DEUTSCHLAND	GERMANY
Bundesland: Sachsen-Anhalt	Saxony-Anhalt
Landkreis: Harz

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The Brocken, or Blocksberg, is the highest peak (1,142 metres) in the Harz Mountains in Germany (located between the rivers Weser and Elbe) and also the highest peak of northern Germany. Although its elevation is below alpine dimensions, its microclimate resembles that of mountains of 2,000 m elevation. The peak tends to have a snow cover from September to May, and mists and fogs shroud it up to 300 days of the year. The mean annual temperature is only 2.9 °C.

The Brocken has always played a role in legends and has been connected with witches and devils; Goethe took up the legends in his Faust, in which he also referred to the mountain. Today the Brocken is part of a national park and hosts a historic botanical garden of mountain plants, founded in 1890. A narrow gauge steam train (opened in 1899) takes visitors from the station Drei Annen Hohne of the Harzquerbahn (Harz Transversial Railroad from Wernigerode to Nordhausen) to the station at the moutain top. The mountain features numerous hiking trails.

On this mountain the world's first television tower was built in 1935. The tower continued functioning until September 1939, when the authorities suspended broadcasting on the outbreak of World War II. Allied forces bombed the Brocken on April 17, 1945, destroying the Brocken Hotel and the weather station, but not the television tower. American forces used the installation from 1945 to 1947. Before the Americans left the Brocken in 1947, they disabled the rebuilt weather station and the television tower. A new modern television tower was built between 1973 and 1976.

The picture on glass no. 2190 [left] shows the Brocken Hotel, which was built in 1862 and replaced an earlier mountain lodge that had been erected in 1800 and was destroyed by a fire in 1859. Glass no. 4299 [right] is a souvenir from Ilsenburg (Harz), but on the bottom right also shows the Brocken hotel.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brocken]