A national park for big heads?

DThe Egerner is currently on a break. The bell is rung twelve times a year, the next time at the winter solstice. It stands at the crossing in Rottach-Egern, next to the five-star hotel of the same name. The bell is used for “customary, cultural and community-related occasions”, as Tegernseer Tal Tourismus GmbH reveals in impeccable broker German. Two anglers throw their lines far out into the cold, black winter lake. The night before it snowed down on the local mountains as if it had ever snowed up. The anglers are out for the pike, the char is closed at this time. Bites what? “No, but that doesn’t matter,” says one of the two men, in a good mood with a French accent.

A more modest property stands in the vicinity of the hotel. With plastic blinds, a green plastic frog and a hardware store lamp next to the front door. Looks suspiciously normal, is certainly unaffordable in this situation. Because everything that moves in town on this cold November Saturday is premium. In fact, one has to say that it may bach right now. The largest SUVs, the slimmest sports cars with the dullest special finishes, the most expensive silk dirndls, the most treated greyhounds. And everything, as the Bavarian says, cleaned with a toothbrush. An echo of rural origins is provided by a tractor that speeds down Aribostraße in the direction of the town center at excessive speed, the shovel full of earth. The driver is wearing a traditional hat.

The “Tegarinseo” appears for the first time in a document from 796. A seven kilometer long, two kilometer wide body of water from the last Ice Age. Altitude 725 meters. Crystal clear water, nothing for warm bathers. In the south of the Wallberg and Colleagues, no three-thousanders, but quite beautiful. The lake water ends up in the Inn via the Mangfall, then in the Danube. Where the river begins its journey, in Gmund at the northern end of the lake, is the handmade paper factory. She does such a good job that her reputation extends far beyond Munich, fifty kilometers away. Paper from Gmund is often used at the Oscars in Los Angeles.

Settling here requires lineage or money

Five communities share the lake shore. Clockwise from the north, Gmund, Tegernsee, Rottach-Egern, Kreuth and Bad Wiessee. Place names with a mythical Oberland sound. Postcard cliché and habitat for former ski stars and FC Bayern grandees. Gorbachev owned a villa, and the GDR foreign exchange collector Schalck-Golodkowski spent the last years of his life here. CSU heartland, a national park for big heads, which is kept free of nuclear power plants, waste incineration plants and industrial clusters. Settling here requires lineage or money. An exclusive pleasure: five towns, twenty-four thousand inhabitants.

Recently, the “Dägernsee”, as the Bavarian-speaking locals call it, has been the talk of the town again. “The rich Russian’s egg lie” was the headline in the “Bild” newspaper’s report on the raid on the property of the Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, who was breathing down the neck of the tax investigators. Four Fabergé eggs were confiscated, which their owner claims are cheap replicas, souvenirs for friends in Uzbekistan. The prosecution admitted that they were not originals, but that they were by no means as worthless as Usmanov claimed. An appraiser was appointed.