Visitors to Germany's highest peak will have to do without the landmark gilded cross at its summit for the next few weeks. A helicopter on Tuesday lifted the cross from the 9,718-foot peak of the Zugspitze—a mountain shared between Germany and Austria in the Bavarian Alps—for restoration. Why? Because as the AP reports, visitors keen to leave their mark have plastered it with stickers over the years. The cross, which is 16 feet tall and weighs 660 pounds, is being taken to the workshop of craftswoman Andrea Würzinger in nearby Eschenlohe, German news agency dpa reported.
Würzinger plans to carefully remove the thick layer of stickers, sand the iron underneath, and then add new gold leaf where needed. With gold prices high, she said that "we want to try to gild it only where there is no longer gold." The current cross was made by her father, Franz Würzinger, in 1993, replacing the original from 1851, which was damaged beyond repair. She said that, when it was first re-gilded after about 15 years, there were three stickers on it; in 2017, there were about 70; and now there are hundreds. It's easy to reach the top of the Zugspitze, which gets around 600,000 visitors each year, by mountain railway and cable car. But the actual peak with its cross is a short climb away from the summit station where visitors gather to enjoy spectacular views.
In July, a replica cross was inaugurated inside the summit station in hopes that people will take their selfies and slap their stickers there instead of risking the climb to the peak. Würzinger and the Bayerische Zugspitzbahn, the operator of the railway and cable cars that lead to the summit from the German side, hope the work will be finished and the cross back in place in time for the beginning of the ski season on Nov. 28.
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