Berchtesgadener Hof ice cream cup.
The Berchtesgadener Hof hotel had previously been the “Grand Hotel Auguste Victoria,” popular with visiting royalty. The Nazis bought it in 1936, remodeled it and renamed it the Berchtesgadener Hof, and used it to house dignitaries visiting Adolf Hitler’s Berghof, such as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and David Lloyd George. High ranking Nazis such as Josef Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Joachim von Ribbentrop also stayed here, as did visiting military officers such as Erwin Rommel. Eva Braun lived at the Berchtesgadener Hof when she first came to Berchtesgaden, before moving into the Berghof.
After the U.S. Army occupied the area in May 1945, the Berchtesgadener Hof was the scene of several high-ranking surrenders, including that of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring.
The U.S. Army took over the Berchtesgadener Hof in 1945, and it was one of the show-pieces of the Armed Forces Recreation Center until 1995. Sandly, when the U.S. Army left in late 1995, the famed hotel was closed and locked, as it remained for several years until it was torn down in 2006, to make way for a new “Haus der Berge” museum of the mountains.