Qualla: Brocken https://qualla.com/brocken en-us © 2026 Bendyline Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:49:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Brocken https://qualla.com/brocken Brocken: Introduction https://qualla.com/brocken/ On 3 December 1989, hundreds of people walked up a mountain that had been forbidden for twenty-eight years. What they found at the top was a concrete wall three metres high, a ring of antennas, and the westernmost Soviet listening post in Germany, code-named Jenissej, sharing the summit with a Stasi station code-named Urian. The cover name has a pedigree. In the Walpurgisnacht scene of Goethe's Faust, Herr Urian is the devil who presides over the witches' revel — on this exact mountain.

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]]> Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/p/w/brocken-wk/u1pw-brocken-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Brocken: The Witches' Mountain https://qualla.com/brocken/ At 1,141.1 metres the Brocken is the highest summit in the Harz and in the whole of northern Germany. Prussian military surveyors fixed that figure in 1850 and it still stands. The name means roughly a lump or a boulder, and from a distance the mountain earns it — something set d...

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]]> Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/p/w/brocken-wk/u1pw-brocken-the-witches-mountain.mp3 0:06 2 full Brocken: Goethe in Deep Snow https://qualla.com/brocken/ Goethe himself came up on 10 December 1777, from Torfhaus, with a forester named Degen. His notes are almost telegraphic. They set off at a quarter past ten through snow an ell deep that held their weight, stood on top at a quarter past one, and were back down by four. In between...

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]]> Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/p/w/brocken-wk/u1pw-brocken-goethe-in-deep-snow.mp3 0:06 3 full Brocken: Three Hundred Days in Cloud https://qualla.com/brocken/ Roughly 1.4 million people come each year, and the summit is in cloud on something like 300 days of it — 330 in the record year 1958. It has a subalpine climate with the tree line at 1,110 metres, and because a steam train runs to the top it gets badly underestimated. Weather her...

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]]> Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/p/w/brocken-wk/u1pw-brocken-three-hundred-days-in-cloud.mp3 0:06 4 full Brocken: Jenissej and Urian https://qualla.com/brocken/ The summit's twentieth century was industrial before it was military. A mobile 10 kW transmitter sent the first television broadcasts from the Brocken in 1935; the present weather station dates from 1939; American bombing destroyed the Brocken Hotel on 17 April 1945. Then the bo...

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]]> Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/p/w/brocken-wk/u1pw-brocken-jenissej-and-urian.mp3 0:06 5 full Brocken: An Island Above the Tree Line https://qualla.com/brocken/ Since the last ice age the Brocken has functioned as an alpine island, holding species that otherwise belong in far higher mountains. The alpine pasqueflower grows here as the Brockenanemone and crowberry is known locally as Brockenmyrte. Among the animals are ice-age relics — th...

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]]> Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/p/w/brocken-wk/u1pw-brocken-an-island-above-the-tree-line.mp3 0:06 6 full