Dear guests,
You might ask yourselves why a guesthouse in Garmisch-Partenkirchen carries the name “Hamburg”? Well, this short story should give an answer.
The house itself was built in the beginning of the thirties by Mr. Richard Kloth, a Hamburg based architect. He designed the house with its sun terrace, which you can still see today on its facade. The first entry into Garmisch´s land registry is dated in 1934.
Both families Kloth and Peters came from Hamburg and named the guesthouse after their hometown. The entrance area still shows Hamburg´s famous water carrier “Hummel Hummel”. The architect Mr. Kloth made the move from the Warterkant area near Hamburg to the Werdenfels area to build a guest house on his property in Garmisch, in order to secure the living of his unmarried daughter Käthe. Together with her university friend Meta Peters, Käthe managed the guest house from the very beginning. In the staircase to the first floor, old engravings of the city of Hamburg are reminiscent of this early period. In the twenties, Wintersports had been “en vogue“ for just a select, “happy few“. But when the 1936 Olympic games were celebrated in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the place received its break-through in winter sports and guesthouse Hamburg was there right from the start.
My mother, Mrs. Anneliese Groes, bought the house in 1967 from Mrs. Peters and the Kloth family and renovated it completely. At that time, it only had one bathroom and three toilets! Actually, she had plans to give up another hotel, which she had leased in the sixties. She wanted to take over the guesthouse herself. But as so often in life, plans changed and reality turned out to be different. Her personal life took her to the Netherlands, where she spent the second half of her life with her Dutch husband in the Eindhoven area. But “Haus Hamburg“ stayed important to her. Over the years she invested a lot of energy modernising the guest house and increasing its comfort, without sacrificing the house´s character. In summer 2007 Anneliese Groes passed away and I inherited the house.
Since then I have been eager to preserve the house in a lively tradition and create a place of encounter. I decided to turn the traditional guest house into a holiday home, “Chalet Haus Hamburg”. A place that invites families and friends to meet and relax, to celebrate and laugh, enjoying our beautiful alpine landscape. You will find a lot of space for meeting with your loved ones as well as retreats for time with yourself.
My personal passion, promoting literacy and reading skills, especially for children, also became part of the concept. Reading corners invite you to relax with a book and all seven bedrooms are dedicated to an author who has a connection to Bavaria. Young and grown up children can dive into the fantastic world of the “Neverending Story” of Michael Ende, or get inspired by crime author Jörg Maurer to go on a forensic search in the Bavarian region.In summer 2014 we celebrated the 80th anniversary of the house and published a small booklet where important companions tell the story of the special house. It tells of wonderful encounters and experiences over the decades and the same I wish you for your stay!
With cordial regards,
Sabine Hinze