G7 leaders
ELMAU CASTLE (awp/afp) – At the foot of the Bavarian mountains, in a fairytale setting, Elmau Castle presents itself as a bubble of luxury and high security for the G7 leaders who meet there from Sunday to Tuesday.
Set on an emerald green mountain pasture, the five-star residence listed as a historic monument offers a unique view of the Wetterstein massif and its famous Zugspitze, the highest point in Germany at almost 3,000 m altitude.
It is in this landscape mixing meadows, full cows, wooden chalets flowered with geraniums and crystalline rivers that Germany had already welcomed in 2015 the main leaders of the planet.
At the time, Angela Merkel was the host of this summit and, flanked by her guests, she had posed for the photographers against a backdrop of snowy peaks.
Sausages and beer
As for the American president at the time, Barack Obama, he had tried the local specialties: white sausages and beer, pretzels. The Bavarians in traditional dress and wearing Tyrolean hats who surrounded him had also made the happiness of the photographers there.
It is now the very sober and reserved Olaf Scholz, in power since December, who receives his counterparts from the United States, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom. Everyone discovers for the first time this castle located a hundred kilometers from Munich, not far from the Austrian border.
The choice of a hotel withdrawn from the world owes nothing to chance. The German authorities want at all costs to avoid repeating the nightmarish scenario of the G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017, which was dominated by violence on a rare scale in Germany.
Burned cars, looted shops, clashes between police and “black blocks”, the overflows in the great German port – whose mayor was then Olaf Scholz – had made this G20 a “fiasco” according to the German media and widely taken the not on the debates between Heads of State and Government.
In Elmau, a metal fence 16 km long and up to 3 meters high has been erected in recent weeks to prevent access to possible protesters.
And up to 18,000 police are mobilized with reinforcements from all over Germany, according to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior.
Spas and concert hall
The residence with 115 rooms and suites, equipped with spas, outdoor swimming pools, concert hall, five restaurants, one of which has two Michelin stars, will therefore place the leaders in a bubble.
In addition to a few hiking trails, only one small road provides access to the castle. Blocked by the police, it will only allow rare official vehicles to pass.
The seven leaders will be transported by helicopter from Munich International Airport to Elmau.
Upon their arrival, they will be able to discover the special history of this place, an example of how Germany dealt with its post-war Nazi past.
Located at more than 1,000 m above sea level in the municipality of Krün, the castle was built between 1914 and 1916 by the Protestant philosopher and theologian Johannes Müller.
This man had become under the Third Reich both a supporter of Hitler and an opponent of his anti-Semitic policy which he considered a “shame for Germany”.
The vast residence had served from 1942 as a reception center for Wehrmacht soldiers who came to rest after the battle. After the fall of the Reich, the castle, seized by the United States, served as an American military hospital, then as a refuge for survivors of the Holocaust.
Elmau Castle is located about forty kilometers from the Austrian town of Innsbrück and 18 kilometers from Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the winter sports resort where a large press center will welcome hundreds of journalists from all over the world.
The regional state of Bavaria, one of the most prosperous in the country, hopes, as in 2015, for significant tourist benefits.
Not far from Elmau is also Neuschwanstein Castle, the most visited in Germany, built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria and which became the logo of the American studio Walt Disney.
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