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Perched high on a mountain in the spectacular landscape of the German Alps are the charred ruins of a mountain house called the Eagle's Nest, which is now at the center of an intense debate over Germany's Nazi past.
Known in German as Kehlsteinhaus, the retreat was built by the Nazis in 1938 and frequented by Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis, as well as their guests. After the Second World War, it was classified as a historical monument commemorating the Nazi era.
Last month, the place was devastated by a fire, possibly arson. Some believe it should be completely destroyed, returned to nature and all memory of its Nazi past forgotten.
But others want it to be partially or completely rebuilt, worried about the risk of turning it into a site of neo-Nazi pilgrimage at a time when Germany is seeing a resurgence of the far right.
Germany has an "ongoing responsibility to communicate and deal with our Nazi past", said Isabel Heinemann, professor of contemporary history at Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich (LMU).
But, according to her, rebuilding the site completely would mean reinstalling a "highly ideologized architecture or with a strong ideological bias."
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Before it was destroyed by fire on the night of October 23, the Eagle's Nest was a popular tourist attraction, owned by the State of Bavaria and operating as a restaurant for many years.
Visitors took a bus and then rode the original brass-paneled, mirrored elevator across the mountain to the Kehlsteinhaus to enjoy the magnificent views above the city of Berchtesgaden.
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Once there, they could eat sausages in the garden 1,834 meters above sea level, overlooking the Alps.
Unlike Hitler's nearby summer residence, the Berghof, which was bombed in World War II and demolished in 1952, the Eagle's Nest survived the war.
Tens of thousands of tourists visited the region each season, providing an important source of income for the community.
In the 1990s, amid concerns that the site did not do enough to confront the crimes of the Nazi past, a museum, the Obersalzberg Documentation Center, opened nearby.
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Around 15 years ago, a photographic exhibition opened at the Kehlsteinhaus about its history.
Although the Eagle's Nest itself was "largely destroyed" by the fire, according to police, the documentation center was unharmed.
Authorities have not commented on a possible motive, but a 33-year-old man with a history of mental illness was detained at a maximum security psychiatric hospital on suspicion of arson.
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Some believe this is the time to let the place fall into oblivion.
"It's already been burned down. It's been destroyed. I think they should just remove the rubble and leave the mountain as it should be, in its natural state," said Professor Sir Richard J. Evans, an expert on Nazi Germany at the University of Cambridge.
This has already happened to "several other Nazi sites", he argued, including the bunker in Berlin where Hitler killed himself: "The bunker was filled with concrete and a children's playground was built on top of it, at ground level."
The Kehlsteinhaus was just "a Nazi vanity project," later romanticized as the Eagle's Nest, he said.
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But Bavarian authorities have a different view of the site's future.
Both the State Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann, and the Arts Minister, Markus Blume, spoke out in favor of the reconstruction of the Kehlsteinhaus.
"We can't leave a ruin standing there," Herrmann said.
Sven Keller, head of the Obersalzberg Documentation Center, believes it is important not to leave the site in ruins, as this could encourage neo-Nazi pilgrims, who could climb there undisturbed.
"We have a lot of experience in Obersalzberg with what happens when we demolish these sites. Hitler's Berghof [another dictator's holiday home] was demolished in the 1950s and in our experience that doesn't erase these sites from people's collective memory," he told the BBC's Today programme.
He also does not believe that an "identical reconstruction" of the site is possible, and Blume made it clear on Bavarian radio that "this should not and cannot cost the taxpayer anything."
Credit, ERIC SCHWAB/AFP
Herrmann said they would seek a sensible solution in consultation with historians, given the historically complex circumstances surrounding the building.
Heinemann, who also directs the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, believes a complete reconstruction should be "out of the question".
"I think we can document the state in which the fire left the building, as well as the historical remains of the Kehlsteinhaus, and then rebuild parts of it with a modern design, to make clear the different layers of time that can be seen in this building," she told the BBC.
Germany and Austria have long struggled to deal with the problematic legacy of buildings and sites linked to the Nazi era.
With the recent rise of the far-right AfD and the Austrian Freedom Party, the debate over Erinnerungskultur (Culture of Memory) has taken on new urgency.
Recently, a controversy arose in Germany when councilors from the AfD party and the conservative CDU, in a city in Saxony, decided to ban memorials called "stumbling blocks" — small bronze plaques embedded in the streets — in honor of the victims of the Nazis.
In Austria, over the summer, a police station was opened in the house where Hitler was born, in Braunau am Inn. The measure was taken after years of controversy over how the house should be used.
The Austrian government stated that the police presence would help prevent neo-Nazis from pilgrimage.
But others wanted the house to become a center of responsibility, actively confronting the Nazi past.
As a resident of Braunau am Inn told me, it's a delicate balance between how much to remember and how much to forget.
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