Bidspirit auction | Postwar Photo Postcard ”Hitlers Berghof

Postwar Photo Postcard ”Hitlers Berghof Obersalzberg” - A photo postcard titled ”Hitlers Berghof Obersalzberg, ” showing the damaged Berghof structure set against a forested hillside, with window and roof openings visible in the masonry. The card carries the printed title again along with the credit ”Aufnahme Anton Hafner, Piding - Alle Rechte vorbehalten” and the ”Echt Foto” stamp box, along with the number 21 in the corner. The postcard depicts the building following its partial destruction, documenting the site on the Obersalzberg above Berchtesgaden. The Berghof was Adolf Hitler's residence on the Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden, functioning from the 1930s as both a private retreat and a secondary seat of government where he received foreign dignitaries and held military conferences. The complex was struck by a Royal Air Force bombing raid in April 1945 and the surviving ruins were later demolished by Bavarian authorities in 1952 to prevent the site becoming a site of pilgrimage for neo-Nazi sympathisers. Postwar photo postcards such as this one, produced by local commercial photographers, catered to the considerable tourist and souvenir trade that grew around the ruined Obersalzberg in the years following the war.