The Building
Adolf Hitler and the Teehaus
All of the rooms were furnished to the highest standard, and no expense was spared. One example was the tablecloth for the main dining hall, which was made of hand-made linen by the Munich-based company Deisz, which cost 2,600 Reichsmarks - equivalent to around 24,000DM or £8,000 today. The house was completed ahead of schedule in the autumn of 1938, and had taken only ten months to complete. Hitler's first visit to the house took place on the 16th of September, some seven months before the house was officially presented to him for his fiftieth birthday. It was the first of only fourteen documented visits, the last of which took place on the 17th of October 1940. This was due to a number of reasons, but mainly due to the fact that the Nazi leader had an aversion to the rarefied air, and had often questioned the safety of the elevator. However, his mistress Eva Braun was to pay frequent visits to the house.
In spite of the fact that he was not actually going to visit the Teehaus very often after it had been completed, Hitler did actually have a significant degree of input with regard to the basic layout of some of the rooms - which were captured in a number of "storyboard" watercolours. Below are two examples of Hitler's own vision of the Teehaus - the kitchen and tea room. To view a larger image, click on the relevant thumbnail.
Unlike the Berghof, Hitler's more well-known residence lower down the Obersalzberg mountain, the Kehlsteinhaus was to survive both the ferocious Allied air raids that took place during the latter stages of the war and the post-war destruction of potential Nazi shrines. Bearing this in mind, visitors to the house can probably be thankful for the fact that Hitler hardly ever visited the Teehaus, for it was almost certainly this that prevented its destruction. Unfortunately, many of the original pieces of crockery and furniture, and even the door handles, were removed by the occupying forces at the end of the war, and while some of these now make up private collections, mainly in the United States, many simply disappeared without trace.