The beginnings
How our family hotel was created
The Leiners Familienhotel was built at the end of the 1920s by Pauline Bierprigl, the grandmother of Toni Leiner and great-grandmother of Monika Leiner-Pieri.
Pauline Bierprigl initially ran three mountain huts on the Zugspitze with her husband Martin (known as "Zugspitz-Martl"). The Münchner Haus, the Knorrhütte and the Reintalangerhütte. At that time, there were no cable cars on the Zugspitze and food and all other necessary items had to be carried up the mountain by mules.
Martin Bierprigl died suddenly in 1911, one year after the birth of their daughter Paula. Pauline now had to manage three huts by herself and raise her daughter alone.
In 1926, the German Alpine Association declared that a woman was not allowed to manage three huts alone. She therefore kept the Knorrhütte, which received the most mountaineering guests at that time. Yet this wasn’t enough for Pauline, so she started building a hotel in the valley.
In the 1930s, Paula Bierprigl married Willi Leiner, an extreme mountaineer from Munich who had spent a lot of time at the Knorrhütte. They together managed the Knorrhütte, while down in the valley Pauline Bierprigl transformed the hotel into a flourishing business with many wealthy regular guests. At that time, the hotel was called “Hospiz".
At the start of war, Willi Leiner was conscripted, the mountain huts were closed and moved back to the valley with their sons Toni and Peter. The hotel was also closed and used to house children who were evacuated during the war.
After the war, it was used to accommodate families whose homes had been occupied by the Americans.
Upturn after the war
Tourists slowly started returning to the hotel in the years 1948/49. Paula and Willi Leiner, who had returned from captivity as a prisoner of war, now ran the hotel together and Willi Leiner gave it the name "Hotel Leiner". This was followed by conversions and expansions. Toni Leiner, their son, trained to become a chef in Munich, attended the hotel management school in Lucerne and worked in various hotels in Germany and abroad.
In 1960, Toni married and together with his wife Lisa invested all his efforts in the hotel. Further conversions and modernisation measures followed.
Focus on families with children
In 1998, their daughter Monika Leiner-Pieri joined the family business. She was always on the lookout for areas of interest for the Hotel Leiner. They first considered becoming a venue for conferences and seminars. Then their experiences with their own patchwork family gave rise to the notion of a hotel for families with children. This was initially followed by the construction of an adventure playground and the transformation of part of the restaurant into a playroom. It started with a half-day child-minder and three apartments and four family rooms. The next step was joining Kinderland Bayern, followed in 2007 by being accepted as part of Familotel.
Over time a youth room was built, the number of child-minders was increased to three full-time employees, and childcare became available 7 days a week. We became a baby hotel and started offering childcare of at least 30 hours per week for children from age 3 months. In 2009, we were awarded 2nd prize in the innovation competition organised by Garmisch-Partenkirchen Tourism for tourism offers.
In the meantime, we offered three childcare rooms, 12 family apartments and five family rooms.
