Griffon vultures and bearded vultures are also spotted occasionally. 16 species of amphibians and reptiles and 15 species of fish live in the area. These include some endangered species such as adder, smooth snake, grass snake, alpine salamander, fire salamander, alpine crested newt, yellow-bellied toad, Königssee char and lake trout. Typical insect species are the Alpine buck and the Apollo butterfly. Originally, bison, lynx, brown bears, wolves and otters were also part of the fauna of the area. For some of these species, immigration from neighboring areas seems possible in the foreseeable future, but targeted reintroductions are not planned.
The largest facility in the
national park is the National Park Center "House of the Mountains",
including the central information and visitor center. Other smaller,
decentralized national park information points are located at the
most important entrances and in the national park: in the
municipality of Ramsau at the Wimbachbrücke, in the Klausbachhaus
not far from the Hintersee at the entrance to the Klausbachtal
(former Laroslehen) and in the Engert-Holzstube towards the
Hirschbichl-Pass; in Schönau am Königssee, on the Kührointalm and in
St. Bartholomä.
The Wimbachschloss in the Wimbachtal in
Ramsau is leased as a mining facility.
The national park
administration is located in Berchtesgaden on Doktorberg. In Ramsau,
a former forestry office also serves as a research station and to
accommodate researchers and interns.
The specialist
information center collects and evaluates data on the geography and
the environment of the national park. Database and geographic
information systems are used for this. The data is used for
research, management, environmental education and public relations.
The National Park Service employees, called rangers, are
responsible for visitor information, guided tours, support for
research work and area control.
A partnership with Yosemite National Park in California has existed since 2014. The administrations exchange scientists and employees and jointly develop best practices in species protection and tourism management.
The paths and climbs (together approx. 260 km)
are mainly maintained by the national park administration. They
enable a variety of different mountain tours. The national park
administration offers hikes for adults and special hikes for
children. Selected trails are open to cyclists. Environmentally
friendly passenger boats with electric propulsion operate on the
Königssee. A bathing ban in the waters of the national park has been
lifted since 1987.
Numerous old hunting and alpine paths are
deliberately no longer maintained or even dismantled by the national
park administration, as the intention is to channel the flow of
visitors. In this case, nature conservation comes into conflict with
the preservation of ancient human cultural assets, such as the
Almsteig.
After the national park had already held open-air performances in the Ramsau district of Hintersee at the Klausbachhaus national park information point in the summer of 2010, Ludwig Ganghofer's Martinsklause held open-air performances under the title National Park Festival. The performance of this piece from the history of the Berchtesgadener Land was the contribution of the municipality of Ramsau to the celebrations on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Berchtesgadener Land in Bavaria.