Road for Romantics

Ascending the 12-kilometer trail up the Brocken from the town of Ilsenburg was something of a rite of passage for German Romantics. Today the route, which the poet Heinrich Heine made famous in his verses, is marked by signs showing green rectangles. Not far from the steeply descending Ilsefälle valley – there where the stream tumbles over the granite stones – is a monument to Heine.

The Harz range got their name from the forest. In middle-high German, “Hart” meant "wooded area." Back then, though, the forests were beech trees, not the spruce that is currently found. The beech trees were eventually all cut down for building houses, supporting tunnels and smelting the ore that had been mined from the mountains for 1,000 years. Fast-growing spruce were planted in their place.

Mass tourism to the Harz region developed in the second half of the 19th century, with the advent of the railway system. Since 1992, the train running from Wernigerode to Nordhausen also covers the stretch, which was closed in the post-war era, from Drei Annen Hohne to the top of the Brockenberg. At 60.5 kilometers, it’s the the longest narrow-gauge steam locomotive route in Germany.