Obersalzberg as a realm of experience on the quality of visitors' experiences at National Socialist places of remembrance

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to explore the array of individual experiences (initial reactions and impact and lasting impressions) relating to Obersalzberg, an authentic site of National Socialist history that had originally been Adolf Hitler’s holiday residence in the 1930s and later became an important Government centre during the Second World War. Obersalzberg is considered a “site of the perpetrators” because here war crimes were planned on a major scale but carried out elsewhere.

Design/methodology/approach

The study uses innovative methodological approaches to capture initial reactions and lasting impressions of the visit. These include extensive, qualitative interviews with visitors (n = 20), and to clarify the long-term effects of the visit, phone interviews were conducted with selected visitors (n = 22) three months after the visit. The aim of the study is to increase the existing pool of knowledge on the quality of experience of visitors to National Socialist sites.

Findings

Overall assessment of the exhibition and the analysis of individual sections of it and individual objects clearly showed that a visit to Obersalzberg is an emotional experience for many people that “gets under the skin” and can possibly never be forgotten. Although the impact of the exhibition is different for each individual, various modes of confrontation with the exhibition contents are discernible in the visitors. Although these are naturally also dependent upon the degree of knowledge and the motives for the visit, spontaneous reactions certainly also occur – depending on the intensity of the examination of the topic of National Socialism. The four reactions to the events can be designated as modes of rationalization, memory, empathy and overwhelming distress.

Originality/value

This paper sheds new light on the reaction of visitors to this kind of exhibition. Visitors find themselves thinking over what they have seen, and together with their overall assessment of the exhibition, visitors go into detail about many particularly moving topics; they are stunned about the world view of those in power at that time and the resulting events; they report on surprising, new knowledge about Obersalzberg; many times, they express empathy toward the evicted residents and experience the bunker as a formidable complex. Their past experiences are often linked to the present, even if the quality and intensity of the experience is different for each individual.

Citation

Aschauer, W., Weichbold, M., Foidl, M. and Drecoll, A. (2017), "Obersalzberg as a realm of experience on the quality of visitors' experiences at National Socialist places of remembrance", Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, Vol. 9 No. 2, pp. 158-174. https://doi.org/10.1108/WHATT-01-2017-0003