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The Jennerbahn at Königssee

70 years of cable car history

The cable car that started operating on the Jenner in 1953 has now become a modern cable car company. Berchtesgadener Bergbahn AG employs 40 people in cable car operations and administration. The cable car’s own restaurants, Jenneralm GmbH, employ up to 35 people in the Jenneralm restaurant at the top station and Halbzeit restaurant at the middle station.

Only a few locals will remember the maiden voyage of the first Jennerbahn in December 1953. The installation was launched with 140 double chairs and 30 closed gondolas. The 3,320-metre-long cable car up the mountain became a success story: the 100,000th passenger was welcomed in June 1954. In the following years, additional lifts were built alongside the cable car for ski operations and the first ever Alpine Ski World Cup was held on the Jenner in January 1967.

On March 5, 2017, the old Jennerbahn with its second-generation 2-seater gondolas and 10 million passengers became history. Capacities and technology no longer met current requirements. As early as 2014, the then management decided with the shareholders of the AG to build a completely new lift. Over a construction period of two years and with an investment of 60 million euros, new operating buildings, a state-of-the-art cable car, new lifts and two restaurants with a panoramic terrace were built. The new Jennerbahn went into full operation in June 2019, with passengers now taking their seats in floor-to-ceiling glazed 10-passenger gondolas, making waiting times in the valley a thing of the past.