In 2019, the Free State of Bavaria was sued by the Nature Conservation Union because the authorities had allowed the demolition of the Villa Schön in Berchtesgaden and instead approved the construction of three new houses with a total of 24 apartments on the large, tree-lined site. The BN won the case, the villa remained standing – and now belongs to the Free State. He bought them from the project developers and is making them permanently available to the Berchtesgaden National Park Administration, as the latter itself announced on Thursday.
From the point of view of national park director Roland Baier, this is “a big step towards the further development of the national park and an extremely important pillar of our research cooperation with the Technical University of Munich.” Mayor Franz Rasp (CSU) also sees this as “strengthening the location of the national park as a beacon for research and education”. The national park administration has rented the villa, built in 1857, in the immediate vicinity of its national park center “Haus der Berge” since 2021 and has housed accommodation, offices and laboratories for researchers in it.