The Harz mountains are one of the most sascinating landscapes of Central Europe. These small low mountain ranges in the northeast of Germany covers different forest types, moorlands, rock and block waste dumps, rivers and brooks. It culminates in the subalpine vegetation of the 1142 meters high, tree-free "Brocken" peak (1600 mm precipitation a year, 260nebula days, annual everage temperarue 2,6 ⁰C).

From the altitude result a set of metereological chracteristics, wich one should consider by a visit, because even in high summer it can become sensitively cool. High yearly precipitations more than 1000 mm and low annual temperatures let develop splenderfoul forests, wich were in subranges hardly effected by humans. These jungle forests remainds the core of the national park high Harz mountains. Dominating tree species is the spruce, whose oldest copies older than 300 years.

At a height of 1.100 meters the forest border is reached. Cause is the extreme climate condition in the summit region. There are man-high deformed spruces like ghosts, wich fights already more than 1150 years against rough climatic conditions. They offer a sight of romantic wilderness.

The peak of Brocken has a special importance, there some planting and animal species have their nearest occurency only again in the alps or in Scandinavia.

Inspired of the impressions of his tree Brocken mountins 1777, 1783 and 1784 Goethe wrote the Walpurgis scene in his drama "Fist". Devil pulpit and witch altar are the places, at wich the night of Walpurgis tkes place. In the night of Walpurgis, the night to 1st of May, witches meet from completely Germany on the block mountain in order to sweep with their brushwood brooms the last snow from Brocken.

In the end of the last century this event became a kind of folk celebration. In the 1896 the society of Walpurges from Bath Harzburg celebrated this for the frist time. Starting from 1901 the Harz mountain steam railway drove drrove to the peak.