Elmau Castle

Schloss Elmau is a hotel at the foot of the Wetterstein mountain range, above the village of Klais, located between Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Mittenwald, in the municipality of Krün in Upper Bavaria.

Schloss Elmau was built in 1916 by Johannes Müller with the help of Elsa Countess Waldersee and his brother-in-law, the architect Carl Sattler, for his friends and artists.

The castle, which has been expanded several times and is now managed by the Müller-Elmau family in its third generation, is a luxurious hotel and residential complex and a venue for chamber music and jazz festivals (including the European Jazz Festival), international scientific symposia, political debates, author readings, and more than 100 individual concerts per year.

Major Fire in 2005

In the early morning hours of August 7, 2005, a devastating fire broke out in the castle, destroying almost the entire attic floor. Around 400 hotel guests and about 50 employees were evacuated; by midday on the day of the fire, there were about ten predominantly slightly injured people.

According to authorities, the fire was caused by a defective electric blanket in the room of the former managing director on the attic floor of the castle.

Reopening in 2007

While the relatively new annex has been back in operation since Christmas 2006, the castle itself only reopened on July 1, 2007. The reconstruction and the new construction of the bathhouse were carried out by the architectural firm Hilmer, Sattler + Albrecht, André Behncke, and the Munich company DBLB-Architekten + Ingenieure.

The new name chosen was Schloss Elmau - Luxury Spa & Cultural Hideaway. It joined the luxury hotel alliance Leading Hotels of the World. In addition, the spa sector was expanded. The spa is also counted among the Leading Spas, an award also given by Leading Hotels.

Schloss Elmau is to continue as a cultural meeting place. In addition to concerts by established artists and the promotion of young musicians in both classical music and jazz, literature series, lectures, and discussion forums (see, among others, Peter Sloterdijk's "Elmauer Rede") are to be open to hotel guests and visitors, taking up the tradition of Schloss Elmau in a modern form.