page_title: Obersalzberg
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Obersalzberg / History
caption_attribution_description: Blick vom Obersalzberg
context_page_description: Obersalzberg is a mountainside retreat situated above the market town of Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, Germany. Located about 120 kilometres southeast of Munich, close to the border with Austria, it is best known as the site of Adolf Hitler's former mountain residence, the Berghof, and of the mountaintop Kehlsteinhaus, popularly known in the English-speaking world as the "Eagle's Nest." All of the Nazi buildings were demolished in the 1950s but the relevant past of the area is the subject of the Dokumentationszentrum Obersalzberg museum which opened in 1999.
context_section_description: The name of the settlement area derives from the rock salt deposits in the former Prince-Provostry of Berchtesgaden. Salt mining at Pherg is documented since the 12th century and a major salt mine opened in 1517. It was destroyed in 1834 but rebuilt and named the "Old Salt Works". The rectangular layout and some components still exist.
  The area was part of the provostry's eight localities (so-called Gnotschaften) mentioned in the first land register of 1456 and was ruled by the Augustinian abbey. From 1517 the Petersberg gallery was built, the first of the Berchtesgaden salt mines which became the economic base of the Prince-provostry. The area was annexed by Austria in 1805 and then ruled by France in 1809–1810. With Berchtesgaden it was secularised in 1803 and passed to the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1810.
  Salzberg was re-established as a Bavarian municipality in 1817. Plans by Nazi authorities to merge it with Berchtesgaden were not carried out and Salzberg was not incorporated into Berchtesgaden until 1972. It was the scene of the filming of The Sound of Music film's last scene where the von Trapps were escaping into what was thought to be Switzerland and to their freedom.
caption: Panorama of Obersalzberg
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2007:01:03 15:42:13", "Image ExifOffset": "156", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "294", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "3197", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "9651", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1700"}