MOB and I arrived at the Sonthofen starting pen for Transalp very early, and decided we should stretch our legs a bit to warm up since we would start the day with a climb and needed to be ready -- a practice we abandoned on subsequent mornings, realizing it was more important to preserve energy. Our quick trip around the Southern edge of Sonthofen took in some very nice territory, and one monumental stone building upon on the hill that appeared to be part of a large military facility, complete with fences and barbed wire.
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The Ordensburg -- National Socialist Training Center in the 1930s, and
French, then American, then German military facility in the postwar era. |
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| Sonthofen, nice country on the edge of the Alps! |
Sonthofen is deep in Bavaria, a region of Germany that was, one might say, especially enthusiastic about that certain German government that took power in the early 1930s. Juliane and MOB had mentioned to me that the conservative political party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (sister party of the Christian Democratic Union that operates in the rest of the country), would have (or at least had had) its annual party congresses in Sonthofen.
So I guess it was not a surprise that the most prominent building in the area is
the Ordensburg, which, to quote an authoritative source (err, well, to quote Wikipedia) served as an "Adolf-Hitler-School for the education of party cadres."
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