Eibsee and Zugspitze Massif from Viewing Point, Bavarian Alps, 1950s

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Eibsee and Zugspitze Massif from Viewing Point, Bavarian Alps, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

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Eibsee and Zugspitze Massif from Viewing Point, Bavarian Alps, 1950s — Archive & Atlas

Unattributed 1950–1959

AA-2026-289853

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Postwar European tourism ran on a simple operating principle: find a mountain, climb partway up it, and stand at the edge looking at the view while someone took your picture from behind. Two visitors on the right do exactly this, gazing down at the Eibsee — the startlingly turquoise alpine lake nestled in its forested bowl below the Zugspitze, Germany's highest peak — as though they personally arranged the scenery.

By the 1950s the Bavarian Alps had become an established destination for travelers who could finally move across borders again, and the Zugspitze cable car meant that the scale of this landscape was available to anyone in sensible shoes. The lake's almost improbable blue-green color was the kind of thing that made tourists check their camera settings twice, convinced something had gone wrong.

The man stands with hands on hips, the universal posture of someone who has decided that a view this large confirms something he already believed about himself.

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