The Eagle's Nest

€œThe Eagle€™s Nest€ in English (aka €œDas Kehlsteinhaus€ in German) - A famous Teehaus (Teahouse) built in September 1938 on the Kehlstein mountain in the Bavarian Alps by the Nazis €“ so it€™s about 74 years old. This was a present for Adolph Hitler for his 50^th birthday. The Eagle€™s Nest building is a popular tourist attraction in Germany, particularly for Britons, Canadians and Americans according to Wikipedia. People take bus tours, or can take a two hour walk up to the mountain - it also serves as a restaurant. The tours are not offered in German, because a requirement due to previous trouble with neo-Nazis and post war Nazi Sympathisers. The lower rooms of the building are not part of the restaurant but can be toured with a guide. Here it says that a lot of Americans mistakenly believe that the term €œEagle€™s Nest€ refers to Hitler€™s former private residence which was located below the Kehlsteinhaus. And in the movie €œWar and Remembrance€ it showed some scenes of events that happened at Hitler€™s former residence, the Berghof, but in the movie the scenes were filmed at the Kehlsteinhaus. So the term €œEagle€™s Nest€ actually came from a group of World War I veterans who visited the Kehlsteinhaus and the name has always only referred to Hitler€™s Teehaus. You are probably wondering what this has to do with door hardware, but when reading more about the Eagle€™s Nest, in this particular post, it mentioned door hardware, believe it or not, at the very end. It says, in Germany they used door handles, not door knobs. And that door knobs were pretty much were unknown on German buildings when das Kehlsteinhaus (The Eagle€™s Nest) was built in the year of 1938. And then it says, and this is the my favorite part, homesick American soldiers in Germany in the 1940€™s and 1950€™s would refer to the United States as €œthe land of the round doorknob€. So maybe even homesick Americans may have had some door hardware geek in them.

One of the door handles from the Kehlsteinhaus in 1977.