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On a high mountain ridge, amidst the picturesque landscape of the German Alps, lie the burnt-out ruins of a mountain house called the Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle's Nest), now at the center of a bitter debate about Germany's Nazi past.
The Kehlsteinhaus residence was built in 1938 and was often visited by Hitler, other high-ranking Nazis and their guests. After World War II, it was recognized as a historical monument reminiscent of the Nazi era.
In October, the building was completely destroyed by fire, believed to be the result of arson. Some believe that its remains should be completely demolished, returning the site to nature and forgetting about its Nazi past.
But others are calling for its partial or complete restoration, fearing the risk of the site becoming a site of neo-Nazi pilgrimage at a time when Germany is witnessing a resurgence of far-right forces.
Germany has an “eternal responsibility to talk about and deal with our Nazi past,” says Isabelle Heinemann, professor of modern history at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU).
However, she warns that fully restoring the site would mean returning to “highly ideological or highly ideological architecture.”
Before the fire on the evening of October 23, the Eagle's Nest was a popular tourist attraction owned by the state of Bavaria and operated as a restaurant for many years.
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Visitors traveled by bus and then took a brass-and-mirror-paneled elevator over the mountain to a building with magnificent views of the city of Berchtesgaden.
At the top, they could feast on sausages in the beer garden on the Obersalzberg, 1,834 meters above sea level with views of the Alps.
Unlike Hitler's nearby summer residence, the Berghof, which was bombed during World War II and demolished in 1952, the Eagle's Nest survived the war.
It was visited by tens of thousands of tourists every season and was an important source of income for the region.
In the 1990s, amid concerns that the site was not doing enough to counter the crimes of the Nazi past, a museum was opened nearby, the Obersalzberg Documentation Center.
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About 15 years ago, a photo exhibition dedicated to its history was opened at the Kehlsteinhaus.
Although the Eagle's Nest itself was "largely destroyed" by the fire, police said, the documentation center was not damaged.
Authorities have not commented on a possible motive, but a 33-year-old man with a history of mental illness was admitted to a maximum-security psychiatric hospital on suspicion of arson.
Some believe the time has come to let this place fade into history.
“Now it’s been burned. It's destroyed. I think we should just remove the rubble and leave the mountain in its natural state,” said Professor Sir Richard J. Evans, an expert on Nazi Germany at the University of Cambridge.
According to him, this happened with “many other Nazi objects,” including the bunker in Berlin where Hitler committed suicide: “The bunker was filled with concrete, and a children’s playground was built on top of this place.”
The Kehlsteinhaus was merely a "Nazi vanity project" that was later romanticized as the Eagle's Nest, he noted.
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However, the Bavarian authorities have a different opinion regarding the future of this facility.
Both the state's interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, and the state's minister of art, Markus Blume, spoke in favor of restoring the Kehlsteinhaus.
“We can hardly leave ruins there,” Herrmann said.
Sven Keller, head of the Obersalzberg Documentation Center, believes it is important not to leave this site in ruins, as this could attract neo-Nazi “pilgrims” who could climb there completely unhindered.
“We in Obersalzberg have considerable experience of what happens when we demolish such objects. Hitler's Berghof was demolished in the 1950s and, in our experience, this does not erase such places from people's memories,” he told the BBC.
He also does not consider an “accurate reconstruction” of the site possible, and Blume made it clear on Bavarian radio that “it should not and cannot cost taxpayers anything.”
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Herrmann said that given the historically complex circumstances surrounding the building, they will seek a reasonable solution in consultation with historians.
Isabelle Heinemann, who also heads the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History, believes that a full-scale reconstruction should be ruled out.
"I rather think we can document the condition in which the building was left after the fire, as well as document the historical remains of the Kehlsteinhaus, and then reconstruct parts in a modern style to demonstrate the different layers of time that can be seen in the building," she told the BBC.
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There has long been a debate in Germany and Austria about how to deal with the complex legacy of buildings and sites associated with the Nazi era.
With the recent rise in popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and the Austrian Freedom Party, the debate about the “culture of memory” (Erinnerungskultur) has taken on new relevance.
Recently, a scandal erupted in Germany when deputies from the AfD and the conservative CDU in one of the cities of Saxony decided to ban memorial “commemoration stones” dedicated to the victims of the Nazis - small brass tablets embedded in the road surface.
In the summer in Austria, a police station opened in the house where Hitler was born, in Braunau am Inn. This comes after years of debate over how the house should be used.
The Austrian government said the police presence would help prevent neo-Nazi pilgrimages.
However, others wanted the house to become a center of responsibility that actively confronted the Nazi past.
As one resident of Braunau am Inn told me, it is a delicate balance between how much to remember and how much to forget.
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