Hintersee mit Zauberwald

The Hintersee is a small mountain lake about two kilometres west of the centre of Ramsau. It formed around 3,500 to 4,000 years ago when a rockfall from the Hochkalter massif dammed the Klausbach.

Highlights

• Clear, turquoise water reflecting the Hochkalter and Reiter Alpe
• Zauberwald: a geotope of moss-covered rockfall boulders on the lakeshore
• Historic 19th-century painters' colony
• Loop around the lake (Prinzregent-Luitpold-Weg), largely level
• Rowing-boat hire and places to stop for refreshments on the shore

Good to know

Practical info

Background & History

The Hintersee near Ramsau in the Berchtesgaden region lies nestled between the rugged walls of the Reiteralpe and the Hochkalter and is considered one of the most atmospheric mountain lakes in Bavaria. Its greenish-shimmering water and the forest behind it attracted, as early as the 19th century, a whole school of landscape painters, who captured here the changing light over water and rock, which is why a part of the shore still bears the name Malerwinkel, the painters' corner. This artistic discovery made the lake an early place of longing for the Romantic movement.

Between the lake and the foot of the mountains spreads the Zauberwald, an enchanted-seeming forest area that has grown on the rubble of an ancient rockslide. Huge moss-covered boulders, clear streams and ancient trees create a fairy-tale atmosphere, which gave the forest its name and has nourished people's imagination with legends since time immemorial. Geologically this chaos of stone tells of vast rockfalls that came down from the Hochkalter and the Reiteralpe over the course of millennia and filled the valley with debris. The village of Ramsau itself, with its much-photographed parish church of St. Sebastian against the backdrop of the Reiteralpe massif, has become one of the best-known postcard scenes of the Alps. At the Hintersee, natural history, painting and legend thus combine into a place of rare intensity.