Firefighters battled for hours to contain a blaze that engulfed the former Nazi guest house known as “The Eagle’s Nest” in southern Germany, while police investigated the cause after detaining a man near the scene, authorities said on Saturday.
Around 200 firefighters and emergency workers near Berchtesgaden in Bavaria were battling the flames after the building, known as the Kehlsteinhaus, caught fire on Friday, police said.
Built in 1938 as a guest house for Nazi officials and their guests, the building sits in a spectacular Alpine setting above Berchtesgaden. Adolf Hitler used it occasionally, earning it the nickname “Hitler’s Tea House”. It is separate from his nearby summer residence, the Berghof.
Bild newspaper quoted a police spokesperson as saying the building, preserved after World War Two as a historical monument linked to the Nazi era, had been so badly damaged that it “could probably not be saved”.
Police said earlier they had detained a man near the site but had not yet established the cause of the fire.
“Whether the person is linked to the fire is currently the subject of a criminal investigation,” Bavarian police said in a statement.