Goethe Way

The Goetheweg is a hiking trail in the Harz Mountains, named after the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Course

Torfhaus chunks

• Distance: 8 km
• Lowest point: 800 m ( peat house )
• Highest point: 1,141.2 m ( chunks )

The Goetheweg is one of the busiest trails in the Harz National Park. Annually migrate to him about 200,000 people to the Brocken. It describes about the likely path of Goethe in his ascent of the Brocken peat house on 10 December 1777. However Goethe's exact route is unknown today.

" Morning after Torfhause in deep snow. Quarter broken up after 10, and from there to the Brocken. A cubit deep snow, wearing though. Quarter up there after one. Cheery glorious moment, the whole world in clouds and fog, and above all cheerful. What is man, that thou art mindful of his. To fours back. When foresters on the Torfhause in hostel. "

From peat house starting, the Goetheweg runs along the Abbegrabens on the Great Torfhausmoor over to the southeast, is to below the Quitschenberg and Luise Cliffs of Kaiserweg achieved. After a few hundred meters common path of Goetheweg branches off to the east. In a northeastern arc across the Quitschenberg he circles the field chunks Moor, the headwaters of the rivers Abbe and Cold Bode. Shortly after the Ecker jump the border is crossed to Saxony- Anhalt. On Goetheweg station the way impinges on the Brocken Railway. Until the closure of the former zone border area by the GDR in 1961, the Goetheweg now proceeded on a straight path to the northeast over the Königsberg at the Hirschhorn cliffs over to the summit of the Brocken. Today, the path leads to the in 1991 opened a new Goetheweg in an arc along the railway line to the Brockenstraße. Here the natural tree line is crossed, and shortly thereafter reached by road, the Brocken plateau.

From July 2008 to October 2009, the previously partially in Bohlensteig New Goetheweg was expanded into a three-meter wide path. Coming ahead critically discussed measure allows automatic preparation of the path in the snow, as it has been carried out on the remaining sections of Goethe path before. This is a safe access be allowed even in winter.

The Goetheweg is part of the Harz Witches Stieges.